Spatial Assimilation Model

The spatial assimilation model, articulated by Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton in 1985, treats where immigrants and minorities live as a measurable outcome of their social mobility. Its core proposition is that as group members acquire human capital and cultural familiarity — rising income, more schooling, English fluency, and longer settlement — they convert these gains into residential mobility, moving out of co-ethnic enclaves into suburban, majority, and higher-quality neighborhoods closer to members of the dominant group. The model is operationalized as a locational-attainment regression: individual residential outcomes are regressed on acculturation and socioeconomic predictors to see whether the expected spatial payoff materializes. Crucially, it doubles as a test of discrimination, because if a minority group earns a smaller residential return on the same income and education than the majority, the shortfall signals barriers that pure assimilation cannot explain. Massey and Denton used this logic to show that spatial assimilation operated for some groups but stalled for others, especially African Americans. The framework became the workhorse for studying how socioeconomic advancement does or does not translate into residential integration.