The Shaping of Selection: Secondary Migration and Historic Immigrant Geographies

PWP-CCPR-2015-002

Abstract

The internal migration of immigrants in the US has long been of interest in assessing immigrant outcomes and potential demographics. Secondary migration is also sometimes theorized through a spatial assimilation lens as a sign of integration. Although settlement patterns and integration are inherently long-term and intergenerational, places themselves and the significance of mobility are often seen as static. This paper seeks to re-theorize these relationships by modeling how immigrants and their children are selected with regard to place and individual characteristics that evolve over generations. I use the 1940, 1970, and 2000 Integrated Public Use Microdata files of the U.S. Census to analyze the changing relationships between the internal (secondary) migration of immigrants and the second generation and their wage outcomes. The endogenous switching models employed explicitly relate the sorting of individual and place characteristics to secondary migration through selection. Focusing on how these relationships change over time and between generations, as well as on the differing significance of local-level mobility and more significant intermetropolitan moves, contributes to theoretical perspectives on spatial assimilation and secondary migration. Results show that secondary migration is important for immigrants in terms of evading gender and educational wage gaps, even as these gaps diminish across decades. A move toward immigrant concentration is often associated with positive wage outcomes, although remaining in immigrant concentrations rather than moving can have negative effects. All of these effects are generally more significant for those undertaking larger-scale moves and also for the second generation. The addition of place characteristics experienced by a previous immigrant generation in situ suggests that the salient characteristics of immigrant geography emerge over time, with relatively high immigrant wages and educational levels continuing to attract new secondary migration decades later.