Douglas Massey

Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton argue that persistent racial residential segregation concentrated poverty and reinforced inequality in US cities. The book was published in 1993 and focuses particularly on the experience of Black Americans.

Cumulative causation describes how each wave of migration changes social networks and local conditions in ways that make later migration more likely. Family and community ties can lower the cost and risk of moving across borders.

Massey was a leading figure in the Mexican Migration Project, which gathers detailed household and community histories on migration between Mexico and the United States. Its data allow researchers to study repeated trips, employment, legal status, and migrant networks rather than relying only on border counts.

Both examine concentrated disadvantage, but Massey's work places especially strong emphasis on residential segregation as a mechanism that concentrates poverty. Wilson's influential research more heavily foregrounded economic restructuring, job loss, and changing class composition in inner-city neighborhoods.