IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v35y1998i3p529-545.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Geographical Barriers to Employment for American-born and Immigrant Workers

Author

Listed:
  • Valerie Preston

    (Geography Department, York University, 4700 Keele Street, North York, Ontario, Canada, M3J 1P3, vpreston@yorku.ca)

  • S. McLafferty

    (Geography and Geology Department, Hunter College-CUNY, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021, USA, slm@everest.hunter.cuny.edu.)

  • X.F. Liu

    (Geography Department, York University, 4700 Keele Street, North York, Ontario, Canada, M3J 1P3, sfliu@yorku.ca)

Abstract

Residential segregation interacts with the changing geography of transport and employment in urban areas to restrict access to workplaces. A growing literature suggests that spatial barriers limit the job opportunities of minority women and men in American cities. This study examines the nature and extent of geographical barriers for minority immigrants by analysing their commuting behaviour. Information from the 1990 Public Use Microdata Sample is used to compare the commuting times of immigrant and native-born minority women in central parts of the New York Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area. The effects of occupation, wages, family responsibilities, transport mode, year of arrival in the US and English fluency on commuting time are assessed separately for immigrant men and women. The results suggest that race/ethnic group has a larger influence on commuting times than place of birth. However, white immigrant women's employment is less restricted by geographical barriers than that of minority immigrants. The findings confirm the diversity of immigrant women's experiences, reinforcing the need to consider the interrelations among gender, race and class when examining urban labour markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Valerie Preston & S. McLafferty & X.F. Liu, 1998. "Geographical Barriers to Employment for American-born and Immigrant Workers," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 35(3), pages 529-545, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:35:y:1998:i:3:p:529-545
    DOI: 10.1080/0042098984899
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/0042098984899
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0042098984899?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cathy Yang Liu & Gary Painter, 2010. "Travel Behavior among Latino Immigrants: The Role of Ethnic Neighborhoods and Ethnic Employment," Working Paper 8516, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
    2. Gary Painter & Cathy Yang Liu & Duan Zhuang, 2007. "Immigrants and the Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis: Employment Outcomes among Immigrant Youth in Los Angeles," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 44(13), pages 2627-2649, December.
    3. Cathy Yang Liu & Gary Painter, 2010. "Immigrant Settlement and Employment Suburbanization: Is There a Spatial Mismatch?," Working Paper 8514, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
    4. David C. Ribar, 2013. "Immigrants’ time use: a survey of methods and evidence," Chapters, in: Amelie F. Constant & Klaus F. Zimmermann (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Migration, chapter 20, pages 373-392, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Zhu, Pengyu & Liu, Cathy Yang & Painter, Gary, 2014. "Does residence in an ethnic community help immigrants in a recession?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 112-127.
    6. Samuel L. Myers & Chanjin Chung & Lisa Saunders, 2001. "Racial Differences in Transportation Access to Employment in Chicago and Los Angeles, 1980 and 1990," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 174-177, May.
    7. Cathy Yang Liu, 2008. "Ethnic Enclave Residence & Employment Accessibility of Latino Workers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington DC," Working Paper 8536, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
    8. Cathy Yang Liu, 2009. "Ethnic enclave residence, employment, and commuting of Latino workers," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 600-625.
    9. Church, A. & Frost, M. & Sullivan, K., 2000. "Transport and social exclusion in London," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 195-205, July.
    10. K. Bruce Newbold & Darren M. Scott & Charles Burke, 2017. "Immigrant status and commute distance: an exploratory study based on the greater Golden Horseshoe," Transportation, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 181-198, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:35:y:1998:i:3:p:529-545. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.