Restricted movement: Nativity, citizenship, legal status, and the residential crowding of Latinos in Los Angeles

2015

Residential crowding is linked with the well-being of children and adults...Data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS) are used to focus on Latinos, the group most likely to experience crowding in the United States. The analyses examine heterogeneity in crowding among four distinct groups of Latinos: U.S.-born naturalized citizens, authorized noncitizen immigrants, and unauthorized noncitizen immigrants. Theories of locational attainment and immigrant assimilation are used to develop hypotheses about whether intra-Latino variation in crowding is explained by differences in individual, household, and other characteristics, and which structural factors also interfere in this process. Multivariate analyses indicate that... lacking legal status does have residual impacts on the outcome: unauthorized noncitizen immigrants are more crowded than authorized noncitizens and all other groups. The results offer support for the spatial assimilation and place stratification perspectives on locational attainment. These findings contribute to emerging scholarship documenting the unique structural challenges that unauthorized Latino immigrants experience in residential outcomes and other domains in the United States.

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Citation: 

McConnell, Eileen Díaz. 2015. “Restricted Movement: Nativity, Citizenship, Legal Status, and

the Residential Crowding of Latinos in Los Angeles.” Social Problems. 62 (1): 141-162.