Search

Homeownership has been a central part of community and wealth building strategies in the US, and prior research demonstrates that Post-Civil Rights Era immigrants have employed these strategies with remarkable success. However, research on immigrant homeownership does not differentiate that which is encumbered by mortgage debt and that which is 'free and clear' or unencumbered. This is an important distinction since wealth held in the form of encumbered home equity can be fleeting. I use US Census and American Community Survey data to chart progress toward unencumbered homeownership among immigrants born in the 1950s who immigrated to the US in the 1970s. Observing this cohort across a 25 year period (1990–2015), I uncover a robust pattern of unencumbered home equity accumulation as they approach their retirement ages. By the end of the period, this small cohort had amassed more than 66 billion dollars in unencumbered home equity, and some immigrant groups exhibited higher rates of free and clear homeownership than their US-born White counterparts. Other immigrant groups lagged in ways that cannot be explained by compositional differences between groups. I address the theoretical implications of these findings and offer suggestions for a new research agenda on immigrant advancement toward free and clear homeownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the largely voluntary character of Nigerian immigration to the United States since 1970, it is not clear that their patterns of integration have emulated those of earlier immigrants who, over time, traded their specific national origins for "American" or "White" identities as they experienced upward mobility. This path may not be available to Nigerian immigrants. When they cease to be Nigerian, they may become black or African-American. In this paper, I use US Census data to trace patterns of identity in a Nigerian second-generation cohort as they advance from early school-age in 1990 to adulthood in 2014. The cohort shrinks inordinately across the period as its members cease to identify as Nigerian, and this pattern of ethnic attrition is most pronounced among the downwardly mobile - leaving us with a positively select Nigerian second generation and, perhaps, unduly optimistic assessments of Nigerian-American socioeconomic advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]