Living in Ethnic Areas or Not? Residential Preference of Decimal Generation Immigrants among Asian Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, and Vietnamese

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper is very interesting and has the potential to make a modest yet noteworthy contribution to the literature on Asian immigrants’ residential patterns in the U.S. I enjoyed reading the paper and have a number of comments and suggestions for the authors to consider.

 

The introduction (lines 22-107) provides a nice set-up for the rest of the paper. The four research questions (lines 93-101) are fine, but the authors should answer these questions in the paper’s concluding sections (sections 4-5), in order to maintain continuity, from start to finish, throughout the manuscript. At present, these questions appear to be stated and then dropped from consideration.

 

The literature review (lines 108-249) is well-organized around the theories of spatial assimilation, segmented assimilation, and resurgent ethnicity. However, this review needs to include more recent studies and should be more comprehensive. Currently, it looks like most of the research cited is from the 1990s with a few studies from the early 2000s. The most recent study is Lee and Kye 2016. Hence, the literature review seems to be outdated. There are also notable omissions. Critical views of race/ethnicity in the U.S., such as those propounded by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, are not considered, and neither is the important line of investigation of U.S. racial/ethnic residential segregation by Daniel Lichter and Dominico Parisi, et al., published in such prominent journals as American Sociological Review, Social Forces, and Social Problems.

 

The paper’s strongest feature is the data quality. The statistical methods are appropriate, and the analyses appear to be competently performed. The authors should provide a stronger justification for using the PUMA to spatially define ethnic communities (lines 288-294) and more carefully discuss the limitations of this operational definition. However, I (and I believe most readers) can live with the authors’ use of PUMAs. The specification of the statistical model (i.e., the variables listed on lines 323-364) and the operational definitions of the variables also seem appropriate.

 

Given the paper’s modest potential, the presentation and discussion of descriptive statistics (lines 370-478) adds unnecessarily to the length of the manuscript. The authors should cut this material, which is presented in a rather dry and tedious fashion, and proceed directly to the logistic regression analyses that address the four questions raised at the beginning of the paper. The basic descriptive statistics (i.e., means and standard deviations, min and max values) could be shown in an appendix. At present, the long and tedious presentation of six maps and three tables is distracting and somewhat overwhelming and does not add much substance. Table 4 is really the core of the empirical analysis.

 

The concluding discussions (lines 560-627) should answer the four questions stated at the beginning of the paper and, above all, do more to explain the difference observed across the six Asian groups with respect to empirical support for the three theories described in the literature review. The key question here is: why is the spatial assimilation perspective supported for the Asian Indians and Vietnamese (lines 574-576), while the resurgent ethnicity perspective is supported for the Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, and Koreans (lines 585-587)? Another question that might be addressed is: what is the theoretical implication of finding no empirical support for the segmented assimilation perspective? For me, and I think for most readers, the most interesting findings of the paper are the group differences, which are net of the control variables for cultural attributes (e.g., English language fluency) and socioeconomic status (e.g., education, income, and homeownership).

 

The reference to “natural ethnocentrism” (line 609) needs to be deleted. Ethnocentrism is not natural, according to the cultural anthropology literature.

 

Finally, while the paper is, for the most part, clearly written, more copy editing is needed to improve the quality of the writing. There are too many problems and infelicities for me to address line-by-line, so I suggest that the authors hire a professional copyeditor and enlist the assistance of a trusted colleague who is proficient in English language writing and speaking.

 

Conclusion

This paper has the potential to make a decent contribution to the literature on Asian immigrants’ residential segregation patterns. However, the literature review needs updating, the discussion and presentation of the statistical results should be more streamlined and concise, and the concluding sections should address the four research questions that motivate the analyses and do more to draw out the theoretical implications of the key finding: namely, the group differences in support of the three theoretical perspectives. The writing also needs to be improved.

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks for all your comments. Please see our responses in the attached file.

Sincerely,

Shuang Li

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

• The manuscript is very well-written. It has clear definitions of terminology and good justification for the study in Section 1. The focus on different decimal generations of immigrants and the different subgroups of Asians are commended! I only have very minor comments:
• line 302 - "having" instead of "have"
• The authors added a hypothesis in the measure (line 327-329) but they should have mentioned that systematically in the description of the study around line 236.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks for your comments! Please see our responses in the attached file. 

