March 24, 2021 | Noon to 1:00 PM EDT
Edgar Franco Vivanco (University of Michigan)
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Why do ethnic minorities tend to be geographically concentrated? This paper argues that ethnic segregation can be a strategic response to targeted exploitation. Focusing on the Mexican case —where only 6% of localities contain 80% of the indigenous population, we develop a research design akin to spatial regression discontinuity to trace the long-run impact of exposure to colonial officials on contemporary ethnic segregation. Our identification strategy takes advantage of long-gone historical district boundaries from the 16th to the late 18th centuries to compare localities that varied only in their distance to their colonial capitals. Despite being otherwise similar, we show that localities farther from colonial officials in the past hold a disproportionate share of indigenous population today relative to localities that were closer. Consistent with the idea that minorities sought refuge from the reach of colonial administrators, our results are stronger in areas where the potential for extraction in colonial times is higher, where indigenous institutions are more prevalent, where indigenous resistance in the form of rebellions and judicial lawsuits was more intense, and where the presence of religious missionaries potentially shielded indigenous settlements. Our findings provide evidence that ethnic segregation arises and persist over time as a combination of top-down coercion and bottom-down agency.