Big City Labor Markets and Immigrant Economic Performance

Franklin J. James spent much of his career working to understand and improve our metropolitan communities. His interests were varied, ranging from impacts of fiscal and economic distress on urban areas to understanding socioeconomic forces reviving our central cities. During the last several years, Professor James had turned his attention to examining the positive economic impacts immigrants and ethnic communities have for reinvigorating our central cities-and beginning to investigate how non-native American's will impact America's suburbs in metropolitan settings
This preliminary exploration examines destination choices of immigrants, the characteristics of immigrant labor markets, and the determinants of immigrant earnings. The article begins to explore indirect evidence on the economic efficiency with which immigrants and native workers distribute themselves within and among labor markets as well as the assimilation process facing new immigrants. Evidence is presented to explain how the earnings of recent immigrants are affected by their human capital characteristics, their race, and ethnicity, and other factors. We reject the hypothesis that immigrants participate in a tertiary sector of urban labor markets and conclude that the determinants of immigrant earnings are similar enough to those of U.S. natives that it makes sense to assume that they work in the same primary labor market in which most native White Americans work. We find that urban labor markets for immigrants are surprisingly efficient, thus enabling immigrants to take advantage of economic opportunities. A major exception concerns what appears to be a powerful effect of discrimination on the economic progress of Black immigrants.     

Jobs,crime, proximity and boats: explaining Australian public attitudes to immigrant numbers

Despite the importance of immigration to Australia, there is little systematic research on the causes of support among Australian citizens for increased, stable or decreased immigration. This paper advances our understanding of Australian public attitudes to immigration levels in the light of the established international literature on public opinion and immigration. Using 2013 Australian Electoral Study (AES) data, we show that, as in other countries, Australian citizens’ attitudes to immigrant numbers are partly driven by a combination of sociotropic economic considerations and perceptions of the socio-cultural impact of immigrants. In addition, we argue that political mobilisation has an impact on attitudes toward immigration that has not received sufficient attention. We demonstrate that citizens who accepted the Coalition's rhetoric on asylum seeker arrivals were more likely to want overall immigrant numbers reduced. Finally, we combine the individual level AES data with electoral district level data to test the impact of contact with immigrants on attitudes to immigrant numbers. Australians living in electoral districts with higher percentages of non-white immigrants are more likely to want lower immigrant numbers than those living in districts with fewer non-white immigrants.     

巴马盘阳河流域季节性移民社区类型与形成机理

季节性移民聚居现象受到西方学术界的极大关注,而我国鲜有研究。采用观察法和访谈法,对巴马盘阳河流域"一地多类"的季节性移民社区的形成过程、类型特征与作用机理进行归纳与揭示。研究表明：①季节性移民社区演变历经萌芽、快速参与和转型发展三个阶段,社区人口结构、聚居空间、经济业态、景观设施及人文氛围在不同时期呈现出不同的特征;②季节性移民社区形态存在差异,可以归类为交融性社区、优势性社区,共享性社区,纯粹性社区。③季节性移民社区是差异化的"美好生活"需求、独特的长寿资源及乡村生活环境、外来商业资本、地方政府调控和利益共生等"五力驱动"的结果,不同发展阶段其主导动力和作用方式存在差异。     

CHANGES IN THE RELATIVE EARNINGS GAP BETWEEN NATIVES AND IMMIGRANTS ALONG THE U.S.‐MEXICO BORDER*

ABSTRACT Using 1990 and 2000 U.S. census data, this study investigates changes in immigrant/native earnings disparities for workers in U.S. cities along the international border with Mexico vis‐à‐vis the U.S. interior during the 1990s. Our findings—based on estimating earnings functions and employing the Juhn‐Murphy‐Pierce (1993, JPE) wage decomposition technique—indicate that the average earnings of Mexican immigrants along the U.S.‐Mexico border improved relative to those accrued by their counterparts in the U.S. interior and by otherwise similar U.S.‐born Mexican Americans between 1990 and 2000. However, when comparing Mexican‐born workers to U.S.‐born non‐Hispanic whites, the immigrant border‐earnings penalty remained statistically unchanged.     

Immigrant Needs and Local Government Services

Upon their arrival in the United States, immigrants, whether documented or undocumented, impact the provision of local government services. Survey data collected from four immigrant groups (Nicaraguans, Haitians, Central Americans, and Mexicans) in Miami, Florida, and Las Vegas, Nevada examine the question of whether country of origin is a predictor of local government service utilization by immigrants. The findings suggest that immigrants, regardless of country of origin, share similar characteristics and attitudes regarding life in the United States. The major differences among the immigrant groups studied appear to be in their plans for the future. The Mexican respondents were likely to be described as sojourners, with plans to return to their home country, while the other groups intended to settle permanently in the United States. At the local level, these findings suggest that policymakers must be sensitive to motivations of the immigrants who locate in their areas, understanding the implications for service delivery in multilanguage, multiculture communities.     

