Residential Assimilation of Immigrants: A Cohort Approach

Abstract

This paper measures the process of residential assimilation for three cohorts of immigrants from each of five countries of birth entering Auckland, New Zealand between 1991 and 2006. It tracks, and compares, the changes in spatial segregation, isolation, and autocorrelation for these cohorts over time, using index measures adjusted for random location variation. We find evidence of residential assimilation, whereby immigrants become less spatially concentrated in the years following arrival. Overall concentration has nevertheless been increasing over time, with successive cohorts entering with higher levels of initial concentration. By examining the spatial location patterns of arrival cohorts, we show that entering cohorts are attracted to the current rather than initial locations occupied by the previous cohort of their compatriots. Despite differences across cohorts and over time, there is nevertheless a high degree of stability in the 'residential footprint' of different immigrant groups within Auckland. JEL codesJ61, R23

The segregation of generations: ancestral groups in Sydney, 2011

“…It may be, for example, that members of an immigrant group choose to live in one sector of a city rather than others and, within that sector, may prefer certain neighbourhoods over others, or they may be evenly distributed throughout that sector (that is, they are relatively segregated at the macro‐scale but not also at the micro‐scale). The method deployed here—as illustrated in a case study of changing ethnic segregation in Auckland (Manley et al , ; see also Maré et al , )—identifies the intensity of segregation at the sector scale and then, holding that constant, its intensity at the neighbourhood, within‐sector scale; it expresses the relative importance of each.…”