Different than the Sum of its Parts: Examining the Unique Impacts of Immigrant Groups on Neighborhood Crime Rates

• In Event: Contexts of Convergence in the Study of Place and Crime

Abstract

There has been an explosion of studies on the relationship between immigration and crime. The literature has produced a robust finding: neighborhoods with greater concentrations of immigrants have lower crime rates. One drawback of this research is that it typically treats immigrants as a homogeneous population. Examining the immigration-crime nexus across neighborhoods in the Southern California metropolitan region, this study builds on existing literature by unpacking immigration and accounting for the rich diversity that exists. We capture this diversity using three different approaches, operationalizing immigrant groups by similar racial/ethnic categories, regions of the world that immigrants emigrate from, and where immigrants co-locate once they settle in the U.S. We compare these novel approaches with the standard approach—a single measure of percent foreign born. We find that considerable insights are gained by distinguishing between diverse groups of immigrants as all three strategies explained neighborhood crime levels better than the traditional approach.

Authors

• Charis Kubrin, University of California, Irvine

• John R. Hipp, University of California, Irvine

• Young-An Kim, University of California, Irvine