The Politics of Immigration and Suburban Revitalization: Divergent Responses in Adjacent Pennsylvania Towns

ABSTRACT:

Amidst debates over the impacts of immigration, cities and towns across the United States have alternately opposed or welcomed unauthorized immigrants. Although their “illegal immigration relief acts” and “sanctuary laws” are typically justified in terms of law and order, they also grow from divergent hopes, concerns, and assumptions about newcomers’ integration and effects on local revitalization. These issues have gained importance beyond central cities with the suburbanization of immigration and the economic decline of older suburbs in recent decades. This article explores the case of two adjacent, formerly industrial towns in suburban Philadelphia, examining local leaders’ respective rationale for seeking to incorporate unauthorized immigrants in Norristown and to restrict their settlement and employment in neighboring Bridgeport. Despite their obvious similarities, these towns’ distinct experiences of race, migration, and revitalization explain much of their divergent responses.

Notes

Greater Philadelphia’s older working class suburbs cluster along the region’s rivers and railroad lines, forming corridors radiating from the city rather than an “inner ring,” hence I use the term “first suburbs,” which regional scientists, planners, and policy advocates in Philadelphia and nationally also commonly use to describe the same sorts of places (see DVRPC, ; First Suburbs Alliance, 2012).

Revitalization refers to the reversal of economic decline and the growth of population, commerce, jobs, tax base, and/or real estate development in a locality.

This article uses the terms “unauthorized,” “illegal,” and “undocumented” immigrants interchangeably.

Initiated as part of research for a Brookings Institution report on immigration to the Philadelphia region (Singer, Vitiello, Katz, & Park ), for which interviews with politicians, bureacrats, police, and realtors about the different reasons and rationales for the two towns’ laws, interviews were subsequently expanded to include representatives of civic and community and economic development institutions. We interviewed seven people in Bridgeport, nine in Norristown, and seven who work with organizations active in both. Thanks to Amanda Wagner, Hannah Wizman-Cartier, and Zoe Tillman for research assistance; and to my colleagues in the Brookings study that inspired this article, Mat Creighton, Michael Katz, David Park, and Audrey Singer.

To most urban planning and policy scholars and professionals, “suburban revitalization” is part of larger “urban revitalization,” which in the past generation has been framed in defining ways as a metropolitan problem and project. Yet many politicians in the suburbs of metropolitan America do view their towns’ community and economic development as distinct (which it is in many ways) and ideally disconnected from that of the big cities in their regions (see Downs, ; Orfield, ; Dreier et al., ).

The Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition threatened to sue Bridgeport if it sought to implement its law.

Undocumented Mexican migration is difficult for the Census to estimate, commonly resulting in wide discrepancies between official figures and estimates by local leaders.

Of course, such backgrounds do not necessarily produce such stances, as, nationally, many more established immigrants of color and their descendants are hostile toward more recent unauthorized and sometimes even legal immigrants (Saito, ; Carpio et al., ).

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Domenic Vitiello

Domenic Vitiello is an assistant professor of city planning and urban studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He has authored books and articles on community and economic development, migration, and planning history.