Whiter Pastures: Asian Immigrants and the Entrenchment of Residential Segregation in Post–Jim Crow Era Houston

Where we choose to live, when we have the luxury of choice, is fundamentally influenced by the cost of residence whether by mortgage or rent, proximity to work, the presence of friends or family, and—if purchasing a home—the projected return on investment. Would-be residents also take into account qualitative factors beyond the logistical. Indeed, the neighborhood emerges as a discursive space that reflects our imagined selves, aspirations, and our understanding of social structure. This paper analyzes the residential choices made by Indian and Pakistani immigrants between 1980 and the present. By utilizing oral history interviews, census data, mapping of racial and class demographic shifts, and economic trends in the Houston metropolitan area, it suggests the importance of racial assumptions among the various determinants governing immigrant and other American residential patterns.

My research follows the movement of immigrant Indians and Pakistanis as they populated the city and its environs, from their first residences in southwest Houston to present locations in suburban Sugar Land. It then analyzes the significance of these residential decisions and the meanings that immigrants ascribed to the “city” and “suburbs.” By focusing the study on a few areas of significant settlement, I interrogate the actions of this group as a window into majority Houstonians’ views of race, the city, and its environs in the decades after the dismantling of de jure racial segregation. I demonstrate that South Asian immigrants whose neighborhoods underwent the greatest demographic change—that is, became increasingly occupied by African Americans— quickly relocated to “whiter pastures” in the suburbs, affirming the endurance of racial hierarchies in the post-Jim Crow South.