Locational preference and unemployment of Asian-born immigrant in the U.S. metropolises

Abstract

Our paper focuses on the problematique of the locational preferences and unemployment of Asian-born migrants in U.S. metropolises. We employ the data from the 2010 United States Census on mostly Asian-born individuals and run a thorough analysis of immigrants' segregation and placement in 23 U.S. largest cities. Our results show there are no areas with high unemployment and a high share of Asian-born individuals. Moreover, a relationship between unemployment and the share of foreign-born individuals in the U.S. cities comes through as insignificant. Our results support the thesis that Asian-born migrants are sensitive to the presence of unemployment while looking for the suitable habitat. In addition, it appears that they might avoid areas with disproportionally high unemployment rate on purpose. It also stems from our findings that Asian-born migrants in United States work harder and do longer hours in comparison with the other migrants, which also means that they do not constitute a significant burden for U.S. social welfare. We come to the conclusion that our findings might also hold for other groups of immigrants in major U.S and world's metropolises.