Immigration, Ethnicity, and Neighborhood Violence: Considering Both Concentration and Diversity Effects

• Published date: 01 April 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/2153368719875183
• Date: 01 April 2022
• Author: Michelle Sydes
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Immigration, Ethnicity,

and Neighborhood

Violence: Considering

Both Concentration

and Diversity Effects

Michelle Sydes

1

Abstract

Immigrant ethnicity remains a largely understudied aspect of the immigration–crime

nexus. Instead, most research to date relies on a single measure of immigrant con-

centration—most commonly the percent foreign born, the percent recently arrived

or the percent Latino/Hispanic. In doing so, studies fail to account for the potential

heterogeneity within the immigrant population. This study provides a comprehensive

examination of immigrant ethnicity by disaggregating the immigrant population by

language and religious affiliation. Drawing on three waves of census data and 9 years of

official recorded crime data, this study explores the impact of both immigrant con-

centration and diversity on violent crime across 882 neighborhoods located in two

Australian cities. The results demonstrate that growth in the immigrant population—

regardless of the language or religion group under consideration—does not lead to

more violent crime within a neighborhood. Further, no language or religion group

concentration is associated with more violent crime once the sociostructural and

environmental features of neighborhoods are considered. Indeed, the growth and

concentration of some ethnic groups are linked to less violent crime. However, both

linguistically and religiously diverse neighborhoods encounter more violent crime.

Keywords

immigration and crime, criminological theories, social disorganization, neighborhoods

and crime, longitudinal crime trends, race/ethnicity

1

School of Social Science and ARC Centre of Excellence in Children and Families over the Life Course, The

University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Corresponding Author:

Michelle Sydes, School of Social Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia.

Email: m.sydes@uq.edu.au

Race and Justice

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DOI: 10.1177/2153368719875183

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2022, Vol. 12(2) 276–\ 302

In launching his bid for presidency in 2015, Donald Trump explicitly albeit erro-

neously linked Mexican immigrants to crime and throughout his campaign, repeatedly

referred to “illegal immigrants” as violent criminals and drug lords (Martin, 2017).

Similar divisive rhetoric has been echoed across the United Kingdom, Europe, and

Australia. For example, ex- United Kingdom Independence Party leader Nigel Farage

attributed an increase in sexual crimes in Sweden to the admittance of Syrian refugees.

Farage went on to declare Malmo “the rape capital of Europe, possibly the world”

(BBC News, 2017). In the Netherlands, populist far-right politician Geert Wilders

openly and unapologetically labeled Moroccan residents as “scum who make the

streets unsafe” (McKie, 2017). In Germany, the former leader of the Alternative for

Deutschland, Frauke Petry, effectively criminalized Syrian refugees by proposing

border guards turn their guns on migrants who cross the country’s borders illegally

(Connolly, 2016). While in Australia, conservative senator Pauline Hanson used her

maiden address to parliament to warn that “antisocial behavior is rampant” among

Muslims and is “fueled by hyper-masculine and misogynist culture” (Commonwealth

of Australia Senate, 2016, p. 939). Together, these sentiments suggest that (regardless

of context) anti-immigrant attitudes are not ethnically neutral with certain groups

more likely to be associated with social problems like crime than others.

Contrary to popular belief, empirical studies find little support to justify these

concerns. In fact, scholars consistently find that once appropriate controls are con-

sidered, neither first- nor second-generation immigrants are more crime prone than

their native-born counterparts (Butcher & Piehl, 1998, 2007; Hagan & Palloni, 1999;

Rumbaut, Gonzales, Komaie, Morgan, & Tafoya-Estrada, 2006; Sampson, 2008).

Further still, a recent systematic review and meta-analysis of U.S.-based immigration–

crime research concluded that immigration is not linked to greater crime at the

neighborhood or city level (Ousey & Kubrin, 2018). Reviewing the results from over

50 studies, Ousey and Kubrin (2018) found that overall immigration was negatively

related to crime—although the association was fairly weak.

Yet despite the plethora of research interested in the immigration–crime link, very

few studies closely examine the particularities of immigrant ethnicity or the effect of

ethnic diversity. Most research to date relies on a single measure of immigrant con-

centration—most commonly the percent foreign-born/recently arrived in an area

(Feldmeyer & Steffensmeir, 2009; Lee, Martinez, & Rosenfeld, 2001; Martinez,

Stowell, & Cancino, 2008; Martinez, Stowell, & Lee, 2010; Wadsworth, 2010) or the

percent Latino/Hispanic (Feldmeyer, 2009; Harris & Feldmeyer, 2013; Light, 2017).

Alternatively, some studies construct an immigration index by combining several

measures into one (e.g., percent foreign-born, percent Latino, and percent linguisti-

cally isolated; Ousey & Kubrin, 2009). Problematically, this approach fails to

recognize the potential heterogeneity within the immigrant population and may wash

out important differences between groups (see for exception, Kubrin, Hipp, & Kim,

2018). Further, the focus thus far has been on measures of concentration rather than

diversity. Only a handful of immigration–crime studies consider how the mixture of

ethnic groups within a given community impacts crime (see for exception, Feldmeyer,

Harris, & Lai, 2016; Graif & Sampson, 2009).

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Sydes