Do Enclaves Matter in Immigrant Adjustment?

By Chiswick Barry R., Paul W. Miller. Foundations of Migration Economics, 2002

396 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper is concerned with the determinants and consequences of immigrant/linguistic concentrations (enclaves). The reasons for the formation of these concentrations are discussed. Hypotheses are developed regarding “ethnic goods” and the effect of concentrations on the immigrant's language skills, as well as the effects on immigrant earnings of destination language skills and the linguistic concentration. These hypotheses are tested using PUMS data from the 1990 U.S. Census on adult male immigrants from non‐English speaking countries. Linguistic concentrations reduce the immigrant's own English language skills. Moreover, immigrant's earnings are lower the lower their English‐language proficiency and the greater the linguistic/ethnic concentration in their origin language of the area in which they live. The adverse effects on earnings of poor destination language skills and of immigrant concentrations exist independently of each other. The hypotheses regarding ethnic goods are supported by the data.

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Citations in the corpus

The Impact of Origin and Host Country Schooling on the Economic Performance of Immigrants (2009, background): “Immigrants living in ethnically concentrated areas can rely on origin-specific knowledge about ethnic goods, consumer preferences and norms (Chiswick and Miller 2005).”
International Migration and the Economics of Language (2014, methodology): “14 Isphording and Otten (2012) argue that the linguistic distance measure of Chiswick and Miller (2005a) could be biased by incentives for learning a foreign language, while the measure based on Levenshtein distance should be devoid of any such bias.”
A quick, gradient Bilingual Dominance Scale* (2009, background): “that are so large that a non-English L1 speaker can live a lifetime without learning English (Chiswick and Miller, 2002).”
Immigrants’ economic performance across Europe – does immigration policy matter? (2005, background): “Chiswick and Miller (2002) found a negative correlation between the linguistic concentration of the language of origin in the immigrants’ residential area and their earnings.”
Social Contacts and the Economic Performance of Immigrants: A Panel Study of Immigrants in Germany 1 (2012, background): “…the uncertainty of employers toward origin-country skills, the lack of host-country-specific human capital can be less important in regions with high concentrations of co-ethnics than it would be in regions with fewer co-ethnics (Chiswick and Miller, 2002, 2005; Kanas and Van Tubergen, 2009).”
Enclaves, language, and the location choice of migrants (2002, unknown): “Recently, Chiswick and Miller (2002) using the 1990 U.S. Census data on adult male immigrants from non-English speaking countries show that linguistic concentrations (enclaves) reduce an immigrant’s own English language skills relative to living in smaller enclaves.”
Ethnic Enclaves and Immigrant Labor Market Outcomes: Quasi‐Experimental Evidence (2009, background): “The reason is that placed refugees are likely to derive high utility from living in the same location as co-nationals according to the ethnic network hypothesis by Piore (1979) and Kobrin and Speare (1983) and the ethnic goods hypothesis by Chiswick and Miller (2005).”
Determinants of recent immigrants’ location choices: quasi-experimental evidence (2009, background): “Equations (3)-(6) comprise the basic structural form of the model.”
Economic Impacts of Immigration: A Survey (2011, background): “These outcomes are distinct from the wage di¤erentials for 10For example, Nakamura and Nakamura (1994), Chiswick et al. (1997), McDonald and Worswick (1998), and Chiswick and Miller (2005).”