Integration Outcomes of Middle-Class Puerto Rican Migrants in Houston, Texas and New York City, NY

• In Event: Class and Labor Migrations to the United States

Abstract

Since 2005, more than 500,000 Puerto Ricans have left Puerto Rico as a result of the socioeconomic crises sustained by economic recessions, colonial policies and environmental disasters. Puerto Rico has not seen a migration wave of this size since the Great Exodus of the 1950s, when half a million Puerto Ricans—mostly, rural poor and working class families and individuals—moved looking for jobs and a better quality of life. There has been a shift in the migration-settlement pattern: while in the 1950s, Puerto Ricans settled in greater numbers in the NY Tri-State Area and Chicago, more recently, they are moving to the U.S. South. This shift in settlement pattern provides us with an opportunity to study the integration of ethnic community in a new social setting. How do migrants frame the factors that enabled their migration, in contrast to peers who were not able to do so? What did they imagine their new life and home would be like, and what spaces and communities have they created in their destinations? I use in-depth interviews to analyze the integration outcomes of Puerto Ricans in New York City, a traditional destination, and Houston, TX, a new destination. I focus on migrants with relative advantage (young, self-identified middle class and college educated) in order to identify the differences in migration outcomes produced by structural inequality and individual capital. Through these interviews, I test whether social structures and institutions unequally incorporate Puerto Ricans based on their demographic and phenotypic characteristics.

Author

• Mario E Mercado Diaz, Rutgers University - New Brunswick