UCLA

The topic of internal or domestic migration of Hispanics in the United States is one that has not received much attention in recent scholarship. With very few exceptions, most of the scholarship on Hispanic migration analyzes this segment of the population as one monolithic group ignoring its wide diversity. Others focus more on the analysis of patterns of international migration of Hispanics, while many others focus on issues regarding the adjustment of communities to "new" Hispanic migration. This dissertation evaluates the state-to-state migration patterns of Hispanics between 1995 and 2000 and between 2006 and 2010 by separating this category into sub-groups classified by country of origin or ancestry. The sub-groups analyzed are: Mexican-origin, Puerto Ricans, Cuban-origin, Dominican-origin, Central American-origin, South American-origin and Other Hispanics. This methodology was preferred because by grouping all of them in a single Hispanic or Latino category some information as well as certain cultural specificities can get lost in the process and produce confusing results. To better understand the state-to-state migration flows of Hispanics, a closer look at the specific sub-groups was performed to see if Hispanics of all ethnic sub-groups follow similar routes when migrating within the US, or if the migration routes revealed by previous scholarship still exist or have given way to new ones. Finally, the different experience in terms of the change in housing expenditures by domestic migrants was analyzed to demonstrate how the effects of domestic migration are quantitatively different for each sub-group of Hispanics. The results obtained here easily dismiss the conclusion that Hispanics behave like one monolithic group. This work also shows that the migration patterns of different Hispanic sub-groups vary substantially, and that there are different patterns of movement among the various Hispanic sub-groups for the periods of 1995-2000 and 2006-2010 that were not present during previous analysis of internal migration during the period of 1985-1990.