ENGLISH SPANISH FRENCH PORTUGUESE TAGALOG ITALIAN
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BRUSSELSCARACAS LISBON
ST. PETERSBURG
DALLAS
VANCOUVER
RIO DE JANEIRO
ATLANTA SANTIAGOSÃO PAULOSTOCKHOLM
MANILA MIAMI PHOENIX ROME TORONTO
AMSTERDAM
BANDUNG ISTANBUL
BARCELONA HOUSTON
MILAN
MEXICO CITY MONTRÉALMOSCOW
DETROIT OSAKA
BUENOS AIRES
SEOUL
SP IT SP T A IT SP SP S P E N P O
S P
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FR FR S P
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10 7 7
(^36)
3
SEAN MCNAUGHTON. SOURCE: FABIO LAMANNA AND OTHERS, “IMMIGRANT COMMUNITY INTEGRATION IN WORLD CITIES,” PLOS ONE, 2018
Wealthier immigrant
groups, such as English
speakers in Rome,
can self-segregate in
specific areas.
Toronto is marked by
the highest degree of self-
segregation, despite being
among the study’s most
linguistically diverse cities.
In Dallas speakers of Tagalog
(a Philippine language)
form one of its smallest
but most integrated
immigrant communities.
In more than half the cities studied, there are
only a few language groups and higher numbers
of self-segregated ethnic neighborhoods.
Less integrated
HOW THE MOST COMMON
LANGUAGES INTEGRATE
TWITTER TRAFFIC DOES NOT CAP-
TURE POTENTIALLY LARGE GROUPS
OF IMMIGRANTS WHO FAVOR OTHER
SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS.
Speakers of the six most
common languages in the
Twitter study display a
range of integration across
major world cities whose
native languages differ
from their own.
English speakers, for example,
are highly segregated in 18
of the 50 cities shown.
THE WORLD’S CITIES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN MELTING POTS for immigrants. Do new-
comers congregate in ethnic enclaves such as San Francisco’s Chinatown? Or do
they scatter, getting fully absorbed into their new homes? To track integration,
researchers took Twitter data from some 50 cities worldwide to identify language
groups and their residential neighborhoods; findings were then compared with
those of the city’s native-language speakers. By reading the Twitter patterns,
researchers concluded that diverse and well-integrated immigrant communi-
ties like those in London exist in less than half the cities studied. In the rest, the
data show varying degrees of self-segregation, with immigrants who share the
same language sticking together in the same part of the city.