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

We reexamine the role of the white ethnic neighborhood for assimilation versus the persistence of ethnicity. We employ 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. This strategy is applied to the Germans, Irish, and Italians in the Greater New York region in 1980 and 1990. The Germans are found to have few and small neighborhoods, while the Italians have many and large ones; the Irish are in between . The neighborhoods of all three groups are frequently in suburbs, including ones that are distant from central cities, and are not limited to working-class enclaves. However, they do represent concentrations of group members with more ethnic characteristics, as measured by single ethnic ancestry and use of a mother tongue. During the 1980s, the most ethnic of these neighborhoods, located in central cities, were declining, while the least ethnic of them, in outer suburbs, were growing. This spatial shift was linked to invasion and succession in inner-city neighborhoods by minorities, chiefly new immigrant groups.