Mexican and Central American immigrant communities in the boom and bust housing markets of the 2000s

Abstract

Classic immigrant enclaves, largely voluntary and temporary, have historically served as a strong platform for integration in United States metropolitan areas. However, trends in the early 2000s, including new destinations and skyrocketing housing costs, may have reshaped the landscape, particularly for numerically dominant immigrant groups with very low socioeconomic status. In this article, I use data for 56 metropolitan areas and 31,563 census tracts from the 2000 Census and the 2005–2009 American Community Survey to examine the relationship between the change in concentration of Mexican and Central American immigrants and the characteristics of neighborhoods in 2000. The analyses suggest that, across metropolitan areas, these immigrant communities consolidated in neighborhoods with low home values, adequate but overcrowded housing, relatively small shares of their own immigrant group, and large shares of other Hispanics. Demographic dynamics may have weakened immigrant support networks, leaving Mexican and Central American immigrants vulnerable, particularly in a subset of metropolitan areas where this population grew most substantially outside the central cities.