Compare methods

	Spatial Assimilation Model	Segmented Assimilation Test
Field	Migration Studies	Migration Studies
Family	Regression model	Regression model
Year of origin	1985	1993
Originator	Douglas S. Massey & Nancy A. Denton	Alejandro Portes & Min Zhou
Type	Locational-attainment regression of residential outcomes	Interaction-based regression test of divergent assimilation paths
Seminal source	Massey, D. S., & Denton, N. A. (1985). Spatial Assimilation as a Socioeconomic Outcome. American Sociological Review, 50(1), 94-106.	Portes, A., & Zhou, M. (1993). The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 530(1), 74-96.
Aliases	Locational Attainment Model, Residential Attainment Regression, Massey-Denton Spatial Assimilation, Spatial Assimilation Theory Test	Segmented Assimilation Analysis, Modes of Incorporation Test, Divergent Assimilation Paths Model, Portes-Zhou Second-Generation Model
Related	3	3
Summary	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.	The segmented assimilation test, formalized by Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou in 1993, examines why the children of immigrants follow strikingly different trajectories rather than converging on a single mainstream path. Against the classic assumption that each generation moves steadily upward into the white middle class, Portes and Zhou argued that the second generation can take at least three divergent routes: upward assimilation into the mainstream, downward assimilation into a marginalized underclass, or selective acculturation in which families preserve co-ethnic ties and values while advancing economically. Which route a child takes depends not on individual effort alone but on the 'modes of incorporation' — the government policy, societal reception, and co-ethnic community structure that greet the group on arrival. Empirically the theory is tested by modeling second-generation outcomes as a function of parental human capital, context of reception, and community resources, and by probing the interactions among them. The presence of significant interaction effects, rather than a single additive ladder, is the signature of segmentation. The framework reoriented immigration research toward the structural conditions that channel mobility downward as well as upward.