Immigration, the internet, and spaces of politics

This paper examines the kinds of politics that are enabled by the Internet with respect to immigrants to the United States; its primary concern is whether the political spaces created through the Internet can foster incorporation of immigrants in the political community or whether the political activity on the Internet seems likely to lead to a more fractionalized political community in which the position of immigrants remains marginal. This exploration is based first on a random sample of web-sites about immigration and second on a more targeted sample of sites aimed specifically at two immigrant groups. The analysis of web-sites indicates that there is a great deal of information about immigrants on the Internet, and that most of it seems to be directed to service providers, policy makers, and researchers. There is relatively little discussion by or about immigrants, and beyond a few notable sites, there is almost no sign of mobilization. To the extent that the Internet is used to create new political spaces, it may not be spaces for deliberation and discussion. Rather, the political spaces seem to be informational spaces in which the politics are not easily or directly read.

A-Awda, The Palestine Right to return Coalition, is a broad-based, non-partisan, global, democratic association of grassroots activists and organizational representatives. Our objective is to educate the international community to fulfill its legal and moral obligations vis-à-vis the Palestinian people. Al-Awda develops, coordinates, supports and guides, as needed, global and local grassroots initiatives for action related to Palestinian rights. Al-Awda, http://www.al-awda.org as visited 11 July 2002.

“Why I won’t serve Sharon.”

“Maaad Abu-Ghazalah, Arab-American Candidate for US Congress, San Francisco.”

“A Statement on the ‘War on Terror’ from Prominent Americans.”

“What Bush Doesn’t Know about Palestine.”

“Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Which Were Destroyed.”

Headlines on Café Arabica, http://www.cafearabica.com as visited 11 July, 2002.

The Internet is widely heralded as opening spaces for a wide variety of politics and political voices. But as it is praised for its inclusiveness, it is also pilloried for enabling the fragmentation of political opinion without providing a forum in which common political ground can be identified or consensus achieved. In the former view, the Internet fosters greater inclusion in democratic debate and political community. In the latter view, it contributes to a weakening of the bonds that are necessary for a political community to reach consensus and to provide guidance for democratic governance.Consider the examples in the epigraph to the paper. Al-Awda is a political movement devoted to securing the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their families. It organizes marches and demonstrations in cities across the US and Western Europe. One reason for the apparent mismatch between the locations of the “problem” and of the “action” is that many – though by no means all – of the participants in the marches are immigrants from the Middle East or they are of Arab descent. While the organization is based in Massachusetts, most of the mobilization through it occurs on-line, and it is not clear that there is either a permanent staff or regular meetings, other than the marches. Café Arabica provides a venue for discussion of a wide range of topics related to Arab culture and politics. Much like the romanticized café society, discussion can be lively and seems to include a wide range of participants and viewpoints. Café Arabica includes an on-line discussion forum, again with many of the participants apparently either being from the Middle East or the descendants of immigrants from the region. It labels itself as an Arab-American on-line community.These two web-sites were not chosen at random. They both relate to immigrants – social groups that are often not able to participate in political discussion and debate in their host countries. As such, these sites exemplify both the possibilities and the limitations that commentators have identified when they discuss the Internet and its role in fostering political dialogue. Some people would see these sites as signs of a group that wants to use the political process in one country to influence events in another country. Some people will read these sites as a an indication that at least one immigrant group – if not all immigrants – refuse assimilation, which is the basis of incorporation into the American political community. Still others will view these sites as attempts to incorporate a set of political voices and agents into a more inclusive political community. This paper examines the use of the Internet in political debate and mobilization around immigrants in the United States. It considers the nature of political discussion on the Internet and the agents involved in it. The overarching concern is whether the Internet fosters a more inclusive political community or whether it leads to alternative political spaces that remain unincorporated with respect to the political community of the host society.The paper is organized in four sections. The first provides a background for the debates about immigrants, the Internet, and politics. The second section is an overview of the theoretical debates about the public sphere as a political space in which members of a polity can participate and the ways in which the Internet may transform that space. The third section highlights some of the key issues that condition migrants’ acceptance into a polity, focusing primarily on the United States. With these sections serving as background, the final section of the paper explores political discussion on the Internet by and about immigrants. This exploration is based first on a random sample of web-sites about immigration and second on a more targeted sample of sites aimed specifically at two immigrant groups. The goal in these examinations is to evaluate the extent to which the Internet can provide the basis of a political space in which issues related to the incorporation of immigrants can be debated or whether it is a space that fosters a more fractionalized politics unlikely to lead to greater political incorporation of immigrants.     

