Neighborhood Opportunity Structures and Immigrants’ Socioeconomic Advancement

This article explores immigrants’ socioeconomic success consequential to their choice of neighborhood. We describe and analyze seven aspects of socioeconomic success during the 1980s for 14 immigrant groups in five metropolitan areas. Exposure indices measuring aspects of the census tracts in which these groups lived in 1980 are calculated and analyzed. Multiple regression explores the degree to which 1980s neighborhood context explains socioeconomic advances of pre-1980 immigrants during the 1980s, controlling for group starting position in 1980 and metropolitan area of residence. Findings support the notion that a neighborhood of poorly educated, welfare-assisted, nonworking residents retards educational, professional, and employment prospects of immigrants. We also find evidence that a higher incidence of residential exposure to other members of one’s immigrant group leads to higher rates of poverty and, perhaps, lower gains in employment during the subsequent decade. These findings should be interpreted cautiously, however, because of data limitations, specification shortcomings, and ambiguities in interpreting causation.