Immigrant Integration and Immigrant Segregation: The Relationship Between School and Housing Segregation and Immigrants' Futures in the U.S.

It is a difficult time for immigrants in the United States. Regardless of citizenship status, reason to migrate, educational background, ethnicity, fluency in the English language, and legal status, immigrants are attacked by sectors of the government and the population. For instance, immigrants are sometimes considered threats to national security and takers of jobs from non-immigrant U.S. citizens. Being an immigrant in the U.S. requires a great deal of courage and strength to overcome the many fears and adversities that they and their family members encounter daily. In the face of these myriad challenges, millions of immigrants and their children must make decisions about where to attend schools and where to live. Immigrant status shapes children’s experiences at schools and in the neighborhoods where they live. This report examines the effects of school and residential segregation on immigrant children’s outcomes. The first part of the report is an in-depth consideration of the extant scholarly literature on this topic. The author starts by discussing the current situation of immigrants in the United States, offers a definition of immigrants, and mentions several theoretical frameworks commonly utilized in the immigrant literature. Building on the above, the author presents a thorough review of scholarly literature regarding relationships between school and residential segregation and immigrants’ outcomes. In the second section of this report, the author employs a variety of data sources to identify general empirical trends regarding the segregation of immigrant children.

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