Old kingdom community organization in the Western Egyptian Delta

Old Kingdom Egypt has traditionally been regarded as distinctive among early civilizations in such characteristics as its largely non‐urban settlement patterns, extreme centralization of wealth and power in elites, and massive stability in its administrative institutions. But these characterizations are based almost entirely on documentary sources. Few Old Kingdom sites except those associated with mortuary cults have been excavated. Excavations at Kom el‐Hisn, in the western Egyptian Delta, have produced evidence about the economic organization and functioning of a rural Old Kingdom settlement that can be related to various hypotheses about the nature of Old Kingdom economic institutions.     

DETERMINANTS OF IMMIGRANTS’ ENTRY TO HOMEOWNERSHIP IN THREE NORDIC CAPITAL CITY REGIONS

The extent of homeownership among immigrants may be seen as an indicator of integration and as a determinant of ethnic residential segregation. Studies have shown differences in the determinants of homeownership between immigrants and natives, indicating that variation in homeownership is not only a function of differences in economic resources. These studies have largely focused on Anglo‐American contexts, using mostly cross‐sectional data. We apply survival analysis methods to analyse the determinants of entry to homeownership in the capital regions of three Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland and Sweden – utilizing longitudinal individual‐level register‐based datasets. We find that differences in entry to homeownership between natives and different immigrant groups cannot be explained by differences in socio‐economic background factors. We also find differences in the effects of these factors. Effects of income are generally weaker among non‐Western immigrants and immigrants are less responsive to changes in household composition. The share of non‐Western immigrants in the neighbourhood is only weakly related to entry to homeownership, while immigrants and natives living in public rental housing tend to be slightly less inclined to move to homeownership. Weaker income effects among immigrants, weak effects of ethnic segregation and the importance of the public rental sector differentiate our results from earlier findings. Weaker income effects may indicate that uncertainty about the future also affects middle‐income immigrants. Differences between the three contexts in housing markets and policies do not seem to matter much, although the results indicate that difficult access to the private rental sector may push immigrants to homeownership.     

Immigrant "Illegality" as Neoliberal Governmentality in Leadville, Colorado

Abstract:  In this paper, I frame immigrant "illegality" as a local-scale technique of neoliberal governmentality. Drawing on recent work of anthropologists, I present illegality as a racialized, spatialized social condition which operates as governmentality by marginalizing and criminalizing immigrants, loosening the US border and forcing it into local spaces, and impacting immigrants' everyday lives and mobility. The paper then draws on a case study of Leadville, Colorado, to illustrate the utility of this framework. In Leadville, we see how through illegality neoliberalism seeps through scales. Illegality disciplines immigrant labor in service of the neoliberal order, turns all residents into surveillers of immigrants' subordinate sociospatial position, and masks contradictions within neoliberalism that arise particularly at the local scale. I argue that conceptualizing illegality as a governmentality technique provides a powerful tool for understanding changing state spatiality, especially ways in which neoliberalism is diffused and embedded into local economic, political, and social processes.     

加拿大中国移民创业模式新探

论文在有关加拿大中国移民最新研究成果基础上,从移民经济适应行为的视角,对移民群体特征及其所面临的机会进行了分析阐述,并提出了一个移民自主创业的分析模型。该模型将移民自主创业行为区分为四种模式,即族裔经济、一般企业、海归企业和跨国创业。随着市场环境、母国政策及企业自身发展水平的不断变化,移民企业家的经济活动可能表现为在几种模式之间的过渡或跃迁。对移民经济行为的研究,需要突破传统的族裔经济的视野,把移民的经济参与放在一个社会经济日益开放、国际社区间联系日益紧密的大背景下加以考虑。     

Dispossessing Massa: Fugitive Slaves and the Politics of Slavery After 1850

This article investigates how Norwegian immigrants expressed their sense of belonging during the antebellum period. By focusing on the concept of “belonging” rather than “adjustment,” the article attempts an interpretation sensitive to how antebellum immigrants themselves perceived the process of adaptation to American society. The Civil War is usually referred to as a sort of watershed in Norwegians' adjustment to American society, and consequently scholars have downplayed the extent to which antebellum Norwegian immigrants expressed belonging in the United States prior to the Civil War. Identifying three main categories of expressions of belonging available to antebellum Norwegian immigrants – namely land ownership, place attachment, and settler ideology – the article concludes that even if these immigrants did not readily identify themselves as Americans, they became firmly attached to their new home.     

