Race/Ethnicity and Homeownership in an Emerging Immigrant Gateway of the US Southeast: A Neighborhood Scale Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper investigates racial/ethnic disparities in homeownership rates at the neighborhood level within Nashville, TN. I like the paper’s focus on Nashville, especially given recent calls to expand urban sociological research to more small and mid-sized cities and cities in the South, which have often been ignored by conventional scholarship.

There are some major concerns with the paper, which I describe below:

1.      Since this is a place-based study, we need more information about the study site. We learn that Nashville is an immigrant gateway, but we don’t learn much otherwise. What is the history of various immigrant groups and settlement patterns in Nashville? This can help set the stage for an interesting and policy-relevant analysis.

2.      I’m not confident that the methods match the front-end of the study. Its unclear what is being tested, and why. I also find it odd that we are not presented descriptive data for the foreign-born-not-citizen population, even though I thought from the front-end of the paper that this was the study group of interest. But, homeownership rates for this group are not presented or analyzed.

3.      What is analyzed is the contribution of the share of foreign-born-not-citizens at the neighborhood level to neighborhood rates of homeownership by race. However, we aren’t given a theoretical justification for why the author expects a relationship between these two outcomes. We are also presented with findings about the share of individuals in various occupations and age of the housing stock and their relationship to racial/ethnic homeownership rates. Again, these factors need to be theoretically motivated in the front end of the paper. Right now, it is unclear how to make sense of the findings.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Moderate editing for typos required.

Author Response

Social Science Manuscript Reviews:  Reviewer 1: Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper investigates racial/ethnic disparities in homeownership rates at the neighborhood level within Nashville, TN. I like the paper’s focus on Nashville, especially given recent calls to expand urban sociological research to more small and mid-sized cities and cities in the South, which have often been ignored by conventional scholarship.

There are some major concerns with the paper, which I describe below:

1. Since this is a place-based study, we need more information about the study site. We learn that Nashville is an immigrant gateway, but we don’t learn much otherwise. What is the history of various immigrant groups and settlement patterns in Nashville? This can help set the stage for an interesting and policy-relevant analysis.

Response: Adding an entire historical pathway about Nashville’s immigration flow could make this paper a very different one in term of its focus.  However, I have revised the economic contexts and have cited many scholars who have addressed the reasons why Nashville remains a major attraction for immigrants. Since my paper deals with housing-related disparity across major races/ethnicities and immigrants, I contextualize my paper accordingly and I provide an overview in the entire country as well as Nashville and then build my reasoning for doing this research. I hope you agree with what I am doing and why I am doing this. I have also revised my text in section 1.5 that adds a better flow of textual information that builds into my theoretical reasoning of my work.

2. I’m not confident that the methods match the front-end of the study. Its unclear what is being tested, and why. I also find it odd that we are not presented descriptive data for the foreign-born-not-citizen population, even though I thought from the front-end of the paper that this was the study group of interest. But, homeownership rates for this group are not presented or analyzed.

Response: I have added many NEW tables in the revised version now. I wanted to keep the manuscript short and hence was using only the description part in text. However, since you are interested in looking at my computations, I have provided basic descriptive stats, especially as shares/proportions and a few values of means/averages, etc. for variables which added meaning.  To address your concern, I have now added several new tables (for almost each variable that was earlier discussed in text), and now I have a total of 9 tables in this manuscript. Thus, the word count has increased to 8,610 words (including everything).

3. What is analyzed is the contribution of the share of foreign-born-not-citizens at the neighborhood level to neighborhood rates of homeownership by race. However, we aren’t given a theoretical justification for why the author expects a relationship between these two outcomes. We are also presented with findings about the share of individuals in various occupations and age of the housing stock and their relationship to racial/ethnic homeownership rates. Again, these factors need to be theoretically motivated in the front end of the paper. Right now, it is unclear how to make sense of the findings.

