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

Abstract

This article compares immigrant and ethnic organizations in four major immigrant-receiving cities and reveals substantial variation across these immigrant gateway cities. Using data from ethnographic fieldwork and an original database of relevant organizations in New York City; El Paso, Texas; Paris; and Barcelona, I find differences in organizational type and density, as well as in their legitimacy and funding. This article contributes to a growing literature on immigrant organizations. Although immigrant organizations have a long history in some cities, they may not always operate in ways that enhance refugee and migrant integration. Comparing immigrant organizations is fruitful because it tells us more about city and national political systems and why distinct localities deal with cultural minorities differently. These comparisons can help the readers to understand the barriers and ladders that immigrants encounter in different cities and inform policy-makers in designing better approaches to incorporate immigrants.

Components of Context: Respecifying the Role of Context in Migration Research

“…A similar tradition of work exists in major European cities, including London (Vertovec 2007;Robinson 2010), Paris (Weil 1995(Weil , 2008Noiriel 2005;Castañeda 2018) and Amsterdam (Foner et al 2014). Taken together, this collective work has done much to teach us about immigrant life in the major cities, particularly in the Global North.…”

“…There is wide variation in the nature of such communities across settlements, and in some places, they do not exist at all (Alba and Foner 2015;Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad 2008;Winders 2014). Work on ethnic communities across the world usually discusses three specific subcomponents: the ethnic economy (Gilbertson 1995;Gold 2015;Portes and Bach 1985), ethnic organizations (Castañeda 2020;Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad 2008;Zhou and Kim 2006), and co-ethnics' characteristics (Abascal 2017;Adida 2011;Brettell 2003;Donato, Stainback, and Bankston 2005;Felouzis 2005;Jiménez 2010;Luthra, Soehl, andWaldinger 2018a, 2018b). • Relations with the Local Population: Immigrants' life chances-socioeconomic and symbolic-are affected by the nature of ethnic or racial boundaries within the host country (Wimmer 2013).…”

“…The character of employment opportunities varies substantially across settlements, not only in rates of labor force participation and real wages but also in the types of jobs and prevalence of contingent, part-time labor contracts (Fee, Wardrip, and Nelson 2019;Kalleberg 2000Kalleberg , 2009Markusen and Schrock 2006;OECD 2018;Tienda and Fuentes 2014). Within this labor market component, prior work has most often emphasized two specific subcomponents as consequential to immigrant integration: the local labor market's flexibility (Castañeda 2018;Cohen and Kogan 2007;Crowley, Lichter, and Turner 2015;Kalleberg 2000;Luthra and Waldinger 2010), much of it tied to the informal economy, and the local mix of industries (Goodwin-White 2009; Lester and Nguyen 2016;Marrow 2011). • Local Institutional and Organizational Landscape: Local government and other institutions such as churches or labor unions touch on practically all facets of immigrant life (Waters and Pineau 2015).…”

“…On the one hand, there is a tendency within this scholarship to study immigrant life in a limited set of places: the world's major metropolis (i.e., New York, Los Angeles, and London) and, more recently, rural destinations where immigrants have only recently arrived. 1 When 1 By city, an incomplete list of notable works in the comparative tradition includes Amsterdam (Crul and Mollenkopf 2012;Foner et al 2014), Boston (Bloemraad 2006;Suárez-Orozco 2001), London (Berrol 1994;Foner et al 2014), Los Angeles (Crul and Mollenkopf 2012;Halle 2003;Lee and Bean 2010;Logan, Zhang, and Alba 2002;Luthra, Soehl, and Waldinger 2018a;Min 1996;Telles and Ortiz 2008;Waldinger 2001), Miami (Portes and Rumbaut 2001;Waldinger 2001), New York (Castañeda 2018;Crul and Mollenkopf 2012;Foner 2005;Foner et al 2014;Halle and Beveridge 2003;Logan et al 2002;Luthra et al 2018a;Massey and Sánchez 2010;Min 1996), Paris (Castañeda 2018;Crul and Mollenkopf 2012;Lamont 2000), and San Francisco (de Graauw, Gleeson, and Bloemraad 2013; Lee and Bean 2010;Suárez-Orozco 2001;Waldinger 2001). For rural areas, see Jiménez (2010), Marrow (2011), Massey (2008), and Zúñiga and Hernández-León (2005).…”