Different than the Sum of Its Parts: Examining the Unique Impacts of Immigrant Groups on Neighborhood Crime Rates

Abstract

Examining the immigration-crime nexus across neighborhoods in the Southern California metropolitan region, this study builds on existing literature by unpacking immigration and accounting for the rich diversity that exists between immigrant groups. Using data from a variety of sources, we capture this diversity with three different approaches, operationalizing immigrant groups by similar racial/ethnic categories, areas or regions of the world that immigrants emigrate from, and where immigrants co-locate once they settle in the U.S. We also account for the heterogeneity of immigrant populations by constructing measures of immigrant heterogeneity based on each of these classifications. We compare these novel approaches with the standard approach, which combines immigrants together through a single measure of percent foreign born. The results reveal that considerable insights are gained by distinguishing between diverse groups of immigrants. In particular, we find that all three strategies explained neighborhood crime levels better than the traditional approach. The findings underscore the necessity of disaggregating immigrant groups when exploring the immigration-crime relationship.