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. 2025 Dec 2;122(48):e2500535122.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2500535122. Epub 2025 Nov 24.

Migration and the persistence of violence

Martin Vinæs Larsen  1 , Gabriel S Lenz  2 , Anna Mikkelborg  3
Affiliations

Migration and the persistence of violence

Martin Vinæs Larsen et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Using data on millions of internal US migrants, we document that historical homicide rates follow migrants around the United States. Individuals born in historically safe states remain safer wherever they go, while individuals born in historically dangerous states face a greater risk, including from police violence. This pattern holds across demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and marital status, across migrant groups with different average levels of education, income, and even when comparing migrants from different states who reside in the same county. To help understand why, we conducted a large national survey that oversampled internal White US migrants. The results suggest this persistence may reflect a sociocultural adaptation to dangerous settings. Residents and migrants from historically unsafe states-mainly former frontier states and the deep South-see the world as more dangerous, react more forcefully in aggressive scenarios, value toughness, distrust law enforcement, and say they rely on self and family in violent situations. These adaptations may have kept them safe in historically dangerous states, but may increase their vulnerability to harm in safer states.

Keywords: migration; persistence; violence.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests statement:The authors declare no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
US Homicide Victimization Rate 1959–61, 1979–91, and 2000–17 by 1933–42 Historical State-of-Birth Homicide Victimization Rate for Whites Ages 15 to 59 by Interstate Migration Status. The Top panels show the scatterplots for nonmigrants while the corresponding Bottom panels show the scatterplots for migrants. For migrants, each point shows the homicide rate averaged across the US states those migrants ended up in. Loess lines are weighted and circles are sized by White population. Note that the y-axis scales vary across columns to make states visible. See SI Appendix, Table S3 for homicide rates for nonmigrants and migrants from each state in each era.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Selected survey measures (A–D) by historical state-of-upbringing homicide victimization rate for Whites by migration status. Linear best-fit lines are weighted and circles are sized by the number of respondents. For the figure only, we exclude states with 20 respondents or fewer. All respondents are non-Hispanic White. Note that y-axis ranges vary for each figure. All dependent variables are scaled from 0 to 1.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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