Marginalization and Risk: Exploring the Relationships Between Immigrant Status and Generation and Crime Victimization

The association between immigration and crime has been at the forefront of political and policy debate in recent years. Given the rapid growth of Asian and Hispanic immigrants and the marginalized socioeconomic position many in these subgroups face, there is an urgent need for a systematic understanding of the victimization experiences faced across different generations of Asian and Hispanic immigrant subgroups. This study fills the gap in the literature to date by (a) investigating variations in the victimization of violent and property crime among immigrants of different statuses (e.g., authorized immigrants, unauthorized immigrants, and second-generation immigrants); (b) examining victimization across various race/ethnicity (e.g., Hispanic and Asian) subgroups; and (c) identifying community-level characteristics that contribute to victimization. This study uses a representative cross-sectional survey of residents' victimization experiences in the city of San Jose, California. Specifically, we use a stratified multistage sampling method to select our sample from 80 primary sample clusters. We find that authorized first-generation immigrants have the lowest risk for several forms of victimization. Several important implications of the methods and findings are discussed, and suggestions for future research are offered.