Local governance of immigrant incorporation: how city-based organizational fields shape the cases of undocumented youth in New York City and Paris

Abstract

City-based organizations and governments play an important role in incorporating undocumented immigrant youth. This article investigates how localities socio-politically incorporate these immigrants by examining the governance constellations and institutional logics of the organizational field that manages undocumented youth. Comparing sets of municipal and civil society organizations in different national settings, I use the two cases of New York City and Paris to ask how the ‘city-based organizational field of immigrant incorporation’ shapes citizenship experiences of undocumented youth. Data come from multi-level longitudinal ethnography over 8 years with two dozen undocumented youth and with organizations in each city as well as interviews with immigrant organization staff and other governance actors in New York and Paris. Organizational field dynamics in Paris provide a stronger possibility of citizenship and rights acquisition, evidence of socio-political incorporation. In contrast, New York’s robust and flexible labor market and ethnic and immigrant legitimacy offer its undocumented youth a marginalized socio-political incorporation. These findings support practice-based understandings of local governance of incorporation of undocumented youth.

Urban Contexts and Immigrant Organizations: Differences in New York, El Paso, Paris, and Barcelona

“…The movement includes undocumented workers engaged in campaigns to stay in France, often one work site at a time (Kennedy and Tilly 2008). Also, a network of educators and allies help some undocumented youth to regularize their status (Ruszczyk 2018; 2019).…”

The Spatial Mobility Trap? How Urban Contexts Shape the Spatial Mobility of Male Undocumented Youths

“…Scholars from multiple disciplinary perspectives (Bauder and Gonzalez 2018; Chavez 2007; Menjívar and Kanstroom 2013; Willen 2007) view economic, administrative, social, political, and spatial aspects of contexts shaping undocumented residents' lived experiences of migrant illegality. Depending on the national form such illegality takes, cities may exercise discretion, ignoring legal status restrictions or working to regularize undocumented residents (Ruszczyk 2018). The contested contours of this local discretion (Jones‐Correa and de Graauw 2013; Varsanyi 2010) beg the question of how it shapes the lived experiences of undocumented residents.…”

Moral career of migrant il/legality: Undocumented male youths in New York City and Paris negotiating deportability and regularizability

“…This article examines how these possibilities shape the lived experiences of undocumented youths coming of age in the largest cities of France and the United States. Paris and New York City have large populations of undocumented youth and different approaches to incorporating them (Ruszczyk, 2018). Within each national context, each city represents particularly undocumented‐friendly contexts, with significant associational and governmental support, robust public transportation, and ethnic communities (cf.…”