Ethnicity & Immigration - Hispanic Settlement Patterns3

Hispanic concentration and isolation measures for cities with the lowest and highest Hispanic populations are shown in the graphic. For an explanation of "concentration" and "isolation," please see earlier panels titled Measuring Segregation and African American Settlement Patterns.

Hispanics generally have higher concentration levels (take up less space) than equivalent non-Hispanic whites, the comparison group. Density is an indirect measure of wealth. With increasing wealth people in urban areas — and the data shown here are for the largest U.S. metropolitan aggregations — attempt to have more space. Using these measures, a population living predominantly in apartment blocks and in small houses, clustered close together, will have a higher density than the majority population living in large houses with larger lots.

In two metro areas, Jonesboro and Pine Bluff, AR, Hispanics occupy more room than equivalent non-Hispanic whites.

Isolation measures the relative integration of neighborhoods. Low values show high degrees of mixing between the minority and the majority, in this case Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites. Isolation reflects the size of the population. The smaller the population of a minority, the less likely it is to be isolated. Note, in this chart, that seven of the cities with lowest Hispanic populations have much higher isolation measures for African Americans. In each of those cases, the black population was higher and in some cases significantly higher, than the Hispanic population in 1990: in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, blacks were 43% and in Jackson, Tennessee 28% of the population, versus a 0.5% Hispanic population in both cities. Not surprisingly, these two metro areas had the highest black isolation measures.

Looking at metro areas with the highest populations of Hispanics, we note that, again, with high populations, the isolation measure goes up. In these areas, Hispanics largely interact with one another in their own neighborhoods, not with non-Hispanic whites. They outnumber blacks in every large metro area shown except Chicago and New York. In those cities black isolation was measurably higher in 1990 — also in Houston, where the Hispanic population was only slightly larger than the African American. The pattern suggests that while Hispanics congregate in enclaves, like all minority groups, they are somewhat more "mixed" with the majority population. Latent habits of active segregation may affect this population less than they do with blacks. Hispanics may see themselves as less restricted in where they choose to live.

Note, finally, the uniformly low isolation level of Asians and Pacific Islanders. They have much smaller populations than blacks in all but two locations, San Diego and Orange County, California.

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Housing and Household and Economic Statistics Division. Online. Available: census.gov/hhes.www.housing/resseg/def.htm. Presentation is from the work of Roderick J. Harrison and Daniel H. Weinberg, "Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation: 1990."