Ethnic enclaves, early school leaving, and adolescent crime among immigrant youth

Abstract

Spatial concentration of immigrant minorities raises concerns about the intergenerational consequences of place-based ethnic inequalities. This study asks how socioeconomic properties of the ethnic neighbourhood environment during adolescence predict future criminal behaviour and early school leaving among immigrant youth using administrative data from Norway. The results show that immigrant youth’s adolescent exposure to better-educated immigrant neighbours from the same origin country is related to lower risks of criminal engagement and higher likelihoods of completing upper-secondary education, while growing up in areas with less-educated coethnics is associated with adverse outcomes. Although effect sizes are modest, these relationships are robust to adjustment for a broad set of background characteristics and fixed effects at the level of neighbourhoods and national-origin groups. Coethnic neighbours’ educational resources are more strongly associated with adolescent crime and early school leaving among immigrant youth from disadvantaged family backgrounds. Overall, these findings support the predictions of influential theories of assimilation which emphasize that access to social capital and socioeconomic resources found within local ethnic enclaves shape the future life chances of immigrant youth.