Response: As a researcher, I do not know if there will be a relationship between the FBNC and homeownership or not. Given the fact that minorities have had to deal with lower homeownerships, I wanted to see how that got impacted in a metropolis where immigrants were coming in huge numbers and if at all those not yet citizens were more severely impacted by lower homeownership, given that their legal status could have impacts on their access to resources. This is what formed the motivation for this research.  Also, to further add clarity on your major concern of why I am doing what I am doing, I want to draw your attention to the entire text in section 1.5 where the literature discusses what has been done so far and why I feel the need to delve into the issues being explored in this research. I am pasting that sub-section here:

1.5. Immigrants’ Experiences with Homeownership:  Numerous immigration scholars have addressed the growth of immigrant gateways and the reasons for attractiveness of such emerging and established immigrant cities (McDaniel et al. 2019; McDanel 2021; Singer et al. 2008). Immigration scholars thus far have discussed immigrants’ experiences with regard to social, economic, political, and institutional assimilation processes and the roles of policies and support-measures taken by the state and federal programs which have made specific cities more receptive toward immigrants (for example Nashville in Tennessee has become an attractive destination for immigrants, largely driven by numerous policy changes) (see McDaniel 2017, 2018; McDaniel et al. 2019; McDanel 2021). And yet, there exists enormous discrepancies in immigrants’ experiences and pathways toward acceptance and integration with regards to immigrants’ housing experiences. There also exists significant disparities in housing experiences between documented and undocumented Hispanic immigrants compared to U.S.-born Hispanics, Whites, and Blacks (Allen 2022; McConell and Akresh 2010). In Los Angeles, for example, immigrants’ legal status was a better predictor of housing affordability among low-income households rather than their Race or Nativity (McConnell 2013; McConell and Akresh 2010).  

Nashville, the largest metropolis in Tennessee, is also known as a Nuevo southern metropolis due to its attractiveness toward diverse immigrant groups originating from Asian, African, Latin American, and Caribbean countries (Chaney 2015, 2022; Chaney et al. 2018; Chaney and Clark 2020; McDaniel 2021; Sharma 2016a,b). Nashville—often referred as a Hispanic hypergrowth metro area (Suro and Singer 2002), a pre-emerging immigrant gateway (Singer 2004), twenty-first century gateway (Singer et al. 2008), and a minor-emerging gateway (Singer 2015)—remains one such attractive destination for many groups, including Hispanic populations. Such unprecedented growth in diverse population, however, has also raised numerous social and economic problems for immigrants, and housing is one such issue that affects all.

While a significant body of housing scholarship has focused on the largest cities and metropolises of the USA (e.g., McConnell 2013; McConell and Akresh 2010), not much is known about housing related issues in the emerging gateways of the South. Nashville in Tennessee is a mid-sized emerging immigrant gateway that has attracted a significant share of immigrants, and has seen a steep rise in its housing prices, but not much is known about its impacts on immigrant communities. Among those who have addressed housing research, they have consistently shown that minorities, especially Blacks, have suffered from lower levels of homeownership in major American metropolises, once again ignoring these effects in mid- and small-sized metropolises, especially those that have attracted significant diversity and immigrants over last two decades. Thus, the impacts of housing market issues on immigrant communities, especially in mid- and small-sized metropolises of the South that have relatively higher share of immigrants and the foreign-born is still unknown. Based on the scholarship thus far, it is fair to expect that immigrants who have not yet become citizens are likely disadvantaged due to their restricted access to banking/financial and legal resources (see Chaney et al. 2018), making it more difficult to own homes; and this paper specifically explores these differences among various racial/ethnic groups along with those in FBNC categories while focusing on the census tracts of Nashville metropolis. In doing so, this research also examines how the determinants of homeownership vary across major population groups, and the FBNC, since the emerging gateway of Nashville has a significant share of its population who are immigrants (McDaniel et al. 2019; McDaniel 2021). This intra-urban inspection of determinants will provide pathways for creating pro-immigrants’-based policy measures that can help create an inclusive and equitable society.

Comments on the Quality of English Language: Moderate editing for typos required.

Response: Due to the use of SoSi template, tracing the errors was difficult. I have read each and every sentence multiple times and have made sure all errors are corrected.  

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This study brings much-needed attention to the growing and diverse metropolitan area in the Southern United States. As highlighted in the manuscript, the Nashville MSA has become a destination for both immigrants and non-immigrants, leading to a dramatic rise in housing prices. This, coupled with gentrification, has resulted in increased inequality in homeownership. While the paper effectively explains the dynamics in the Nashville MSA regarding this issue, the manuscript needs to clarify many of the criteria used in the analysis. Specifically, the ethnic and racial categories, as well as the geographic focus area, are defined imprecisely. This lack of clarity may confuse readers and make the study’s methodology appear unsystematic. I explain below:

The author needs to clarify in both the abstract and introduction that the data pertains to the Nashville metropolitan area, or the Nashville-Murfreesboro-Franklin MSA. When I first began reading the article, I assumed the focus area was limited to the city of Nashville or perhaps Davidson County. It wasn’t until I reached the subsection titled 'Data Source' that I realized the entire MSA was being considered. This distinction should be made earlier in the manuscript. For instance, it is confusing if not misleading—when the author —states that 'Nashville' contains 37.52 percent of Tennessee’s Latinos, when they actually mean the Nashville MSA. Additionally, it should be noted that, as of 2023, the Nashville MSA includes 14 counties.

