Ethnic succession theory
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Ethnic succession theory is a theory in
sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...
stating that ethnic and racial groups entering a new area may settle in older neighborhoods or urban areas until achieving economic parity with certain economic classes. The concept of succession is well established in "both ecological and economic models of urban residential change."Michael J. White, "Racial and Ethnic Succession in Four Cities"
''Urban Affairs Review'', December 1984, vol. 20 no. 2, 165-183, accessed 18 April 2011
As the newer group becomes economically successful, it moves to a better residential area. With continued immigration, a new ethnic group will settle in the older neighborhood in a similar starting situation. This pattern will continue, creating a succession of groups moving through the neighborhood (and city) over time. Ethnic succession has taken place in most major United States cities, but is most well known in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, where this process has been observed since the 19th century.


Explanations


Immigration and environment

Because of the United States' continued attraction for immigrants, its cities have been sources of study for scholars of urban development and ethnic succession. Ethnic groups often settle together in urban neighborhoods as part of a "chain of
immigration Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...
" to a new country, or migration to a new region, to keep personal networks, languages, foods, religions and cultures alive. They may be viewed by the dominant racial or cultural group as undesirable neighbors because of
prejudice Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's per ...
against a new culture's dominating a neighborhood. People with entry-level skills and/or limited language skills often have settled in older areas, where they can afford the housing and entry-level jobs. Over time, the incoming group members find work, and members are able to establish themselves economically. The group rises in
status Status (Latin plural: ''statūs''), is a state, condition, or situation, and may refer to: * Status (law) ** City status ** Legal status, in law ** Political status, in international law ** Small entity status, in patent law ** Status conference ...
with its economic achievements. The first, more established group tends to move out in the face of new arrivals, as it tends to have the economic resources to do so. The neighborhood takes on new demographics. Since the late twentieth century, more people in the United States live in suburbs than in center cities. Ethnic succession has also been observed taking place in suburbs, with newer groups settling in older suburbs, and more established groups' moving to newer developments. Many well-educated
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
n and
Nigerian Nigerians or the Nigerian people are citizens of Nigeria or people with ancestry from Nigeria. The name Nigeria was taken from the Niger River running through the country. This name was allegedly coined in the late 19th century by British jour ...
immigrants, who could afford good housing, have settled immediately in better suburbs rather than in cities.


Segregation

Segregation Segregation may refer to: Separation of people * Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space * School segregation * Housing segregation * Racial segregation, separation of humans ...
has played a major part in the limitations on socioeconomic ascension of an ethnic group, whether by self-selection in settlement together or pressure to be confined by a majority group. In some cases, immigrants have been limited to small areas of rundown housing which they could afford. After reaching economic parity, high-income earners of a traditional low-status group may still not achieve integration in the majority culture. Some suburbs of cities have come to be dominated by different ethnic and cultural groups. Often economic class is a factor equally important as race. Mary Pattillo-McCoy provides an example from her studies of South
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
in the 1990s. Although middle-class blacks moved out of their original neighborhoods, they settled in predominantly black neighborhoods, not venturing too far from their first, lower-class neighborhood. She studied Groveland, a middle-class enclave between poorer black areas and white suburbs. Although gaining the middle class, she found some African Americans were underemployed because of persistent
discrimination Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...
. Living closer to lower-income neighborhoods put them and their children at risk of higher crime, poverty-related drugs and dysfunction, and problems in public schools.


