CSI’s Inequality Discussion Groups bring together Cornell faculty and graduate students from around campus to discuss and improve their in-progress research. 

Hao Liang (Sociology, Cornell)

Title: Intermarriage, Gender Imbalance, and Ethnic Residential Segregation in Japan

Abstract: Marital integration through intermarriage and residential integration by gaining spatial proximity to the majority population are two key indicators of immigrant integration. But how is the former related to the latter? This paper examines how households of different marriage types integrate residentially with the local majority in Japan, a new global destination. Using a difference-of-means approach, this study compares the residential outcomes of coethnically married households, households intermarried with Japanese husbands, and those intermarried with Japanese wives across six major immigrant groups using restricted access census microdata. The findings reveal that, for nearly all groups, households with Japanese spouses show less segregation from Japanese endogamous households, with families that have Japanese husbands experiencing the least segregation, followed by those with Japanese wives, and finally, coethnically married families. The results indicate that socioeconomic resources, as posited by spatial assimilation theory, are associated with location attainment across all marriage types. Additionally, assortative mating and status exchange theories relate to where families reside: hypergamous families tend to follow the dominant Japanese spouse, while homogamous families, influenced by a strong gender imbalance, tend to follow the husband’s ethnicity, whether he is from the immigrant minority or the Japanese majority. These findings support that residential integration reflects both structural mobility and intra-family negotiation.