Unsettled Americans

The politics of immigration have heated up in recent years as Congress has failed to adopt comprehensive immigration reform, the President has proposed executive actions, and state and local governments have responded unevenly and ambivalently to burgeoning immigrant communities in the context of a severe economic downturn. Moreover we have witnessed large shifts in the locations of immigrants and their families between and within the metropolitan areas of the United States. Charlotte, North Carolina, may be a more active and dynamic immigrant destination than Chicago, Illinois, while the suburbs are receiving ever more immigrants.

The work of John Mollenkopf, Manuel Pastor, and their colleagues represents one of the first systematic comparative studies of immigrant incorporation at the metropolitan level. They consider immigrant reception in seven different metro areas, and their analyses stress the differences in capacity and response between central cities, down-at-the-heels suburbs, and outer metropolitan areas, as well as across metro areas. A key feature of case studies in the book is their inclusion of not only traditional receiving areas (New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles) but also newer ones (Charlotte, Phoenix, San Jose, and California's "Inland Empire"). Another innovative aspect is that the authors link their work to the new literature on regional governance, contribute to emerging research on spatial variations within metropolitan areas, and highlight points of intersection with the longer-term processes of immigrant integration.

Contributors: Els de Graauw, CUNY; Juan De Lara, University of Southern California; Jaime Dominguez, Northwestern University; Diana Gordon, CUNY; Michael Jones-Correa, Cornell University; Paul Lewis, Arizona State University; Doris Marie Provine, Arizona State University; John Mollenkopf, CUNY; Manuel Pastor, University of Southern California; Rachel Rosner, independent consultant, Florida; Jennifer Tran, City of San Francisco

John Mollenkopf is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology and Director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is coeditor of Unsettled Americans: Metropolitan Context and Civic Leadership for Immigrant Integration and Bringing Outsiders In: Transatlantic Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation, and author or editor of many other books. Manuel Pastor is Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity, Director, USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity, and Director, USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration at the University of Southern California. He is coeditor of Unsettled Americans: Metropolitan Context and Civil Leadership for Immigrant Integration and This Could Be the Start of Something Big: How Social Movements for Regional Equity are Reshaping Metropolitan America. His other books include Equity, Growth, and Community: What the Nation Can Learn from America's Metro Areas.

Unsettled Americans describes and analyzes immigrant integration or the extent to which new immigrant communities are making economic, social, and civic progress, and closing gaps with the native-born mainstream (p. 3). The concept of immigrant integration relates centrally to debates, issues, and questions regarding citizenship. Understanding and explaining the extent to which and why different kinds of localities respond to different kinds of immigrants not only speaks to the contested nature of citizenship but also shows that the reality boundaries of exclusion are maintained and contested at the local level.

Caroline B. Brettell, Ruth Collins Altshuler Endowed Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Dedman College Interdisciplinary InstituteSouthern Methodist Universityco, author of Migration Theory: Talking across Disciplines:

The well-written and accessible Unsettled Americans is an important addition to the scholarship on immigrant incorporation, particularly with its unified framework, comparative analysis, and focus on metropolitan areas. Public officials and community-based organizations will find this great book useful in improving their work on immigrant integration.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, co-author of The New Immigration Federalism:

Unsettled Americans shows us how, and why, place matters for the incorporation of immigrants in the United States. The authors provide detailed analyses across a range of central cities, suburbs, and exurbs, drawing our attention to economic, social, and political dynamics that fundamentally shape the process of immigrant incorporation today.