The economic geography of immigrant diversity: Disparate impacts and new directions

Increasing immigrant diversity, both in the number of immigrants and the diversity of sending countries, is helping reshape the economic landscape in many countries, most notably in their urban regions. This paper provides a succinct introduction to the existing research on the economic effects, particularly productivity, of immigrant diversity, focusing on a recent wave of empirical work. It identifies outstanding questions in the research, offering several ways to push current lines of inquiry ahead and suggesting areas as yet underexplored. To motivate these new directions for geographers to pursue, it presents empirical results that raise more questions than they answer. In doing so, it sets the stage for future work that can generate a deeper understanding of the role of immigrant diversity in shaping economic welfare in cities.