8. Situating the Immigration and Neighborhood Crime Relationship across Multiple Cities

Abstract

This chapter explores whether the often-found negative relationship between recent immigration and neighborhood crime is limited to or enhanced in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. It also examines whether this moderating effect of neighborhood disadvantage is further enhanced in gateway cities. It does so by drawing on a unique multilevel data set—the National Neighborhood Crime Study (NNCS)—which provides demographic and violent crime data for 6,926 neighborhoods within 69 cities. A comparison of the relationship between immigration and crime in traditional gateway cities long accustomed to immigration, and non-gateway cities, which historically have incorporated far fewer immigrants, shows that the protective effect of immigration is heightened in gateway cities. This suggests that immigrants fare better in contexts that are receptive to them.