Placing progress: contextual inequality and immigrant incorporation in New York and Los Angeles

This study contributes to the growing body of research on immigrant economic incorporation by considering the relative wages of immigrants, the adult children of immigrants, and the US-born of US parentage. By 1) disaggregating these three groups racially, 2) comparing entire wage distributions, and 3) comparing the immigrant cities of New York and Los Angeles with the US overall, this study provides perspective on the complicated contexts of intergenerational immigrant progress. In addition to comparing groups relative positions in 1990 and 2000, this paper decomposes relative wages such that educational composition differences between groups can be isolated from residual wage inequality. This research is of interest because consideration of the US-born or educated children of immigrants invokes questions of social mobility and the persistence of ethnic inequality more generally. Further, this paper contributes to a theoretical debate over place and immigrant progress by examining the second generation, for whom residence in immigrant cities is often theorized as detrimental to economic incorporation. Finally, this paper introduces substantial analysis of local wage structures to questions of intergenerational immigrant economic progress to a much greater extent than has previously been the case. Results suggest that prospects for immigrants economic incorporation are geographically specific and should be assessed across multiple generations as a result of the continuing contexts of racial wage inequality.