Delineating the paradox: Gauging foreign nationals' “Target Suitability” to robbery in the United States

Abstract

Robbery is among the most researched crimes in the criminological literature, with increasing attention on foreign-born robbery victims. However, prior work has been limited by ungeneralizable samples that either do not include foreign nationals, or aggregate migrants across statuses into a single “foreign-born” group. Drawing from the National Latino and Asian American Survey (NLAAS), this study contributes to our knowledge of foreign nationals' “target suitability” by a) using five proxy statuses coded based on the parameters of U.S. Immigration Laws to make intra-group comparisons, b) drawing from prior robbery research to examine historical and migrant-specific risk factors, and c) using a nationally representative dataset that oversampled foreign-born Latinx and Asian individuals. This study examines two research questions: Do robbery outcomes in the U.S. vary across foreign-born groups based on legal status? Which vulnerabilities are the strongest predictors of foreign nationals' robbery victimization in the United States? Weighted descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression models were estimated using STATA 17. The results suggest that refugees have the greatest likelihood of U.S.-based robbery. Among migrant-specific vulnerabilities, years in the U.S. and being questioned about legal status were significant, suggesting that opportunity and stereotyping may play important roles in victimization. The methodological, theoretical, and policy implications of these findings are discussed.