Collaborative Research: Residential Segregation and the Spatial Division of Labor of Immigrants in Los Angeles

Dartmouth College, Hanover NH

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines the geography of residence and workplace for immigrants in the Los Angeles region to see how residential location and spatial accessibility affect the concentration of immigrants in particular lines of work. Data limitations have previously restricted empirical analyses of such effects. The Census Bureau has recently released a special version of the 1990 Census of Population and Housing that includes information on employment, place of residence by census tract, and place of work by census tract. The project will use these data to address a series of basic questions that include: Where, by census tract, in Los Angeles do immigrants work? How is place of work related to an immigrant group's geography of residence? Where are a group's niche jobs (notable industrial and occupational employment concentrations) in relation to its non-niche jobs? And how far away are these niches from residential concentrations? The project employs two different methods to answer these questions. First, we plan to plot immigrant workers by census tracts of employment and residence by sex and immigrant group for the Los Angeles CMSA. These maps are input to a series of map-based statistics summarizing the relations between immigrant employment specialization and their geographies of work and residence by tract. Second, we estimate a nested logit model of the probability of working in an immigrant niche and choice of residential location for the most recent immigrant arrivals to Los Angeles - those who came between 1985 and 1990. In general, the aim of this research is to uncover the interrelationship between the residential clustering of immigrants and their concentration in particular types of work. Scholars have speculated about the connections between these two types of segregation - residential and industrial - but have rarely investigated its specific form. These connections are likely bound-up with workplace segregation - the concentration of specific types of jobs in particular places, usually described as the spatial division of labor. This project explores linkages between these three forms of segregation - residential, industrial, and workplace - in order to better understand how the jobs immigrants hold depend on the location of their ethnic neighborhoods in relation to the spatial distribution of industries. In so doing, the project will help shed light on the role ethnic residential segregation plays in ethnic employment inequality.