I believe the author is conflating race and ethnicity. 'Hispanic' and 'Asian' are ethnic identifiers, while 'Black' is racial. I also recommend avoiding the term 'Blacks.' Instead, consider using 'Black residents' or 'Black Nashvillians,' or alternating between the two. Simply using 'Blacks' may be offensive to some. In the subsection titled 'Racial/Ethnic Disparity in Homeownership,' the author uses census data to refer to 'African-Americans.' Keep in mind that not all 'Black' homeowners are African American. Similarly, a distinction should be made between 'whites' and 'non-Hispanic whites.' While I understand that the author is analyzing categories based on census data, an explanation of these categories is necessary. Without clarification and consistency, the analysis is less reliable.

I really do not think statements like the following are necessary in a publication like this: “This is also a research pathway that I plan to engage in the future, pending available funds of field-based indepth invetigation.”

There are numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes in this manuscript.  I list several of them in the next section.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Finally, this manuscript needs serious proofreading!!! There are numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes.  Below, I list a few, but there are many more:

In abstract change “Using Nashville, the emerging southern gateway as the study area…” to Using Nashville, an emerging immigrant gateway, as the study area…

Make sure that the capitalization of racial categories is consistent throughout the manuscript. Some editors and publications argue that 'White' should be capitalized as a racial category, while others do not. However, whichever choice is made, it should be applied uniformly throughout the manuscript.

On page 2,  “south” should be capitalized and “severity” is spelled wrong in this sentence: “its sevirity was felt disproportionately among immigrants coming into the emerging immigrant gateways of the south.”

Line 100: “ie.” Should be “i.e.”

The sentence in lines 106 and 107 is grammatically incorrect (subject-verb agreement) and should be written as "In this body of work, however, meso-level factors such as neighborhood characteristics and their relationship with wealth accumulation are missing in the literature.”

The sentence starting on line 143 should be written in a clearer way or broken into two sentences.  Since Nashville is the focus area, I would not put it in paratheses : “In general, scholarly work focused on immigrants have so far discussed their experiences with regard to social, eco nomic, political, and institutional assimilation process and the roles of policies and support-measures taken by the state and federal programs which have made specific cities more receptive toward immigrants (for example Nashville in Tennessee that has become an attractive and highly desirable destination for immigrants)

Line 169: “tract” not “tarcts”

This opening sentence on line 179 needs to be rephrased for clarity and to correct some grammatical issues. For example instead of “on homeownership” it should be “of homeownership”

Line 265: is should be “on the South” not “of the South”

Line 452: this sentence needs to be corrected:  “Nashville ha sgained in car assembly plans over last few decadeas…”

Author Response

REVIEWER 2 - Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comment: This study brings much-needed attention to the growing and diverse metropolitan area in the Southern United States. As highlighted in the manuscript, the Nashville MSA has become a destination for both immigrants and non-immigrants, leading to a dramatic rise in housing prices. This, coupled with gentrification, has resulted in increased inequality in homeownership. While the paper effectively explains the dynamics in the Nashville MSA regarding this issue, the manuscript needs to clarify many of the criteria used in the analysis. Specifically, the ethnic and racial categories, as well as the geographic focus area, are defined imprecisely. This lack of clarity may confuse readers and make the study’s methodology appear unsystematic. I explain below:

Response: Thank you. I have addressed this issue. Done!  I also explained why Nashville was chosen, how and why it is important and the difference between race/ethnicity and my use of these terms (in the footnote). The fact is that Nashville MSA has remained one of the fastest growing metropolises in the South due to various reasons and this has added to its racial/ethnic diversity as well as immigrants’ share. These are concisely added in the text.

Comment: The author needs to clarify in both the abstract and introduction that the data pertains to the Nashville metropolitan area, or the Nashville-Murfreesboro-Franklin MSA. When I first began reading the article, I assumed the focus area was limited to the city of Nashville or perhaps Davidson County. It wasn’t until I reached the subsection titled 'Data Source' that I realized the entire MSA was being considered. This distinction should be made earlier in the manuscript. For instance, it is confusing if not misleading—when the author —states that 'Nashville' contains 37.52 percent of Tennessee’s Latinos, when they actually mean the Nashville MSA. Additionally, it should be noted that, as of 2023, the Nashville MSA includes 14 counties.

