Immigrant Artists: Enrichment or Displacement?

In order to investigate the role of immigrant artists on the development of artistic clusters in U.S. cities, we use the U.S. Census and American Community Survey, collected every 10 years since 1850. We identify artists and art teachers, authors, musicians and music teachers, actors and actresses, architects, and journalists, their geographical location and their status as a native or an immigrant. We look at the relative growth rate of the immigrant population in these occupations over a ten year period and how it affects the relative growth rate of native-born individuals in these artistic occupations. We find that cities that experienced immigrant artist inflows, also see a greater inflow of native artists by about 40%.