Pioneer settlement of U.S. immigrants

Abstract

1. IntroductionThe foreign-born resettlement process now underway in the United States involves the increasing dispersion of immigrants to mid- and small-sized metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas throughout the country that had few immigrants before the 1980s. Several studies document the spread of immigrants to new destinations as well as the determinants and consequences of this settlement shift (Gozdziak and Martin 2005; Iceland 2009; Kandel and Parrado 2005; Lichter and Johnson 2009; Marrow 2011; Massey 2008; Odem and Lacy 2009; Singer 2004; 2008; Zuniga and Hernandez-Leon 2005). Most of what we know about the dispersion process stems from analyses of the total foreign-born population or Hispanics to macro-geographic units such as states and metropolitan areas that have relatively large foreign-born populations. However, with the exception of case studies of specific communities, we know very little about foreign-born dispersion to smaller-sized places where few immigrants live. National origin differences in dispersion to new destinations have received some attention (Hall 2013; Kritz and Gurak 2015) but, in general, little is known about group differences and their determinants. Given that the dispersion process likely starts at different points in time for national origin groups and initially involves pioneer settlement in places where immigrants have no settled compatriots, it is important to study group differences. Although pioneer settlement is an important part of the dispersion process, we are unaware of studies that examine the correlates of that process for today's immigrants. The pioneer settlement process should differ across national origin groups, given their differences in population size, skills profile, legal status, and settlement patterns. To provide insight into that process, we focus on pioneer settlement processes for immigrants from ten Asian and Latin American origins, including the Chinese, Indians, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese, Mexicans, Cubans, Colombians, Dominicans, and Salvadorans.The study of pioneer settlement requires a large foreign-born sample as well as detailed geographic and national origin data for a large number of places that have standardized boundaries at two or more points in time. PUMS files, which are widely used to document settlement patterns, do not meet these requirements, especially for immigrants living in micro-geographic areas. States do have standardized boundaries but they span large territories, and traditional states, including California, Florida, and New York, have new destination places within them (Henrie and Plane 2008; Pfeffer and Parra 2009). In addition, in 1990 all 50 states already had immigrants from most of the study groups, which means they could not be considered pioneer places.3 The metropolitan places identified by Singer (2004; 2008) and Fischer and Tienda (2006) as new and emerging foreign-born destinations also had immigrants from most of our study groups in 1990. Due to the need to protect individual privacy, no settlement data by national origin are available in PUMS files for small metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas, even though those are the areas with the most rapid growth in immigrant numbers.The only data files that do have sufficient sample size and detailed national origin and geographic data for all metropolitan and non-metropolitan places are the Confidential Use Micro-Data Samples (CUMS) from the 1990 and 2000 decennial censuses. We draw on those data to examine the characteristics of pioneer places and migrants in the 1990s for ten immigrant groups. For each immigrant group, pioneer places are defined as geographic areas that had no immigrants in 1990 but did have one or more in 2000.4 Since this definition is group-specific, pioneer places for a given group may have had foreign-born from another origin in 1990 but not their own. In addition, a place could have been a pioneer destination for more than one of the ten origin groups in the 1990s. …