Where Are Migrants Going? Part II
Key Cities, Differences by Race
Metro area migration trends vary not only by age, but by race. This is a subject that’s received significant attention in the past, especially in debates about gentrification or, most recently, the supposed out-migration of low-income black individuals from Chicago.
So does race matter for migration? In the aggregate, it doesn’t seem like it: most races and ethnicities have approximately similar annual migration rates. But in this case, the devil is in the details. If we look at just white and black migration patterns it becomes clear that while the different races may have similar total migration rates, they go to different places. I’ll look at migration by race for all 20 of the cities I identified in my previous post as having the most extreme internal migration.*
White and black migrants have starkly different migration patterns in key cities.
The chart above shows the difference in the total net migration rate, in-state and interstate, between white and black populations in the 20 cities with the most extreme total migration rates. Negative numbers mean that white people are moving into an area at a higher rate (or moving out at a lower rate), while positive numbers mean black people have more positive in-migration. This data can shed light on some of the cities from my last post.
Apparently, not only does Portland, Maine attract professionals, it attracts white professionals. Portland has positive in-state migration for whites, but slightly negative for blacks, giving it the largest racial migration gap of any of the key cities measured. It likewise has positive interstate migration for whites, and massive interstate out-migration for blacks. In 2013, about 8 percent of the black population of the Portland-South Portland, Maine metro area moved to a different state. This is a shocking number, and seems hard to explain.
But what we can clearly see is that while Portland has succeeded in creating strong in-migration despite lacking the “Sun Belt” advantage, it appears to have done so in a way that drives racially inconsistent migration. For some reason, something in Portland is driving black people away. It’s not easy to say exactly if this is a bad thing without more detail (maybe those migrants went somewhere they’re happier and better off), but it should certainly give policymakers in Portland-South Portland pause. If gentrification causes re-segregation (as these migrant flows suggest), then it might not be worth it.
Des Moines’ story is the opposite. The black population has seen much higher in-migration than the white population. However, unlike in Portland, both whites and blacks have been moving to Des Moines. Far from one group displacing the other, the city is attracting migrants from around Iowa and from other states, regardless of race.
Yet blacks have been entering Des Moines at a much higher rate. Why is this? One reason may be a ripple effect from Chicago. Declining working-class economic conditions and rising home prices have driven many native Chicagoans out of Chicagoland.
But the reporting I mentioned earlier in this post suggested that in Lafeyette, Indiana, at least, black migrants from Chicago haven’t been as prominent as many people think. It did, however, find some “ripple effect” from Chicagoland out-migration, confirmed by work done by Aaron Renn over at Urbanophile. If we look at Polk County, Iowa specifically, it turns out there was some significant migration between 2006 and 2010 (the most recent county-to-county migration flows data available for racial migration) from the Chicago area, but even more from Minneapolis, and a surprisingly large amount from Arizona. So this ripple effect from Chicago can only partially explain Des Moines’ migration trends.
Overall, explaining Des Moines fully may have to wait until there’s more data. But for now, the comparison between Des Moines and Portland is illustrative: one area managed to promote strong migration for one group at the expense of the other, while another city managed to attarct high migration for all groups, but possibly at the expense of another nearby city.
American migration, from the day the first slave-ship brought African captives to our shores by force, has never been racially neutral. Racially-charged migration flows continue today, especially in trendy cities like Portland (both of them, Oregon and Maine), San Francisco, Ann Arbor, Charleston, or Austin, with white in-migrants displacing black out-migrants. Especially at the very local level, gentrification can be extremely racially charged. Policymakers should be sensitive to how such selective migration can change regional demographics and contribute to social tensions. This story of racial migration, and its negative effects, has played out again and again in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, and St. Louis. And it probably won’t stop until policymakers begin to view black migrant populations as assets to be cultivated (much like how Millennial migrants are viewed).
Start the series from the beginning!
Follow me on Twitter. Follow my Medium Collection at In a State of Migration. I’m a grad student in International Trade and Investment Policy at the George Washington University’s Elliott School. I like to write and tweet about migration, airplanes, trade, space, and other new and interesting research.
* A note on language: I am using Census definitions for this post. The census term is “black or African-American” and “white or Caucasian.” For simplicity, and because most journalism on the issue has used these terms, I will use just “white” and “black.” Realistically, race is not nearly so simple an issue, and individuals that the American Comunity Survey classifies as having more than one race are excluded from this data. Likewise, the “white” population here is includes both non-Hispanic and Hispanic whites. I am aware some readers may object to these labels and that looking at just these two races is overly simplistic, but I trust that most will understand I use them because they’re the statistical labels used, for simplicity in writing, and because they are the terms most in use in public writing on migration issues.
