Racial Segregation in Multiethnic Schools: Adding Immigrants to the Analysis

Published in Research on Schools, Neighborhoods and Communities: Toward Civic Responsibility. Rowman and Littlefield Publishing, 2012. Pp. 67-82.   

The authors explore how increases in immigration are likely to affect school segregation by comparing the schools that foreign-born and native-born minorities in New York City attend. They find that foreign-born blacks, Hispanics, and Asians tend to be more racially isolated than their native-born counterparts, even after controlling for differences in language skills and income. The heightened isolation is partially linked to the clustering of immigrant students from particular regions or countries within the same schools. How an increase in foreign-born students in a school district will shape racial segregation therefore will depend on the racial composition of the immigrant students as well as their country of origin.