Housing and migrant communities

Abstract

When a person migrates to a new country, nearly everything they encounter is new. They face new laws and conventions, new groups of people, a new labor market, and a new built environment. Given this, it is not surprising that many newcomers initially concentrate into receptor areas, or “ethnic enclaves.” The reasons for clustering may be factors external to the group (such as discrimination or the unavailability of viable employment opportunities) or within‐group characteristics (such as a common language, ties of consanguinity, shared income limitations, the need to pool market resources, etc.). Regardless of the reasons, immigrant spatial concentration should be temporary and of declining utility, and the longstanding expectation is a process of eventual dissipation into the residential mainstream by moving to a less segregated neighborhood (Massey & Denton 1985).