The European Union as a Gated Community: The Two‐faced Border and Immigration Regime of the EU

Abstract: Within the European Union, an internal liberalisation of cross‐border labour mobility for EU citizens is currently being combined with the tightening of control and management efforts at the external borders. At the same time, attempts are being made to strategically select immigrants from new member states as well as from outside the EU who will be of economic value. In this paper we argue that by implementing such protectionist and selective immigration policy, the EU has come to resemble a gated community in which the bio‐political control and management of immigration is, to a large extent, the product of fear. Often fear manifests itself in terms of fear of losing material gain, eg the anxiety of losing economic welfare or public security. More often, however, this fear relates to the entrance of the immigrant, the stranger and is, as such, associated with a fear of losing a community's self‐defined identity. These perceived threats to a community's comfort lead to the politicisation of protection, whereby the terra incognita beyond the border is justifiably neglected due to the indifference and the intentional blindness shown to the outside. Hiding in a gated community in order to protect this comfort zone and trying to exclude outsiders, ‘Others’, from the community, is not only in vain since the desire for completion of the Self can never be fulfilled, but what remains still more troublesome, is that this tendency will sustain and reproduce global inequality and segregation, both in the material as well as symbolic sense.     

MYTHS AND MEANINGS OF IMMIGRATION AND THE METROPOLIS

A number of trends in recent immigration to Canada are discussed: the scale of contemporary movement; the transformation of national origins over the past generation; the diversity of entry classes and the lack of any singular immigrant condition; the remarkable contraction of immigrant destinations to a few large cities; the contribution of immigration to population growth and housing demand in these metropolitan areas; and the distinctive geography of the various entry classes, with higher-status arrivals disproportionately located in Vancouver. The remainder of the paper considers and rejects two common myths in the discussion of immigration: first, the myth of an immigrant underclass, and second, the myth of an immigrant overclass. Using research from Vancouver associated with the Metropolis Project, the first myth is challenged from an analysis of Census data that emphasizes the social context of immigrant life and upward mobility; the second myth is shaken by a qualitative methodology that reveals the unexpectedly fragile experience of a number of business immigrants. Certaines tendances relatives à l'immigration récente au Canada sont examinées: l'envergure des déplacements actuels, les changements dans l'origine nationale des immigrants au cours de la dernière génération, la diversité des catégories d'immigrants admis et, par conséquent, l'absence d'une seule condition pour tous, le fait que les immigrants choisissent essentiellement de s'établir dans quelques grandes villes, la croissance de la population et la demande en logement attribuables aux immigrants dans ces régions métropolitaines, et les choix géographiques distincts des immigrants selon leur catégorie à l'admission, comme c'est le cas de Vancouver, qui accueille un nombre disproportionné d'arrivants de statut élevé. Dans le reste de l'article, les résultats d'études effectuées dans le cadre du Projet Métropole permettent d'examiner puis de réfuter deux mythes communément associés à l'immigration au Canada: l'existence d'un sous-prolétariat et celle d'une classe dominante d'immigrants urbains. D'abord, l'existence d'un sous-prolétariat est rejetée suite à l'analyse de données tirées du recensement concernant le contexte social entourant les immigrants et la mobilité sociale ascendante de la plupart des nouveaux arrivants. Ensuite, une méthode qualitative met en lumière une découverte surprenante: la fragilité de l'expérience de la prétendue classe dominante – les immigrants qui travaillent dans le monde des affaires.     

Geopolitics by another name: immigration and the politics of assimilation

In this introduction to the special issue on the geopolitics of migration, I discuss some of the problematic elements of current approaches to migration studies. In particular, I comment on the concept of ‘transnationalism’ as it has been applied to immigrant communities, and argue that claims about immigrant transnationalism resemble contemporary and historical polemics on the non-assimilation of immigrants. I propose that our understanding of the dynamics of immigrant-host society relationships must begin with an understanding of the geopolitical contexts in which migration takes place. I illustrate my argument using the case of Arab Americans in the aftermath of September 11, and I conclude by urging a reconsideration of the concept of assimilation as a ‘politics of sameness’.     

