The Increasing Significance of Local Context in Immigrant Integration

Session Submission Type: Paper Session (90 minute)

Description

As the US federal government exerts its authority, it is facing both resistance and cooperation with local authorities and actors as it enacts its agenda. It is a reminder that integration happens at a local scale and that, while the features of nation-states set many of the conditions of incorporation, the characteristics of the local place of settlement also exert lasting impacts on the life chances and belonging of immigrants and their children. For this panel, we invite panelists that engage with questions that examine the impact of local context on immigrant life in the United States and across the world. We are particularly interested in papers that advance our understanding of which aspects of context matter most for immigrant outcomes; that can isolate the impacts of features of context using careful comparison; or that tell us how aspects of context that pertain to immigrants co-vary or interact with each other. We are also interested in papers that examine the impact of place on the children of immigrants and examine places that have been seldom studied in the US, or the world.

Sub Unit

• International Migration Section / The Increasing Significance of Local Context in Immigrant Integration

Presider

• Francisco Lara-García, Hofstra University

Individual Presentations

• Empowering through proximity: How female neighbors serve as local social capital for refugee women - Kerstin Ostermann, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg / Institute for Employment Research (IAB); Sebastian Werner Baehr, Institute for Employment Research (IAB)

• “Foreigners in a Domestic Sense:” Local Contexts, Temporal Juxtapositions, and Migrant “Illegality” in Puerto Rico - Carlos Alberto Aguilar Gonzalez, University of Pennsylvania

• “Our kids” versus “Illegal” children?:Local Public Debates and Votes on Children of Immigrants in Schools - Robert Courtney Smith, Baruch College, CUNY

• Placing Belonging: How Relationships, Community, and the Physical Environment Shape the DACA Experience - Roberto G. Gonzales, University of Pennsylvania; Sarah Bruhn, University of Pennsylvania; Kristina Paige Brant, Pennsylvania State University

• The Politics of Belonging Come Home: Neighborhood Belonging in the Context of Brexit - Rachael Kei Kawasaki, European University Institute

Session Organizer

• Francisco Lara-García, Hofstra University