Residential Patterns of Korean Americans in the Chicago Metropolitan Area: A Longitudinal Study of Spatial Assimilation in a Multi-Ethnic Context

The city of Chicago is home to the third largest concentration of Korean Americans in the United States. It is estimated that four out of five Korean Americans in Chicago live in the suburbs. In this paper, the authors examine the extent of spatial assimilation of Korean Americans with both the “mainstream” American populations, namely, the Caucasian, Black and Hispanic populations, and also their residential patterns vis-à-vis other dominant Asian sub-groups in Chicago—Chinese, Indians and Filipinos. Their analysis examines spatial assimilation of Korean Americans in terms of their residential segregation/integration from 1970 to 2010 in a multi-ethnic context. Results indicate that in general Koreans are becoming more integrated (less segregated) with the White population over the forty year time period in every major county where they were clustered, while they are generally more segregated from the Black and Hispanic populations. Among the dominant Asian sub-groups, Korean Americans tended to be more integrated with Chinese and Indian populations, and more segregated from the Filipino population.