Whither the urban diaspora? The spatial redistribution of Latino origin groups in metropolitan America since 1990

ABSTRACT

Our research advances what is known about the urban portion of the Latino diaspora, focusing on the extent to which Hispanic country-of-origin groups have spread throughout metropolitan America. Analyzing 1990–2010 census data for the 7 largest origin groups, we find that all 7 have become more evenly dispersed across metro areas, with group shares declining in primary gateways and increasing in other types of destinations. At the same time, Dominicans and Cubans remain highly concentrated in New York and Miami, respectively, and certain pairs of groups (e.g., Mexicans and Dominicans) continue to inhabit different metropolises despite a modest trend toward convergent settlement among most pairs. All groups have experienced some growth in exposure to ethnoracial diversity, particularly in primary gateway settings. However, Mexicans are less exposed than any other origin group to African Americans. The variation in our results by group attests to the delicate balance between the forces driving spatial concentration and dispersion. We conclude that multiple diasporas are underway rather than a single, uniform one. This pattern has relevance both for diversity within local Hispanic communities and for relations between Hispanics and other panethnic populations, most notably Whites and Blacks.

Acknowledgments

A version of this article was presented at the 2018 meeting of the American Sociological Association in Philadelphia. We thank Chad Farrell, John Iceland, and Megan Evans for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We use the terms Hispanic and Latino interchangeably, in keeping with common practice.

2. The practical reason for employing such a definition is that the census summary files used in our analysis do not report nativity or generation for Latino origin groups. Moreover, perceptions of shared physical attributes (like skin tone, body type, or facial features), ancestry, and cultural traditions are arguably more central to how “outsiders” (non-Latinos) view these groups (Cornell & Hartmann, 1998).

3. As a matter of convenience, we include Puerto Rico when discussing Hispanic countries of origin despite its status as a U.S. territory.

4. Collectively, the members of the “other” category constitute less than 3% of the U.S. total in all three census years.

5. Several investigators have criticized the quality of 2000 census data on Hispanic origin, citing a large, unexpected rise over 1990 figures in the percentage of Latino respondents identifying as “other Hispanic” and a corresponding dip in the percentages identifying with smaller origin groups (Logan, 2001; Martin, 2002; Suro, 2002). These shifts appear attributable to a series of changes in census questionnaire design between 1990 and 2000, most notably the removal of example origin groups for respondents to write in if they fell outside the Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban check-box categories. Fortunately, the 1990 version of the Hispanic origin module was reinstated in 2010. To minimize concerns about lack of comparability, we stress 1990 and 2010 results throughout the analysis.

6. Alternative destination typologies are available, but none that we are aware of is ideal for present purposes. Most classify metro areas or other geographic units based on the representation and growth of their total foreign-born (immigrant) populations (Lee et al., 2014; Singer, 2005) or their Hispanic panethnic populations (Lichter & Johnson, 2009; Lichter et al., 2010; Suro & Singer, 2003). Hall’s (2013) analysis of residential segregation among immigrant origin groups in established, new, and minor destinations stands as a partial exception, recognizing that an area’s destination status may differ from one group to the next. However, only three of our Hispanic origin groups are among the 10 groups covered by his study, which includes immigrants from Asia and the Caribbean as well as Latin America.

7. Although the index of dissimilarity is often employed to study residential segregation across neighborhoods, its general function—comparing the evenness (or lack thereof) in the proportional distributions of groups across categories—has relevance for other topics and geographic scales. For example, research on male–female differences in types of occupations has long utilized some version of D (e.g., Jacobs, 1989). In addition, similar to our analysis, Saenz and Morales (2015, pp. 63–64) have compared the geographic distribution of Latino origin groups to that of the U.S. population as whole but across states rather than metropolitan areas.

8. Despite our metropolitan focus, members of the seven Latino origin groups also live in nonmetropolitan settings. As of 2010, the shares of all Mexicans (8.9%), Guatemalans (6.4%), Puerto Ricans (4.5%), Cubans (2.9%), Salvadorans (2.7%), Colombians (2.3%), and Dominicans (1.3%) found in nonmetro America remain modest. This assessment holds both in an absolute sense and relative to their representation in each class of metro destination shown in Table 1. Nonmetro shares were lower 2 decades earlier for six of the seven groups, with only Mexicans (8.9% in 1990) failing to record an increase.

9. Metro areas qualify as growth centers if they rank among the 15 areas in a census-defined region that experience the largest absolute increases in population for the origin group of interest.

Additional information

Funding

Support for this research has been provided by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD074605). Additional support comes from the Population Research Institute at Penn State, which receives infrastructure funding from NICHD (P2CHD041025). The content of the article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not reflect the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Notes on contributors

Barrett A. Lee

Barrett A. Lee is Professor of Sociology and Demography at The Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on spatial manifestations of social organization and inequality, spanning such topics as community racial–ethnic diversity, segregation, neighborhood change, involuntary mobility (displacement), local attachment, and the residential circumstances associated with wealth and affluence. He also has a career-long interest in urban homelessness.

Michael J. R. Martin

Michael J. R. Martin is pursuing a PhD in Sociology and Demography at The Pennsylvania State University. He studies racial–ethnic diversity, segregation, and spatial analytic methods, particularly spatial clustering in transitions over time. In addition to being a graduate student, Michael works for the United States Census Bureau as a statistician, investigating computer and Internet availability and aspects of the digital divide.