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Different than the Sum of Its Parts: Examining the Unique Impacts of Immigrant Groups on Neighborhood Crime Rates

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Abstract

Objectives

Examining the immigration-crime nexus across neighborhoods in the Southern California metropolitan region, this study builds on existing literature by unpacking immigration and accounting for the rich diversity that exists between immigrant groups.

Methods

Using data from a variety of sources, we capture this diversity with three different approaches, operationalizing immigrant groups by similar racial/ethnic categories, areas or regions of the world that immigrants emigrate from, and where immigrants co-locate once they settle in the U.S. We also account for the heterogeneity of immigrant populations by constructing measures of immigrant heterogeneity based on each of these classifications. We compare these novel approaches with the standard approach, which combines immigrants together through a single measure of percent foreign born.

Results

The results reveal that considerable insights are gained by distinguishing between diverse groups of immigrants. In particular, we find that all three strategies explained neighborhood crime levels better than the traditional approach.

Conclusion

The findings underscore the necessity of disaggregating immigrant groups when exploring the immigration-crime relationship.

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Notes

  1. We chose this value because: (1) it reflected a relatively discrete point in the distribution of the groups based on size; (2) below this point the groupings began to reflect aggregations across regions (e.g., other Europeans).

  2. Here we remind readers to exercise caution with respect to this finding, as we do not claim to have identified causal mechanisms underlying individual behavior. A positive association between percent Latino and violent crime does not necessarily mean that Latino immigrants are more violent. This association could occur, for example, because they are more likely to be victims, or due to over-policing in these communities (Butcher and Piehl 1998b:459; Hagan and Palloni 1999).

  3. These numbers are based on IPUMS data for the Southern California region for 2009. These household-level data allow us to characterize these specific households (although they have limited spatial precision).

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Acknowledgments

This research is supported in part by NIJ Grant 2012-R2-CX-0010 and NSF Grant 1529061. We thank Nicholas Branic for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, Irvine, Social Ecology II, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA

    Charis E. Kubrin, John R. Hipp & Young-An Kim

  2. Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Charis E. Kubrin & John R. Hipp

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  1. Charis E. Kubrin
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  2. John R. Hipp
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Correspondence to Charis E. Kubrin.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 6.

Table 6 Classification of immigrant groups in three classification schemes: (1) world region; (2) racial group; (3) geographic co-location factors
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Kubrin, C.E., Hipp, J.R. & Kim, YA. Different than the Sum of Its Parts: Examining the Unique Impacts of Immigrant Groups on Neighborhood Crime Rates. J Quant Criminol 34, 1–36 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-016-9320-y

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