No abstract

In the United States, the failure to achieve immigration reform at the national level has resulted in numerous responses in local communities that have been most impacted by the settlement of new immigrants. Some of these responses have emerged in suburban communities that have experienced a rapid rise in the foreign-born population during the last twenty years. This essay offers an in-depth analysis of one such community, Farmers Branch, Texas, covered nationally for a series of anti-immigrant ordinances passed by its City Council. Following a description of the history of this community, the growth of its foreign-born population, and the legal manoeuvres to control unauthorized immigration, the essay argues that anti-immigrant legislation in local places like Farmers Branch is at its core a reflection of a debate about and anxiety over American identityhow it is defined and how it is changing. In particular, these responses are about a perceived threat to middle class status and identity. This is discussed first in relationship to issues of home ownership and income and then, in relation to cultural dimensions of class, including matters of taste and the spatializations of middle class identity. Finally, the paper unpacks the concept of ''rule of law''. By invoking the claim that Americans are law abiding while unauthorized immigrants have broken the law, lawfulness becomes an exclusionary tool and gives those who support antiimmigrant ordinances a platform for legislating a certain quality of life, and de-Americanizing those who do not fit their conceptualization of what it means to be American. Rule of law becomes a weapon in the fight for middle class status and the status quo.

This article addresses the organizational life of Asian-Indian immigrants in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The analysis is framed in relation to the concept of social capital, and more specifically to differences between bonding and bridging social capital, and between ethnic social capital (embedded in ethnic associations) and cross-cultural social capital (embedded in mixed and more mainstream organizations). After a brief discussion of the growth of the Asian-Indian population in DFW, the article draws on examples of five different organizational forms—regional, religious, ethnic, pan-ethnic, and ethnic to mainstream—to explore how different forms of social capital are developed and deployed, as well as how nested hierarchies of identity are manifested and expressed. In the conclusion the article addresses the implications for our understanding of how dispersed immigrant populations in new suburban cities of immigration establish place through associations as well as what an analysis of these organizations contributes to ongoing debates about assimilation, incorporation, and the construction of community.

Through an analysis of interview data and biographies of entrepreneurship, .we demonstrate in this article the diverse paths to immigrant self-employment across a range of immigrant populations. We address the utilization of ethnic and occupational niches for establishing businesses and the resources that immigrant entrepreneurs draw upon as they move into seEfemployment. By drawing on the concept ofbiographical emheddedness and by emphasizing the agency of individual actors andtheir motivational andexperiential resources, this article moves the analysis of immigrant entrepreneurs beyond the "disadvantage hypothesis" that has characterized much of the previous work on this subject. RESEARCH ON IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURS IN THE UNITED STATES dates back to the 1970s with the publication of Ivan Light's Ethnic Enterprise in America (1972) and Edna Bonacich's (1973) formulation of "middleman minorities." However, twenty years stlbsequent to these publications Light and Bhachu were still claiming that entrepreneurship was a "neglected but potent influence upon the economic and social integration of immigrants" (1993: 13). They argued, in particular, that the role of immigrant networks in building business had been overlooked, as had the impact of entrepreneurship on the volume of immigration. Several essays assembled in their book advanced the discussion of immigrant entrepreneurship, as have numerous articles published in the ensuing decade (for example,

Despite immigration policies that are often built around family reunification, contemporary research on migration often prioritizes labor mobility over mobility associated with marriage and family formation. Drawing on scholarship across a range of disciplines and across the globe, this article focuses attention on the substantive dimensions and theoretical debates located at the intersections of research on marriage and migration. Among the topics covered are rural bride shortages and mail-order marriages, arranged marriages, marriages of convenience and the state policies introduced to regulate them, and crimes of honor. The article also addresses the impact of migration on spousal relationships and on parenting in a transnational context. Of particular consideration are dimensions of insecurity that arise in mixed-status families, which may result in domestic violence.