The Changing Face of World Cities: Young Adult Children of Immigrants in Europe and the United States

Chapter 7. Neighborhoods and Perceptions of Disorder

156 Chapter 7 Neighborhoods and Perceptions of Disorder Van C. Tran, Susan K. Brown, and Jens Schneider The post-1960 influx of immigrants and the coming of age of their childrenhavemadetheneighborhoodsof thebigimmigrant-receiving cities in the United States and western Europe increasingly more diverse in ethnic terms (Logan and Zhang 2010). And yet, despite the growing presence of these immigrants, no systematic study has yet been made of the kinds of neighborhoods in which they grew up and mostly still reside. This gap is striking in light of the prominent role that neighborhood conditions and processes play in accounts both of immigrant assimilation and of larger patterns of urban inequality, specifically, within the research traditions of spatial assimilation, place stratification, and urban poverty . This chapter turns to this critically important but largely neglected topic by looking at the residential spaces and urban neighborhoods experienced by the second generation in Los Angeles, New York, and Berlin. A robust literature has documented the pervasive racial segregation and stratification of American inner-city neighborhoods. From New York to Los Angeles, different ethnic and racial groups clearly occupy different urban spaces (Iceland 2009, 2007, 2004; Iceland and Nelson 2008; Logan, Stults, and Farley 2004; Anderson and Massey 2001; Massey and Denton 1993; Alba and Logan 1993). Although much attention has focused on Neighborhoods and Perceptions of Disorder    157 how segregated African American neighborhoods exacerbate concentrated poverty and social problems (Anderson 2008, 1999, 1990; Venkatesh 2006, 2000; Wilson 2009, 1996, 1987; Massey and Denton 1993; Sampson 2008; Sharkey forthcoming), relatively little is known about how and where the post-1965 immigration fits into (and is also changing) the hierarchy of inner-city neighborhoods (but see Logan and Zhang 2010; Iceland 2009; Jargowsky 2009, 1997). Furthermore, we know next to nothing about the relative stratification of the new American immigrant ethnic mosaic, as good empirical data that go beyond the most basic racial-ethnic categories have not been available. European scholarship does not use racial categories to analyze the spatial concentrations of different immigrant groups in European cities. Moreover, European countries have collected relatively little small area data on firstgeneration immigrants and their children. Finally, most western European countries have adopted welfare state and urban planning policies toward socially deprived neighborhoods that define them in terms of indicators of social problems or labor market exclusion, not ethnic ancestry or immigrant generation. Although many nonwhite and non-middle-class neighborhoods populated by growing numbers of immigrant families did of course emerge in their cities, they tend not to be dominated by one ethno-national-origin group in a way comparable to racial segregation in the United States. They often retain at least some working-class residents of native-born ancestry. Although European urban sociologists have examined the growing diversity of their neighborhoods, they have not yet done so through the perspective of their new natives, namely, the children born in them to immigrant parents (Crul and Schneider 2010). We know little about their experiences in these neighborhoods or whether they perceive them, as the larger society often does, as hot spots of social problems and social disorder. Drawing on geocoded data from ISGMNY, IIMMLA, and TIES, this chapter begins to fill this knowledge gap. Our findings largely confirm the apparent differences across the Atlantic: to the extent that the U.S. second generation in Los Angeles and New York grows up in or near poor or black neighborhoods, these places feel disorderly and dangerous to them; in Berlin, however, growing up in the most heavily Turkish neighborhoods is also associated with the perception of disorder, but the connection is far weaker. It appears that growing up in “bad” or minority neighborhoods may exert a far more negative influence on secondgeneration trajectories in the United States than in Berlin. We know a great deal about racial residential segregation in the United States but less about the spatial distributions of specific ethnic groups. The 158    The Changing Face of World Cities majority of American research on urban inequality continues to rely on the broadest racial-ethnic categories provided by the census—non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, non-Hispanic Asians, non-Hispanic others, and all Hispanics regardless of race (Alba and Logan 1993; Iceland 2009; Crowder, South, and Chavez 2006). Until the advent of migration-driven diversity, this made sense, because the original black-white dichotomy reflected the historical legacy of slavery, racial subordination, and racial segregation...