Diversity Makes Us Safe: Immigration, Lasting Ethno-Racial Heterogeneity, and Neighborhood Crime.

• In Event: Immigrant Communities, Generational Status, and Heterogeneity on Crime.

Abstract

Research consistently shows that in America immigration is associated with lower community crime rates. However, some studies find that the protective effects of immigration are limited to places with well-established immigrant communities. A small but growing number of studies also show that the protective effects of immigration on crime are even stronger in more ethno-racially diverse communities. This study uses data from the 2010 Neighborhood Change Database (NCDB), National Neighborhood Crime Study, Wave 2 (NNCS2), and the Census to bridge these two literatures by examining whether immigration leads to even less crime in neighborhoods that have been ethno-racially diverse for several decades compared to places that diversified only recently or did not diversify at all. The results shed new light on how immigrant communities become established leading to lower crimes rates and the role that neighborhood diversity plays in this process over time.

Author

• Feodor Gostjev, Bridgewater State University