Where they live and go: Immigrant ethnic activity space and neighborhood crime in Southern California

Abstract

The current study advances the literature by simultaneously accounting for the geographic location of immigrant residences and the location of ethnic businesses, and considers their proximity to one another. We argue our alternative measure, which we term Immigrant Ethnic Activity Space (IEAS), more fully captures the ecology of immigrant communities. Using data from several sources to capture neighborhoods in the Southern California region, we constructed IEAS measures for the seven largest ethnic groups in the region, including groups from Mexico, China, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Armenia, and El Salvador. These measures reflect where immigrants live and where they go for various ethnic-related routine activities, as well as the distance between the two. We estimated a set of negative binomial regression models to examine the effects of the IEAS measures on neighborhood violent and property crime rates. We find that our IEAS approach is distinct from traditionally-employed measures of immigrant neighborhoods. We also find that IEAS measures have negative associations with both violent and property crime, in general. The current study proposes and develops an alternative approach to conceptualizing immigrant neighborhoods, which more closely aligns with extant theory and should be considered in future research on the immigration-crime nexus. Immigrant-ethnic activity space3 Bio Young-An Kim is an Assistant Professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University. His research interests focus on various areas such as neighborhoods and crime, criminology of place, geo-spatial analysis, and immigration and crime. Besides criminology, he is interested in sociology of health, urban sociology, and quantitative research methods.John R. Hipp is a Professor in the departments of Criminology, Law and Society, and Sociology, at the University of California Irvine. His research interests focus on how neighborhoods change over time, how that change both affects and is affected by neighborhood crime, and the role networks and institutions play in that change. He approaches these questions using quantitative methods as well as social network analysis. He has published substantive

Is It Dangerous to Live in Neighborhoods with More Immigrants? Assessing the Effects of Immigrant Concentration on Crime Patterns

“…The conceptual and perceived areas where individuals believe they share life, community, and cohesion with neighbors are vague, and this limitation has been controversial in the literature about neighborhood characteristics and crime (e.g., Kim & Hipp, 2020;Sampson, 2013). For example, Kim et al (2019) measured immigrants' daily activity patterns and identified new boundaries of neighborhoods for immigrants.…”

“…Similarly, some assert that immigrant concentration in specific areas such as in neighborhoods marked by racial/ethnic segregation or disadvantaged areas could be linked to other disadvantages such as lack of employment opportunities, relatively lower wages for the same amount of work, low education attainment, language barriers, and more constricted patterns of structural integration (Alba & Nee, 1997;Feldmeyer, 2009;Kim et al, 2019;Sanders & Nee, 1987;Saporu et al, 2011). For example, the settling down of immigrants in disadvantaged areas has been associated with their being trapped in structural inequality.…”

“…For instance, it is generally perceived that most of the immigrant arrests and apprehensions happen in communities with Latin American origins (Hernández et al, 2018). In extension to the conventional notion, a handful of studies have examined the unique effects of immigration in specific racial/ethnic enclaves on crime (Feldmeyer & Steffensmeier, 2009;Herzog, 2009;Kim et al, 2019;Kubrin et al, 2018;Kubrin & Ishizawa, 2012;Ramey, 2013;Saporu et al, 2011;Sydes, 2017). This line of inquiry asserts that "context matters," stating that immigrant concentration needs to be distinguished from the general combination of distinct immigrant groups due to the different cultures and trends of the reaction to discrimination and abuse in racially/ethnically segregated communities (Kubrin et al, 2018).…”

Immigrant Organizations and Neighborhood Crime

“…Studies find little evidence that areas with more immigrants are at heightened risk of neighborhood crime (Desmond & Kubrin 2009; Kim et al, 2018; Kubrin & Ousey 2009; Ousey & Kubrin 2014; Trager & Kubrin 2018). In fact, research typically shows that immigrant concentration has a null effect, or in some cases, a negative effect on neighborhood crime rates.…”

Reconsidering movement and exposure: Towards a more dynamic health geography

“…Mobility and its resulting associations between environmental exposures and health behaviours or outcomes may also differ by individual characteristics or by groups within the population. For instance, differences by socioeconomic status or age are infrequently considered (Fuller & Stanley, 2019; Kim et al., 2019; Portegijs et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2019). Exposure to fast‐food outlets often differs by socioeconomic status as these outlets more readily locate in more deprived areas (Black et al., 2014; Wiki et al., 2019).…”