African Americans and Immigrants in Cities: A Long View

Suny At Albany, Albany NY

Investigators

Abstract

Tolnay, Stewart E. SES-0001729 During the last one-hundred years the level of immigration to the United States has fluctuated, as has the national origins of the immigrants. Throughout this period African Americans have also experienced dramatic changes in their geographic distribution and socioeconomic standing. The possibility of linkages between these two phenomena has occasionally been the subject of concern by social commentators, or of scholarly investigation by social scientists. This project is an in-depth investigation of the relationship between immigrants and African Americans during six "historical regimes" from 1880 through 1990. It has two major component. The first component uses data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) for 1880, 1910, 1920, 1940, 1970,1980, and 1990 to compare the social and economic characteristics of African Americans and immigrants across a broad sweep of U.S. history. The second component combines data from the IPUMS with contextual data form counties and metropolitan areas to determine how the social and economic well-being of African Americans was affected by the sized and growth of immigrant populations (or specific immigrant groups) within their urban areas. The primary objectives of the project's three components are to: (1) describe the relative social and economic positions of African Americans and immigrants or specific immigrant groups) over time; (2) to determine whether immigrants were better able than African Americans to translate one type of socioeconomic advantage (e.g., more education) into other advantages (e.g., higher incomes, home ownership, residence in better neighborhoods); (3) to more thoroughly investigate the potential negative consequences of large and growing immigrant populations on the welfare of African Americans in urban areas; (4) to lean whether certain segments of the African American population were more vulnerable than others to competition from immigrants; and (5) to investigate the possibility that the relative standing of African Americans, or the collective impact of immigration on the well-being of blacks, varied significantly over time, or across space. The protracted time period examined by this project should result in the most comprehensive study, to date, of the complex relationship between African American and immigrants throughout U.S. history.