In the face of continued immigration to the United States and federal policy inertia, many local governments have started to adopt their own immigrant-related policies to cope with the newcomers. Among them, welcoming cities represent a new wave of inclusive local government responses that seeks to incorporate immigrants socially and economically and deviates from the previous policies that focus on law enforcement and legal status. In this article, we explore the rationales behind these cities' commitment to immigrant integration by examining the effect of theory-based local demographic, economic, political, fiscal, and institutional characteristics and national network organization on local governments' policy adoption. Our results indicate that cities that have an educated, diverse, and liberal population, are more economically troubled but fiscally sound are more likely to become welcoming cities. The Welcoming America as an umbrella organization also plays an important role in facilitating the welcoming movement.

The rapid expansion of self‐employment has accompanied the rise of a market economy in urban China. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the state‐owned enterprises' share of the country's gross domestic product has declined from over 90 percent in 1978 to below 50 percent in 2005. Urban entrepreneurship and self‐employment is an emerging force that is shaping the economic and physical form of Chinese cities but is understudied in the academic literature. Using the 2007 Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) data, we investigate the rate and scale of urban entrepreneurship across Chinese cities, as well as the characteristics and earnings associated with self‐employment as compared to wage employment. We pay particular attention to the financial capital, human capital, and social capital factors underlying entrepreneurial entry and distinguish between “necessity entrepreneurs” and “opportunity entrepreneurs” and their respective socioeconomic characteristics.

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The 2007–2009 financial crisis has caused economic disruption in many US cities and has drawn considerable academic attention. Despite abundant evidence of immigrants’ economic and social value to urban areas, little research has examined the relationship between immigration and resilience. This article investigates whether immigration enhanced economic resilience to the Great Recession for metropolitan areas in the US. It uses ordinary least squares and instrumental variable regressions to test the immigration effects between 2007 and 2014. The findings indicate that immigration leads to employment and income resilience. On average, metropolitan areas with a larger immigrant population tended to better preserve their growth paths during the Great Recession and to experience greater levels of employment and per capita income growth following the recession.