Residential Settlement, Economic Incorporation, and Civic Reception of Immigrants

Abstract

The macro-level economic and political circumstances of the reception of members of our eight groups in the United States, and those immigrants’ human capital, cultural backgrounds, and the intentions which brought them to that country were discussed in the previous chapter. Here we consider three important dimensions of their incorporation into the host societies, including residential patterns in the cities immigrants settled in and their concentration and segregation from other groups; the profile and dynamics of local economies and, in this context, immigrants’ integration into the labor market; and the civic-political climate and reception of newcomers in the places they have settled in. This information will be used in the following chapters examining the contributing factors and outcomes of immigrants’ sociocultural and civic-political assimilation and transnational engagements. Because the analysis here concerns issues related to the process of immigrants’ assimilation into the host society, we begin with an overview of the current theoretical understandings of this concept which pertain to the economic dimension of newcomers’ integration, and identify the approach informing this study. (Concepts related to immigrants’ sociocultural and civic-political assimilation will be introduced in the next chapter.)