Immigration Effects on Violent Crime in Context of the Geographic Diversification of the Latino Population
Open Access
- Author:
- Painter-Davis, Noah
- Graduate Program:
- Sociology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- None
- Committee Members:
- Darrell J Steffensmeier, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Jennifer Lynne Van Hook, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Jeffery Todd Ulmer, Committee Member
Ralph Salvador Oropesa, Committee Member - Keywords:
- immigration
crime
immigrant destination types
race/ethnicity - Abstract:
- In response to the tremendous growth of the Latino and Latino immigrant populations over the past thirty years, there has been an increase in both studies that examine the effects of immigration on crime or that incorporate Latinos into tests of the relationship between structural disadvantage and racial/ethnic disparities in crime. Despite the contributions of these studies, research in these areas has yet to fully investigate how these relationships may be shaped by the recent geographic diversification of Latino populations to emerging destinations, locales with little or no history of immigration. Rather, these lines of research have largely focused on established Latino destinations, communities with legacies of immigration and “contexts of reception” that are arguably more favorable for Latinos and Latino immigrants. This study examines relationships between race/ethnicity, social structure, and violence amid the geographic diversification of Latino populations to emerging destinations. Two key objectives are addressed. The primary objective of this dissertation is to examine how the link between immigration and crime is contextualized by immigrant destination types and the race/ethnicity of offenders. Specifically, I examine (a) if the effects of immigration on crime differ depending on whether the movement of Latino immigrants is into established as compared to emerging immigrant communities and (b) whether immigration’s effects vary by the race/ethnicity of the offender (White, Black, Latino). The secondary objective of the study is to advance racial invariance research, which argues that the structural sources of crime are similar across racial groups, by assessing the hypothesis separately in both established and emerging immigrant destinations. Specifically, using samples of established and emerging destinations, I examine whether there are racial/ethnic differences in the way that structural disadvantage and indicators of social disorganization (i.e. residential instability, racial/ethnic heterogeneity, population density) impact group rates of violence. To address these issues my study draws on a strong theoretical and empirical framework. Theoretically, my study merges theories of immigration and crime (also race and crime) with sociological perspectives that link social change to racial/ethnic stratification. Empirically, I address the above objectives using race/ethnicity-specific (e.g. White, Black, Latino) arrest data on violent crime from the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and the crime reporting programs of California, New York, and Texas linked with census place structural characteristics from the 2000 census. I examine the effects of structural factors on crime at the census place-level with a full set of census places (N=528) and with samples of both established (N=297) and emerging destinations (N=117). I use two measures of crime, an expressive violence index (sum of assaults and homicides) which captures violence that typically arises out of disputes, and robbery, a form of violence that is financially motivated. Seemingly Unrelated Regression is used to compare the effects of structural factors on violence across racial/ethnic groups. Two important findings emerge from the immigration analyses. First, in general, immigration has small or trivial effects on violence and this pattern holds across most comparisons, including most destination and race/ethnicity specific models. Second, despite the general pattern of immigration having small or trivial effects, the immigration-crime link is contextualized to some extent by immigrant destination type and by race/ethnicity. The most notable contextualization is moderate to strong crime-generating effects of immigration on Black robbery and Latino robbery in emerging destinations. These findings suggest that when examining the effect immigration has on crime it is important to account for both the immigrant destination type and the race/ethnicity of the offender. There are two key findings from the racial invariance analyses. First, for the full set of communities, structural disadvantage is associated with higher rates of violence for each racial/ethnic group, but the effects are significantly stronger for some groups compared to others. Second, conclusions regarding racial invariance vary somewhat depending on the destination type under study. In both established and emerging destinations, structural disadvantage is associated with higher rates of violence for Whites, Blacks, and Latinos. However, there are more differences (i.e. a greater number of statistically significant differences) in the way structural disadvantage impacts groups in established destinations than in emerging destinations. In established destinations, the effects of disadvantage are more likely to vary across groups, having stronger effects on one group compared to another (e.g. disadvantage has stronger effects on Blacks than Whites). In emerging destinations, the magnitude of the effects of disadvantage are more likely to be statistically similar across groups. Because there are more differences in the effects of structural disadvantage on violence in established destinations, there is less support for the racial invariance hypothesis in established destinations than in emerging destinations. All in all, my dissertation finds that the geographic diversification of immigrant populations to emerging destinations has important implications for the links between immigration and crime and between structural disadvantage and racial/ethnic disparities in crime, with immigrant destination types shaping how these structural factors impact crime.