Immigrant integration and receptivity policy formation in welcoming cities

ABSTRACT

Amid a broader context of immigration federalism and debates over immigration policy in the United States at the national level, states and municipalities in recent years have been pursuing their own paths on local immigration policy. One example is the welcoming cities movement that has formed a growing network of municipalities across the United States that are encouraging efforts for warmer receptivity and more efficient immigrant integration. Through a qualitative methodology including systematic content analysis of primary documents and key informant interviews, this article examines when, why, and how recent local receptivity and immigrant integration initiatives and policies formed and coalesced and how different places are implementing those policies. We examine 3 case study cities—Nashville, Dayton, and Chicago—through Kingdon’s multiple streams approach analytical framework to demonstrate how multisector forces at multiple scales (i.e., municipal, state, and national) facilitate or hinder the formation of local receptivity and integration initiatives and policies.

Acknowledgments

We thank the anonymous reviewers and the journal editors who provided constructive feedback to improve the article. We also offer our appreciation to our graduate research assistants, Gianni Bisio and Christina Edwards, doctoral students in the School of Conflict Management, Peacebuilding and Development at Kennesaw State University during the time frame of the article preparation and review process, who assisted with various stages of the manuscript preparation and revision.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For the purposes of this article, when we say immigrant, we are defining the term as all foreign-born individuals residing in the United States, regardless of immigration status. Consequently, the term is inclusive of, but not limited to, individuals who are identified as asylees, refugees, visa holders and overstayers, temporary protected status, legal permanent residents, naturalized U.S. citizens, and those who entered without inspection.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul N. McDaniel

Paul N. McDaniel is Assistant Professor of Geography at Kennesaw State University in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia. His research interests focus on the processes and impacts of immigrant settlement, adjustment, integration, and receptivity in cities and metropolitan areas, particularly in the United States. He, along with Rodriguez, is a co-founder of the Georgia Immigration Research Network (GIRN), a research consortium among Atlanta-area immigrant and refugee integration researchers and practitioners. Previously, McDaniel was a research fellow with the American Immigration Council in Washington, DC, where he conducted research and policy analysis on immigrant settlement, integration, and receptivity in cities and metropolitan areas and immigrant and refugee entrepreneurship.

Darlene Xiomara Rodriguez

Darlene Xiomara Rodriguez is Assistant Professor of Social Work and Human Services at Kennesaw State University. Her research focuses on the nonprofit sector’s role in facilitating immigrant integration. Rodriguez’s co-edited book, Green Card Youth Voices: Immigration Stories From an Atlanta High School (2018), documents the experiences of young New Americans in their own words. Rodriguez holds a PhD in Public Administration and Policy and a master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Georgia. She earned her master’s in Public Affairs at Rutgers University through the U.S. Peace Corps. Rodriguez understands what it means to grow up in a mixed-immigration-status household and serve as a linguistic, informational, and cultural broker. As an academic, Rodriguez has continued that role on a larger scale through her collaborative research that informs immigrant-focused policy formulation and nonprofit service delivery. To that end, in 2015, she and McDaniel co-founded the Georgia Immigration Research Network (GIRN).

Qingfang Wang

Qingfang Wang is Professor of Geography and Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside. Her research interests lie broadly in inequality and development with a particular concern of minority population (such as immigrants, racial minorities, and women) and minority communities. Funded by National Science Foundation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Kauffman Foundation, and other agencies, she has published widely on ethnic labor market segmentation and ethnic entrepreneurship. At the same time, she is interested in the transnational migration of the highly skilled labor force under the globalization context.