How “Ethnic” Were White Ethnic Neighborhoods? European Ancestry Groups in the Twentieth-Century USA

To what extent did Southern, Central, and Eastern (SCE) European groups maintain distinctive residential patterns vis-à-vis Northern and Western European groups in the late twentieth-century USA? Classical assimilation and melting pot interpretations of these groups’ historical experiences imply tha...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of international migration and integration Vol. 24; no. 3; pp. 1211 - 1229
Main Author Boyd, Robert L.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.09.2023
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
20th century
Assimilation
Demography
Ethnic factors
Ethnic groups
Ethnic neighborhoods
Ethnicity
European cultural groups
Homogeneity
Jewish people
Melting
Migration
Neighborhoods
Population Economics
Residential patterns
Social distance
Social groups
Social Sciences
Socioeconomic status
Socioeconomics
Sociology
United States > US
Residential areas
European ancestry groups
Twentieth-century USA
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Summary:To what extent did Southern, Central, and Eastern (SCE) European groups maintain distinctive residential patterns vis-à-vis Northern and Western European groups in the late twentieth-century USA? Classical assimilation and melting pot interpretations of these groups’ historical experiences imply that, by the century’s end, SCE European groups’ ethnic neighborhoods would have vanished. However, pluralistic or “beyond the melting pot” interpretations of these experiences suggest that such neighborhoods were durable, partly because of SCE European groups’ ethnic homogeneity preferences, that is, a desire to reside near co-ethnics. The present study’s 1970 and 1930–1980 data analyses indicate that Italians, Poles, Greeks, and Russian ancestry Jews had unique residential patterns net of their socioeconomic status and of US-born persons’ expressed desires for social distance from these groups. The study concludes that SCE European groups’ distinctive residential patterns may have been due partly to these groups’ ethnic homogeneity preferences, although alternative explanations are not completely dismissed.
ISSN:1488-3473
1874-6365
DOI:10.1007/s12134-022-01000-w