Response: Done, I added text in the abstract itself and added several footnotes to clarify this. There is clearly distinction, which I have made, and have also noted that I use the word Nashville and Nashville metropolis/MSA, etc. interchangeably in the text, but everything implies the same exact geographic study area which is the metropolitan area of Nashville, comprising 13 counties based on 2019 OMB definition.

Comment: I believe the author is conflating race and ethnicity. 'Hispanic' and 'Asian' are ethnic identifiers, while 'Black' is racial. I also recommend avoiding the term 'Blacks.' Instead, consider using 'Black residents' or 'Black Nashvillians,' or alternating between the two. Simply using 'Blacks' may be offensive to some. In the subsection titled 'Racial/Ethnic Disparity in Homeownership,' the author uses census data to refer to 'African-Americans.' Keep in mind that not all 'Black' homeowners are African American. Similarly, a distinction should be made between 'whites' and 'non-Hispanic whites.' While I understand that the author is analyzing categories based on census data, an explanation of these categories is necessary. Without clarification and consistency, the analysis is less reliable.

Response: I have been doing research on race/ethnicity for more than two decades now. I totally understand the difference between race and ethnicity, even though I have used this term race/ethnicity generically throughout the text.  Since you raised this question, I have added clarity in footnotes 2 and 3 and why I use some terms interchangeably.  I have also added my clarity about use of interchangeability in the use of the racial terms and my clarity about use of the word. Probably Black is a better racial terms (as against African American) and since I am not only studying Blacks from African origin, but the whole group together, and hence Black is probably a better word. I take note of your suggestion to use Black Nashvillians – may be I can use this.  Also, my Black Studies colleagues tell me that they much prefer to be called Black rather than African Americans. I have used Black through out the manuscript (for consistency).

Comment: I really do not think statements like the following are necessary in a publication like this: “This is also a research pathway that I plan to engage in the future, pending available funds of field-based indepth invetigation.”

Response: Thanks for bringing this up. I have removed it. Future study is a future study and no need to bring this here.

There are numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes in this manuscript.  I list several of them in the next section.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Finally, this manuscript needs serious proofreading!!! There are numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes.  Below, I list a few, but there are many more:

In abstract change “Using Nashville, the emerging southern gateway as the study area…” to Using Nashville, an emerging immigrant gateway, as the study area…

Make sure that the capitalization of racial categories is consistent throughout the manuscript. Some editors and publications argue that 'White' should be capitalized as a racial category, while others do not. However, whichever choice is made, it should be applied uniformly throughout the manuscript.

Response: I have edited the paper thoroughly. I am sorry that the use of the SoSi Template for writing this manuscript made the grammatical errors less traceable, and often the autocorrection in word also played disasters with some words and spellings.  I have gone through sentence by sentence and am confident that the errors, grammar and incomplete sentences/structure, etc. have been addressed completely.  My apologies for these errors that appeared in the first version submitted. I have addressed all the errors you have noted below on several lines and sentences. This is due to the template that made it difficult to identify errors on first look. I read the text a few times to make sure all errors were addressed. I have addressed the concerns illustrated in the following lines/sentences and have done thorough editing. I hope you like the quality now. Thanks !

On page 2,  “south” should be capitalized and “severity” is spelled wrong in this sentence: “its sevirity was felt disproportionately among immigrants coming into the emerging immigrant gateways of the south.”

Line 100: “ie.” Should be “i.e.” – Done!

The sentence in lines 106 and 107 is grammatically incorrect (subject-verb agreement) and should be written as "In this body of work, however, meso-level factors such as neighborhood characteristics and their relationship with wealth accumulation are missing in the literature.”

The sentence starting on line 143 should be written in a clearer way or broken into two sentences.  Since Nashville is the focus area, I would not put it in paratheses : “In general, scholarly work focused on immigrants have so far discussed their experiences with regard to social, eco nomic, political, and institutional assimilation process and the roles of policies and support-measures taken by the state and federal programs which have made specific cities more receptive toward immigrants (for example Nashville in Tennessee that has become an attractive and highly desirable destination for immigrants)

Line 169: “tract” not “tarcts” – Done!

This opening sentence on line 179 needs to be rephrased for clarity and to correct some grammatical issues. For example instead of “on homeownership” it should be “of homeownership”

Line 265: is should be “on the South” not “of the South” - Done!

Line 452: this sentence needs to be corrected:  “Nashville ha sgained in car assembly plans over last few decadeas…” - Done!