Historical examples


East End of London

The
East End of London The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have uni ...
has seen a succession of poor migrants from rural areas, as well as
immigrant Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...
populations, who for centuries arrived as refugees from warfare on the Continent. For instance, in the 17th and 18th century, the area had many
French Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Bez ...
(Protestant) refugees, who managed the silk-weaving industry. At its peak in the mid-18th century, 12,000 silk weavers were employed in the
Spitalfields Spitalfields is a district in the East End of London and within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The area is formed around Commercial Street (on the A1202 London Inner Ring Road) and includes the locale around Brick Lane, Christ Church, ...
area.Roy Porter, ''London: A Social History'', Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, pp. 132, 140 In 1742 they built a church, ''La Neuve Eglise''. Later it became used as a Methodist chapel to serve mostly poor East Enders from around England. Although in the 17th century, the East End also had
Sephardic Jewish Sephardic (or Sephardi) Jews (, ; lad, Djudíos Sefardíes), also ''Sepharadim'' , Modern Hebrew: ''Sfaradim'', Tiberian: Səp̄āraddîm, also , ''Ye'hude Sepharad'', lit. "The Jews of Spain", es, Judíos sefardíes (or ), pt, Judeus sefar ...
immigrants, it was not until the concentration of 19th-century Ashkenazi
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
immigration from eastern Europe, that the Methodist chapel was adapted as the ''Machzikei HaDath'', or Spitalfields Great
Synagogue A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...
; it was consecrated in 1898. By the 1870s, thousands of unskilled Jewish immigrants were garment workers in
sweatshops A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor, socially unacceptable or illegal working conditions. Some illegal working conditions include poor ventilation, little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting, o ...
. Descendants of Jewish immigrants became educated, took better jobs, and gradually moved on to other parts of London and its suburbs, and new immigrants settled in the area. Since 1976, the synagogue was converted to the '' Jamme Masjid'' mosque, which serves the local ethnic
Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
i population, who are
Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
.


U.S. cities

Most major American cities have historically had forms of ethnic succession, from the earliest years of colonial settlement, to recent times with newer immigrants altering city demographics. What is generally known are the successions as a result of the waves of immigration from eastern and southern Europe of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North. Since changes to immigration laws in the 1960s, there have been new ethnic successions with the arrival of immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America; Africa and Asia. In addition, industrial restructuring and major economic changes upended the economies of cities throughout the
Rust Belt The Rust Belt is a region of the United States that experienced industrial decline starting in the 1950s. The U.S. manufacturing sector as a percentage of the U.S. GDP peaked in 1953 and has been in decline since, impacting certain regions and ...
, with implications for ethnic succession. In addition, there has been increased population movement to the South and Southwest over recent decades, causing shifts in population and voting patterns across the country.


St Louis, Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit

Ethnic succession has been studied in these four cities of the Midwest, which had dramatic growth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fueled by industrialization, commodity resources, shipping traffic, and the automobile industry. From World War I through the 1930s, many African Americans moved to northern and midwestern cities in the first wave of the Great Migration. In addition, each of these cities received in total millions of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Both the new immigrants and blacks competed with contemporary working class groups for housing and jobs. In Chicago, for example, ethnic Irish had become well established since the immigration of the mid-nineteenth century, and its members violently defended the physical boundaries of its neighborhoods, and its control of local working-class jobs. Similar issues prevailed in St. Louis, but the major nineteenth-century immigration had been by Germans. In both cases, the earlier ethnic groups resisted and tried to dominate the later ones, leading to outbreaks of violence in some cases. Tensions fueled by labor competition and post-World War I social tensions caused race riots, with ethnic whites, especially of Irish descent, attacking blacks during the summer of 1919 in Chicago. East St. Louis had a similar riot in 1917 that erupted after a strike.


White flight

In the United States, ethnic succession has been seen both among Europeans groups and between European-American and other ethnic groups. By the late nineteenth century, some cities were served by commuter railroads and trolley public transportation, which made longer commutes to work easier. The wealthiest people were the first to move out to new suburban developments. Such new transportation systems stimulated residential real estate development in train and trolley suburbs, and people who could afford to move out of the inner cities started to do so. At the same time, major northern and midwestern cities were being crowded by two major groups: immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, and
African Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
from the rural South. With federally subsidized highway construction after
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, residential suburban development was stimulated and working middle-class white people began to leave the cities - often the children of immigrants. They were replaced, or sometimes moved away from competing for housing, by newer groups of both migrants and immigrants. People described the suburban migration as "white flight", because newer populations happened to be ethnic groups of color. Today's suburbs are more diverse, as ethnic groups of color have also moved to the suburbs when they could afford to. Other ethnic groups have occupied older, lower quality housing in the cities. Some cities also maintain residential areas of high-value housing, occupied by upper classes of various ethnic groups.


Los Angeles

During the early 1990s, numerous Hispanic immigrants, primarily from Mexico, increased their rate of settlement in
South Central Los Angeles South Los Angeles, also known as South Central Los Angeles or simply South Central, is a region in southwestern Los Angeles County, lying mostly within the city limits of Los Angeles, south of downtown. It is "defined on Los Angeles city maps as a ...
. It had historically been mostly African American from the Great Migration beginning in the early 1940s. In 1980 Los Angeles was 28% Hispanic, 48% non-Hispanic white, and 17% black. By 1990 it was 40% Hispanic, 37% non-Hispanic white, and 13% black. This extremely rapid change in racial dynamics resulted in much social tension and some outbreaks of violence between groups. Such violence occurred in
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.


