Migration Studies Commons^™

New Frontiers Of Integration: Convergent Pathways Of Neighborhood Diversification In Metropolitan New York, Kasey Zapatka, Van C. Tran

Publications and Research

This article examines the most recent trends on neighborhood racial integration in New York—the country’s largest metropolitan area in 2019 with a total population of 19.2 million. We ask how the suburbanization of both immigration and poverty have transformed suburbs over the last two decades. We highlight four findings. First, ethnoracial diversification has led to a significant decline in nonintegrated neighborhoods and a sharp rise in integrated neighborhoods, but such a decline is more dramatic in suburbs than in cities. Second, White-integrated neighborhoods remain the most prevalent form of neighborhood integration in both cities and suburbs. Third, immigrant neighborhoods are …

Safety And Belonging In Immigrant-Serving Districts: Domains Of Educator Practice In A Charged Political Landscape, Rebecca Lowenhaupt, Dafney Blanca Dabach, Ariana Mangual Figueroa

Publications and Research

Drawing from a context of reception framework, this article asks the following questions: How do educators describe issues of safety and belonging in the context of a charged immigration policy climate? What practices have educators developed to support immigrant-origin youth? And, what are the relationships between educators’ perceptions of safety and belonging and educator practices? We analyze educators’ survey responses administered across six school districts in different contexts across the United States, including the Northeast, Midwest, South, and West. We synthesize four domains of educator practice: signaling affirmation, building shared knowledge and capacity, finding and mobilizing resources, and creating space …

Legislation, Linguistics, And Location: Exploring Attitudes On Unauthorized Immigration, David A. Caicedo, Vivienne Badaan

Publications and Research

Contemporary discourse on domestic immigration policy varies widely based on political affiliation, linguistics, and regional differences. This experimental study aimed to concurrently investigate three social psychological bases of attitudes towards unauthorized immigrants in the United States: political ideology, social labels, and social context. Participants were 744 adults, recruited from “New York Community College” (“NYCC”/urban) and “New Jersey Community College” (“NJCC”/suburban), who were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions: “illegal” vs. “undocumented”. Participants completed a scale measuring their attitudes towards unauthorized immigrants with the embedded label manipulation, followed by the General System Justification scale, and culminating with demographic items. …

Immigrants And Crime, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

The gap between public perception of immigrant criminality and the research consensus on immigrants’ actual rates of criminal participation is persistent and cross-cultural. While the available evidence shows that immigrants worldwide tend to participate in criminal activity at rates slightly lower than the native-born, media and political discourse portraying immigrants as uniquely crime-prone remains a pervasive global phenomenon. This apparent disconnect is rooted in the dynamics of othering, or the tendency to dehumanize and criminalize identifiable out-groups. Given that most migration decisions are motivated by economic factors, othering is commonly used to justify subjecting immigrants to exploitative labor practices, with …

Capitalism And The Immigrant Rights Movement In The United States, Marcel Paret, Sofya Aptekar, Shannon Gleeson

Publications and Research

Social movements are full of contradictions, and an inherent tension often emerges between reformist and radical flanks. This becomes especially true as activists attempt to draw connections between varied aims such as opposition to globalization and support for immigrants. During the 1999 Battle of Seattle, the movement focused on opposing neoliberalism (Graeber 2002) and advocating for alternative visions of globalization (Reitan 2012). Some activists also noted the hypocrisy of opening borders to capital while militarizing the borders for migrants. Yet, in the end, immigrant rights movements and their central issues did not feature prominently in Seattle or later anti-globalization efforts. …

Crimmigration, Deportability And The Social Exclusion Of Noncitizen Immigrants, Shirley P. Leyro, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

The spread of crimmigration policies, practices, and rhetoric represents an economically rational strategy and has significant implications for the lived experience of noncitizen immigrants. This study draws up in-depth interviews of immigrants with a range of legal statuses to describe the mechanics through which immigrants internalize and respond to the fear of deportation, upon which crimmigration strategies rely. The fear of deportation and its behavioral effects extend beyond undocumented or criminally convicted immigrants, encompassing lawful permanent residents and naturalized citizens alike. This fear causes immigrants to refuse to use public services, endure labor exploitation, and avoid public spaces, resulting in …

“I Want Her To Make Correct Decisions On Her Own:” Former Soviet Union Mothers’ Beliefs About Autonomy Development, Masha Komolva, Jane Y. Lipnitsky

Publications and Research

This qualitative study examined Former Soviet Union (FSU) mothers’ explicit and implicit attitudes and parenting practices around adolescents’ autonomy development. Interviews were conducted with 10 mothers who had immigrated from the FSU to the US between 10 and 25 years ago, and who had daughters between the ages of 13 and 17 years. Mothers predominantly defined autonomy in terms of adolescents’ ability to carry out instrumental tasks, make correct decisions, and financially provide for themselves, but rarely mentioned psychological or emotional independence. Mothers reflected on the various aspects of autonomy emphasized in their country of origin and America, and balancing …

Making Sense Of Naturalization: What Citizenship Means To Naturalizing Immigrants In Canada And The Usa, Sofya Aptekar

Publications and Research

Immigrant naturalization is both a barometer of inclusiveness and immigrant incorporation and a mechanism of social reproduction of the nation. This article reports on an interview-based study in suburban Toronto and New Jersey that investigated how immigrants explain their decisions to acquire citizenship. It analyzes respondents’ under- standings of naturalization in light of different theories of citizenship and different dimensions of the concept. The study contributes to the literature by showing how many American immigrants interviewed while going through the naturalization process resisted framing naturalization as identity-changing, situating it instead as a common-sense move following permanent settlement and belonging. In …

Citizenship Status And Patterns Of Inequality In The United States And Canada, Sofya Aptekar

Publications and Research

Objective: This study investigates inequalities in the distribution of citizenship status among immigrants in Canada and the US between 1970 and 2001. It is motivated by a desire to probe deeper into the gap in citizenship rates between the two countries.

Methods: Logistic regression analysis of Census data is used to predict the odds of citizenship among the foreign-born, controlling for a range of factors.

Results: There has been a growing inequality in the distribution of citizenship in the US, but not in Canada. Low rates of citizenship hide the appearance of a large disparity in citizenship …

Am I An Albanian American, Katherine Gregory

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Protest And Reform In Asylum Policy: Citizen Initiatives Versus Asylum Seekers In German Municipalities, 1989-1994, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Anti-Minority Riots In Unified Germany: Cultural Conflicts And Mischanneled Political Participation, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

Anti-foreigner riots in eastern Germany in the early 1990s have usually been explained by ethnonationalism or racism, ethnic competition for scarce resources, and opportunistic political elites. If anti-minority riots are analyzed as a distinct phenomenon with a cross-sectional approach, local political processes emerge as more important causes. Cultural conflicts, the channeling of mobilization from nonviolent into violent forms, local political opportunities for success, and mobilization by social movement organizations convert ethnic conflict and violence into riots. A comparison of riot and non-riot localities in eastern Germany supports this argument.

The Politics Of Immigration Control In Britain And Germany: Subnational Politicians And Social Movements, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

Political backlash against immigrant minorities and restrictive immigration policies have increased in western Europe. Most explanations of the adoption of restrictions on immigration have focused on ethnic competition for material resources and on national political factors. An alternative theory of political mobilization and restrictive policy changes argues that pressure from subnational politicians and social movement organizations and signals from dramatic anti-immigrant events such as riots lead national elites to infer that public interest in anti-immigration policies is intense enough to justify a break with liberal policies. This theory is tested against four cases in Britain and Germany, where the hypothesized …