The Shaping of Selection: Secondary Migration and Historic Immigrant Geographies

Jamie Goodwin-White, University of California, Los Angeles

This paper uses the 1940, 1970, and 2000 IPUMS to analyse the changing relationships between the secondary migration of immigrants and the second generation and their wage outcomes, contributing to theoretical perspectives on spatial assimilation. The endogenous switching models employed explicitly relate the sorting of individual and place characteristics to secondary migration through selection. Immigrants evade gender and educational wage gaps through secondary migration, even as these gaps diminish across decades. Moves toward immigrant concentration show positive wage outcomes, although remaining in immigrant concentrations can have negative effects. These effects are more significant for those undertaking non-local 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.