Chicago's New Immigrants, Indigenous Poor, and Edge Cities

Abstract

The settlement pattern of new immigrants in the Chicago urban region diverges significantly from previous immigration periods, when employment was concentrated in the urban core. In recent decades, the rate of employment decentralization in the Chicago area has accelerated, giving rise to edge cities, which are acquiring an increasing share of the region's total employment. As a result, the new immigrants are in a far more favorable geographic position than the region's indigenous poor to compete in the local unskilled labor market. Meanwhile, with the absence of new immigrants settling the region's traditional port-of-entry neighborhoods, thus not replacing the exiting middle class, large sections of Chicago's urban core are being bypassed, further isolating the indigenous poor from the economic mainstream.

Poverty concentration in an affluent city: Geographic variation and correlates of neighborhood poverty rates in Hong Kong

“…A second line of inquiry into urban poverty highlights the role of racial segregation. Scholars have argued that racial segregation also plays a significant role, no less than class-based residential segregation, in explaining concentrated poverty [ 4 , 12 , 24 ]. For example, the work which opened this discussion was American Apartheid by Massey and Denton [ 4 ], who argued that increasing poverty concentration is a reflection of both economic inequality and racial segregation, and that racial segregation reflects urban neighborhood poverty more than economic inequality.…”

Dynamics of Spanish-Language Neighborhoods in Chicago and Atlanta: 1990–2000

“…The growth of suburban Spanish-language neighborhoods is taking place not only in Atlanta but also in the traditional immigrant gateway of Chicago, likely due to the growth of job opportunities in the suburbs (Greene 1997) and the process of gentrification in the city of Chicago (Betancur 2002). Therefore, non-English language speakers do not necessarily have to live in the central city areas to share a neighborhood with speakers of the same language.…”

Representing “Neighborhood”: Growth Coalitions, Newspaper Reporting, and Gentrification in St. Louis

“…Use of such proxies, common in studies of urban neighborhoods (cf. Rex 1986;Ley 1987;Allen and Turner 1996;Greene 1997), become valid surrogates on the theoretical grounds we now discuss.…”