Sincerely, 

Shuang Li

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript examines spatial concentration of six Asian ethnic groups in the U.S. It uses data from ACS 2013-2017 to identify ethnic areas, with detailed descriptions of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of these areas by ethnic origin. The paper’s contribution is its description of how major patterns of spatial concentration vary by decimal generation among foreign-born Asians in the U.S.    Below are a few concerns and suggestions.   On the inclusion of mixed-race, mixed-ethnicity Asians in the sample: I am not sure what is gained by this and it could introduce potential noise from the data. By definition, the majority of Asian immigrants came from one sending country, and Asian individuals of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity comprise a very small fraction of all Asian immigrants. To be sure, mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity Asians are rather common among second- and later-generation individuals, but that goes beyond the scope of this paper. Therefore, I would leave them out of the sample for this analysis because I don’t know how to make sense of these findings with them being included in the sample.    On the theoretical perspectives: the author identifies spatial assimilation, segmented assimilation, and resurgent ethnicity as three perspectives to guide the development of hypotheses and analyses. But I am not so sure how much segmented assimilation has to say about spatial concentration (other than the fact that low-income and dark-skinned children of (black) immigrants are more likely to live in poorer areas in close proximity of blacks). I don’t know how much that applies to all Asian groups.    The author also left out the possibility of housing discrimination in shaping spatial concentration (i.e. ethnic preferences vs. racial constraints in the housing process). While the author can’t get at this using the dataset, the author might note this possibility at the front or the back end of the paper.I would also develop more explicit hypotheses to guide the analyses of this paper.    On level of aggregation: did the maps use county or census tract as the unit of analysis for mapping? It is not clear, but the findings are sensitive to level of aggregation, so more info will be helpful.    On linear vs. non-linear relationships between decimal generation and living in ethnic areas: different groups exhibit very different patterns. (See Table 4, but it will be helpful to see these findings without the mixed-race/ethnicity individuals.) For Chinese, Japanese and Filipinos, they are non-linear. For the other three groups, they are mostly linear. Because this is a central point in the paper, more care is needed for these analyses before we can reach any firm conclusions. 
On length of residency: By focusing on decimal generations, the paper cannot address or control for the impact of length of residency on the spatial concentration. This is a rather important conceptual limitation, so how does the author think about this?    Minor comments: Figure 4: I am not sure because it shows that the entire state of Nevada is a strong-hold of Filipino ethnic areas. This looks wrong.   Table 1: In addition to comparing ethnic vs. PUMA average, perhaps data on the ethnic vs. non-ethnic comparison should be included.    Table 2: This Table might work better as a figure to visualize the clear shift across decimal generations by ethnic group. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks for all your comments! Please see our responses in the attached file. 

Sincerely,

Shuang Li

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The copyeditor missed a few problems -- see below:

 

Lines 16-17 – the sentence should be, “Meanwhile, their Asian Indian and Vietnamese counterparts show spatial assimilation.”

 

Lines 39-43 – this sentence doesn’t make sense; it must be rewritten in clear English

 

Line 223 – a semicolon, not a comma, should be between “generation” and “however”

 

Line 263 – “is” should be “are”; that is, “data are” [note: data = plural, datum = singular]

 

Line 273 – an em dash [long dash] should come between “older” and “are”

 

Line 281 – Logan 2011 should be Logan et al. 2011

 

Line 421 – say that the maps are available on request

 

Line 457 – insert “those” between “of” and “living”

 

Lines 476-481 – Figure 1 shows the data in Table 2; thus, delete Table 2 and keep Figure 1

 

Line 630 – a new paragraph should begin with the sentence, “The second research question…”

 

Line 684-685 – the sentence should be, “Apparently, for most Asian immigrants who are…”

 

Lines 699-702 – this sentence doesn’t make sense; it must be rewritten in clear English

 

Line 702 – delete “with”

 

Line 720 – say, “are concentrated in ethnic areas…”; delete “to be found” and insert “are”

 

Lines 857-858 – the citation to reference #54 is incorrect

 

The authors have worked diligently to revise the paper, and thus the manuscript has been improved.  The paper makes a nice contribution to the literature and will be frequently cited by researchers who study Asian immigrants' residential patterns and assimilation.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Please find our response to your comments in the attached file. 

Thanks!

Shuang Li and Weiwei Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have addressed my concerns from the previous round of review.

A few minor observations:

p. 7: equation 1 is slightly off. Review. 

p. 11: results in Table 2 are incomplete

On tables and figure: the ordering of ethnic groups should be consistent across all tables and figures. In table 1, they are ordered based on SES status, so this logic should also apply to the other tables. If ordered by group size, then Chinese should be the first one, followed by Indians, etc.

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

Please find our response to your comments in the attached file. 

Thanks!

Sincerely, 

Shuang Li and Weiwei Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.docx