Economic Recession, Anti-Immigrant Climate, and Hispanic Immigrant Mobility in New and Established Destinations

Emilio A. Parrado, University of Pennsylvania
William A. Kandel, Congressional Research Service

The current economic recession has significantly affected market processes underpinning emerging new immigrant destinations with unclear consequences for immigrant mobility and settlement. We analyze ACS PUMS data from 2006-2008 to describe and model Hispanic foreign-born population change at the state and metropolitan levels before and after the economic recession, and to understand how it has altered the relative attraction of new and established immigrant destination areas. We disentangle unique effects of changing economic conditions, negative immigrant climate, and ethnic community size. Preliminary descriptive results suggest foreign-born Hispanics may be more inclined to migrate from newer to more established immigrant destinations for economic support and perhaps more socially tolerant locales. Changing migration patterns of the foreign-born Latin American population before and after recession commencement may signal a reverse in Hispanic population dispersion evidenced during the 1990s, and suggest the need for a scholarly reassessment of the new immigrant destination construct.