White Ethnic Neighborhoods and Assimilation: The Greater New York Region, 1980-1990.

The article examines the role of the white ethnic neighborhood for assimilation versus the persistence of ethnicity. It employs a geographic mapping strategy to identify ethnic neighborhoods as clusters of proximate census tracts where a particular group has a disproportionate share of the population. The white ethnic neighborhood is viewed with uncertainty by sociologists. In contemporary research on ethnic segregation, the assimilation perspective is represented by the theory of spatial assimilation. Its basic tenet is that residential mobility follows from social mobility and acculturation. As members of minority groups establish themselves in American labor markets and acquire the cultural skills to function outside of ethnic enclaves, they leave behind less successful members of their groups and convert socioeconomic and assimilation progress into residential game. An alternative view is that ethnic neighborhoods can survive despite the socioeconomic mobility of group members. The article examines these opposing perspectives by investigating white ethnic neighborhoods in the Greater New York metropolitan region in the period from 1980 to 1990.