What Is Racial Residential Integration? A Research Synthesis,1950–2013

Abstract

In the past two decades, there has been a sharp increase in the number of studies on racial residential integration. However, there is a fair amount of disagreement in this work about how to conceptualize integration and how to operationalize it in research. We conduct a research synthesis of published research from 1950 to 2013 to uncover (1) how scholars have defined integration, (2) how scholars have measured integration, and (3) which ethnic/racial groups are integrating with whom. We have three key findings. First, the definition of integration moved away from being a multidimensional concept—involving both racial mixing in neighborhoods and cross-racial interactions—to solely referring to the racial composition. Second, the measurement of integration varies tremendously across time. Third, although the combination of ethnic/racial groups has expanded from Whites and Blacks sharing a residential space to include other groups such as Asians and Hispanics, these differences are often not made explicit. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings.