Flocking Together: Homophily in the Strong Ties of Immigrants

Susan K. Wierzbicki, University of California at Irvine

This paper compares the level of intergroup ties among first-generation immigrants and the native-born along the dimensions of race/ethnicity, sex and educational level. It uses the Los Angeles and Boston segments of the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, which oversamples minorities. For Asians and Hispanics, the level of homophily dropped between the first and later immigrant generations, in keeping with an interethnic assimilation pattern. Homophily among non-kin also dropped for most groups along two other dimensions: sex and education. Immigrants and the native-born show no difference in the level of racial and ethnic homophily in their strong ties when they are residents of enclaves. However, among those who do not live among co-ethnics, immigrants are more likely than the native-born to maintain co-ethnic strong ties.