Do immigrants build regional resilience? An analysis of US regions from 1980 to 2010

There is consensus in the literature on the benefits that immigrants can bring to communities. However, less research has investigated how immigration shapes a region's resilience. This study primarily adopts the resilience capacity approach to examine the relationship between immigration and a set of resilience capacities covering the economic, socio-demographic, and community connectivity aspects of 359 regions from 1980 to 2010. It also examines resilience performance related to resistance and recoverability of employment and per capita income in a region. Fixed effects models with MSA and year fixed effects are estimated to mitigate bias generated from unobserved but fixed regional characteristics. Results show that a higher share of immigrants in a region is associated with higher scores on key economic, social, and community resilience indicators. Additionally, immigration contributes to the overall resilience capacity of a region, which encompasses the three previously specified aspects. Finally, resilience capacity and immigration are associated with the resistance and recover-ability and the decade-long growth of the regions. The findings highlight the potential benefits that immigrants can bring to regional resilience.