“Conventional Numbers” in Immigration Research: The Case of the Missing Dominicans 1

Abstract

Since 1980, more than a dozen estimates of the number of Dominicans living in the U.S. or abroad have converged on 500,000. Both the 1980 U.S. Census and the 1981 Dominican Republic Census counts, however, suggest there were fewer than 200,000 at that time. Seven years later, estimates, even of the available “pool” of Dominican migrants, are well below 500,000, and it is difficult to justify empirically an estimate of more than 300,000. This article examines the 500,000 figure and concludes that it is overestimated, possibly because of the difficulty of estimation, the tendency to repeat unsubstantiated estimates, and the incorrect interpretation of missing values. Because larger estimates may also serve political purposes, however, they may achieve a political reality as “conventional numbers”.