Current research


Immigrant enterprises

Ethnic succession has been seen in the immigrant-dominated garment industry in New York since the turn of the 20th century. Ethnicity among entrepreneurs and workers continues to be an important determinant in maintaining the industry in New York against global competition. Bernard Wong's 1987 study of Chinese-owned factories noted that common ethnicity allowed the mobilization of capital and labor, and reduced management/labor conflict. Margaret Chin's book, ''Sewing Women'' (1998, 2005), examines how immigration, ethnicity and gender dynamics affect the contemporary garment industry. Also, Chin stresses the effect of unionization. She examines how ethnicity succession offers economic opportunities for immigrants, while limiting options for rising social mobility. The garment industry has long been immigrant-dominated, specifically in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. From
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
immigrants in the early 1900s, to later 20th-century domination by
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
owners and workers, to
Hispanic The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad. The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to Vic ...
workers under
Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...
owners today, the industry has been dominated by low skill, cheap labor, and poor working conditions. These conditions are typical of many jobs taken by immigrants without language skills in the larger cultures. Chin contrasts aspects of the industry and employer-employee relations of Chinese-owned garment factories in Chinatown and Korean-owned factories outside the Korean enclave.Zhou, Min, "The Significance of Ethnicity in Immigrant Enterprises", Review of Margaret M. Chin, ''Sewing Women''
''Sociological Forum'', September 2006, Vol. 21, No. 3, accessed 18 April 2011
She concludes that within the
ethnic enclave In sociology, an ethnic enclave is a geographic area with high ethnic concentration, characteristic cultural identity, and economic activity. The term is usually used to refer to either a residential area or a workspace with a high concentration ...
, workers are more limited to low wages by familial and community relations. By contrast, Hispanics working for Korean owners may gain higher market wages, but be limited from advancing to supervisory positions by belonging to a different ethnicity than owners.


New York City planning

The researcher Ronald J.O. Flores, along with A.P. Lobo and J.J. Salvo of the
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
Department of Planning, have noticed since 1970 increasing succession among various Hispanic nationalities in residential neighborhoods in New York. Since about 1970,
Hispanic The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad. The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to Vic ...
ethnic groups have predominated among immigrants entering
inner-city The term ''inner city'' has been used, especially in the United States, as a euphemism for majority-minority lower-income residential districts that often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in a downtown or city centre area. Sociologists sometim ...
neighborhoods of New York City, succeeding whites of European ancestries.
Puerto Ricans Puerto Ricans ( es, Puertorriqueños; or boricuas) are the people of Puerto Rico, the inhabitants, and citizens of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and their descendants. Overview The culture held in common by most Puerto Ricans is referred t ...
and Dominicans tended to settle in their own ethnic neighborhoods, perhaps because of a concentration of numbers. Immigrants from a variety of South American nations have integrated more in multi-ethnic neighborhoods. In the 21st century, numerous national groups of South American Hispanic ethnicity have begun to succeed the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in some areas, creating the first Hispanic succession in the city.Lobo et al., "The Impact of Hispanic Growth on the Racial/Ethnic Composition of New York City Neighborhoods"
''Urban Affairs Review'', Mat 2002, 37 (5): 703


Footnotes


References


Chin, Margaret May, ''Sewing Women: Immigrants and the New York City Garment Industry''
Columbia University Press, 1998, reprint 2005
Pattillo-McCoy, Mary (1999), ''Black Picket Fences : Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class''
University of Chicago Press. . * Stark, Rodney (2007), "Sociology", 10th edition, Thompson Wadsworth. .
Wong, Bernard (1987) "The Role of Ethnicity in Enclave Enterprises: A Study of the Chinese Garment Factories in New York City"
''Human Organization'', Volume 46, Number 2 / Summer 1987, Society for Applied Anthropology, pp. 120–130, accessed 18 April 2011
Zhou, Min, "The Significance of Ethnicity in Immigrant Enterprises", Review of Margaret M. Chin, ''Sewing Women''
''Sociological Forum'', September 2006, Vol. 21, No. 3 {{DEFAULTSORT:Ethnic Succession Theory Sociological theories Internal migration