Intra-Urban Mobility Patterns of Mexican Immigrants in Emerging Gateway Cities

Pamela Rogers, University of Texas at Austin

The 2000 U.S. Census identified the impact of immigration upon a number of 'emerging' gateway cities. Little is known about the intraurban mobility patterns of immigrants in these metropolitan areas: where they live at the outset, what governs their search behavior for employment, how far they mobilize social capital in the first few months, and about their medium- to long-term employment trajectories. Similarly little is known about their parallel residential trajectories, as they move from being sharers or renters upon arrival to later tenure housing arrangements as they become settled in the medium- to long-term. This paper addresses the current gap in the literature regarding the urban transitions undergoing these emerging gateway cities and the spatial mobility and work-seeking experiences of recently arrived immigrants. Based on a regression analysis of 1-percent Public-Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) files, this research studies Pamela Rogers (University of Texas at Austin)