New Destinations in Context: Explaining the Changing Geography of Immigrant Settlement.

摘要

The main objective of this dissertation is to determine what factors predict the growth or decline in foreign-born populations over the last three decades. In order to present a comprehensive analysis, this project also examines racial and ethnic differences within foreign-born population growth and the role that the unit of analysis has in affecting results in such analyses. These objectives are motivated by a number of gaps in the current literature on foreign-born population growth, especially the research on population growth in new destinations of immigrant settlement. Specifically, the primary contributions of my dissertation are that it addresses the following three gaps in the literature. First, there is no systematic analysis of foreign-born population growth in metropolitan areas since 1980. Second, we have a limited understanding of how determinants of foreign-born population growth vary across racial and ethnic groups. Third, there is no examination of whether determinants of population growth differ across varying geographic units of analysis.;In order to contribute to the literature on foreign-born population growth, I analyze data from 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2005/2009. The data sources are the summary files of the 1980, 1990, and 2000 decennial censuses, the 1980-2009 U.S. Census Bureau population estimates, TRAC, and the 2005-2009 ACS 5-year estimates. These data are used to examine three primary research questions: 1) What are the determinants of foreign-born population growth in metropolitan areas? 2) Do determinants have different effects across multiple foreign-born racial and ethnic groups? 3) Do determinants vary across hierarchical geographies (i.e., are determinants different in counties versus metropolitan areas?). For comparison purposes, these questions are also answered using native-born population growth as the dependent variable. Specifically, I assess the role that labor and housing market, demographic, and legal characteristics have in contributing to foreign- and native-born population growth.