A new look at the U.S. geography of immigration: an approach based on relatedness between population groups revealed from their joint concentrations
Abstract
This paper examines patterns of spatial behaviour of the U.S. immigrants when focusing on the relatedness between different population groups as revealed from their joint spatial concentrations. This approach is based on a basic assumption that population groups with similar destination choices are more likely to have something in common.
We firstly quantify this revealed relatedness based on joint concentrations in 3,143 U.S. countries and, subsequently, at the detailed level of census tracks of the six key immigrant metropolitan statistical areas. We then examine patterns of the relatedness by various techniques including the network visualizations, identification of communities of population groups by affinity propagation, and a regression framework.
We found strong similarity in spatial behaviour of Western European migrant groups on the national level, whereas on the metropolitan level, the tightest clusters of related groups contained migrant groups from the less developed regions. The results also suggest possible links between contemporary spatial distribution and historical waves of migration to the USA.
Finally, the results obtained from regression analysis showed that the choice of a destination region is driven mostly by economic factors and, particularly on the level of metropolitan areas, by cultural factors.