Professor Tracks Assimilation of Racial, Ethnic Groups Through New York City Housing Market

“In all those novels and movies, the immigrant experience in America is the stuff of dreams. Whether you come to America on a plane, a boat, or slip under a fence, the pattern of assimilation remains the same as it was in the 19th century and early 20th—you and your U.S.-born children’s lives improve over generations.

Unless, according to Emily Rosenbaum, Ph.D., professor of sociology and anthropology, you are black.

Rosenbaum’s book, The Housing Divide: How Generations of Immigrants Fare in New York’s Housing Markets (New York University Press, 2006), analyzes data on upward mobility as it relates to housing of different racial and ethnic groups across three generations in New York City. What she and her co-author, Samantha Friedman, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology at Northeastern University, found was that for white, Latino and Asian immigrants, housing improves or remains the same over generations. For black immigrants, however, it declines”*

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