UNC sociology professor Kyle Crowder co-authored “Neighborhood Immigration and Native Out-Migration”, a study exploring the tendency of native whites to leave areas with influxes of immigrants.
Matthew Hall of the University of Illinois-Chicago and Stewart E. Tolnay of the University of Washington also worked on the study, which appears in the February issue of the American Sociological Review.
The authors find that white residents seem to out-migrate in reaction to the changing racial composition of a neighborhood.
Meanwhile, decreasing homeownership rates and increasing housing costs seem to cause black residents to leave immigration-heavy neighborhoods.
But the study also found that large numbers of immigrants in areas surrounding a neighborhood make it less likely that native residents of that neighborhood will leave, possibly because it makes those areas unattractive for relocation.
The authors used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a longitudinal survey of U.S. residents.
Crowder, who is also a fellow of the Carolina Population Center, researches racial and ethnic stratification, neighborhood dynamics, and other topics.