Complexity and diversity: domestic material culture and French immigrant identity in early modern London

Abstract

The French immigrants of early modern London are recorded as having been a clearly recognizable community with similarities in language, religion, occupation and material culture. However, analysis of the excavated and documentary evidence of their domestic artefacts reveals few differences when compared with their English counterparts. Although isolated artefacts may reasonably be linked to an immigrant identity, the majority of refugees do not appear to have commonly expressed their group identity through their domestic material culture in historically identifiable ways. This may indicate that the nature of French immigrant identity was more complex and varied than contemporary accounts imply.     

Irish Domestic Servants, ‘Biddy’ and Rebellion in the American Home, 1850–1900

This essay looks at the role that Anglo‐American women played in governing their Irish immigrant domestic servants and at the racial and gendered meanings that were attached to servitude. In the second half of the nineteenth century, female Irish Catholic immigrants predominated in domestic service employment in the north‐eastern United States. Newspaper and magazine articles portrayed the home as a site of conflict where Protestant, middle‐class families clashed with Irish Catholic ‘peasant’ girls newly arrived in the US. Employers depicted ‘Bridget’ or ‘Biddy’, the collective nickname given to Irish domestic servants, as insubordinate, unrefined and prone to violent outbursts. While reliant on domestic service for wages, female Irish immigrants understood that service represented racialised labour in the United States and was viewed as an occupation befitting non‐white populations.     

西方国家移民聚居区研究进展及启示

西方国家对移民聚居区的研究可以追溯到20世纪初的美国“芝加哥学派”,随后经历了同化主义、多元主义、异质本地化和跨国主义研究思潮,不仅拥有丰富的实证研究成果,而且形成了较为完整的理论体系和研究框架。总体上看,对移民聚居区的研究,区位选择方面经历了中心城区到郊区的演变,空间类型包括族裔飞地、族裔社区和族裔郊区,移民聚居区经济经历了单个案例到不同案例的对比研究,形成机制方面从民族团结理论转向不同作用者和空间生产理论,此外,西方移民聚居区还加强了反作用和空间效应的研究。本文在评述西方移民聚居区研究的基础上,结合国内移民聚居区研究现状,提出中国相关研究在研究视角、研究问题和研究方法的借鉴之处。     

Survive but not thrive? Geographical strategies for avoiding absolute homelessness among immigrant communities

This article seeks to unpack why certain immigrant communities manage to avoid absolute homelessness, emphasizing how survival strategies embedded in immigrant community space may be deployed in both advantageous and disadvantageous fashions. Bangladeshis in Greater London and Central Americans in Los Angeles County were compared, based on the fact that they are similarly vulnerable immigrant communities in terms of poverty and segregation, yet have successfully avoided the streets and/or shelters. Key strategies included the beneficial clustering of non-profits and overcrowding strategies within immigrant community space, although Bangladeshis differed substantially in terms of more state support for their community space. The implications for the study of race and survival are offered.     

俄罗斯华侨华人与俄联邦的移民政策

20世纪末, 伴随着中俄改革的大潮, 大批中国人涌向了俄罗斯, 形成了一个不小的华侨华人群体, 他们为中俄两国的文化交流、贸易往来和经济发展做出了巨大贡献。本文试图求本溯源, 客观地去认识自17世纪中叶以来华侨华人在俄苏的历史, 揭示、反思新一代华侨华人在俄国的生存发展状态和社会历史背景及他们在俄罗斯各国移民中的地位, 分析不同阶层的俄罗斯人对华侨华人的不同看法和态度及俄罗斯联邦政府十多年来移民机构、移民政策的发展变化, 特别是针对中国人的政策变化, 以探讨在新的历史条件下, 华侨华人如何在俄罗斯这片热土上更好地发展, 从而为促进中俄两国人民的睦邻友好、加快两国的经济建设步伐做出更大贡献。     

Muslim immigrants' sense of identity and belonging in the Western world: A comprehensive review

In recent years, much has been written about the growth of anti‐immigrant sentiment in Western countries. Propagated by the fastest growing party family, far right‐wing parties, there is growing support in Western populations in favour of scapegoating Muslim immigrants for economic, cultural and security problems. However, less has been written on how Muslim immigrants feel about their host country. What is their sense of belonging and identification with their country of residence? In this review article, we summarise the results of 29 studies that explicitly focus on questions of integration, national identity and sense of belonging of Muslim immigrants. The studies we review document a range of outcomes, varying from a low sense of belonging and attachment to the country of residence to extremely high integration levels and loyalty. It seems that most variation depends on the country of residence at the macro‐level and on their education at the individual level.