New Directions in Research on Immigration and Crime

The project will improve understanding of the immigration-crime relationship, further explore how immigrant communities might be better conceptualized and operationalized in studies, and examine how the immigration-crime relationship is context-dependent and impacted by city-level immigration-related policies and practices.

The applicants propose collecting and geocoding crime data at the neighborhood and census tract levels for cities across the United States. The study will also incorporate data from the Census and American Community Surveys (2000 and 2010), Reference USA historical business data from 1997-2014, TRACFed data to measure immigration enforcement, and data on victimization will come from the restricted-use NCVS. The applicants will conduct a series of analyses that examine how and whether immigration (beyond the simple foreign-born/native-born dichotomy) and crime are linked in neighborhoods across U.S. cities.

One set of analyses will examine the immigration-crime relationship focusing on differences among immigrants based on citizenship status, reason for migration, and level of assimilation. Another set of analyses will provide an alternative conceptualization of immigrant neighborhoods, the Immigrant Ethnic Activity Space. This new measure more fully captures the ecology of immigrant communities and reflects where immigrants live and where they go for various ethnic-related activities, as well as the distance between the two. A third set of analyses will consider the extent to which the broader city-context of reception as well as immigration-related policies and practices condition the immigration-crime relationship. The applicants propose to isolate two specific components of immigration policy: 1) how active ICE agents are in referring undocumented individuals for deportation and 2) how cooperative local governments are with federal agents who attempt to identify non-citizens who commit crime.

"Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law," and complies with Part 200 Uniform Requirements - 2 CFR 200.210(a)(14). CA/NCF