Abstract: A large number of studies have focused on the neoliberal political and economic restructuring of non-profit immigrant settlement agencies (ISAs) through a policy analysis framework. While policy analysis is key to determining how resources are distributed among non-profit organizations, the challenges that ISAs encounter in planning and delivering services extend beyond limited financial resources in the sector. This research focuses on the system-level challenges ISAs encounter in planning and delivering services to newcomers in the suburban municipality of the Peel Region, Ontario, Canada. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with frontline staff and executive directors in settlement organizations in Peel Region, Ontario, Canada, to understand the complex challenges they face within a highly federalized and neoliberal policy environment. The results indicate that although funding dollars are a large concern for ISAs, the conditions attached to funding, such as the types of programs settlement providers are able to offer, mandatory quotas, and restrictive eligibility criteria, hinder ISAs from being able to plan and implement programs that better respond to the needs of immigrants in Peel Region. The results also demonstrate that restrictive funding criteria contribute to competition with other ISAs for limited resources and challenge the structure and continuity of programs. Many of these challenges are exacerbated by the transportation system unique to suburban settings.

Abstract: Migration is a multidimensional phenomenon with both positive and negative effects. However, the extent to which migration positively or adversely affects the life opportunities of people, especially the youth abroad, is partly influenced by the aspirations and expectations of the migrants prior to embarking on their journeys. Drawing on macro-, meso-, and micro- level migration theories, this qualitative study explored the intentions for out-migration among final-year university students in Ghana. Thirty-four students (16 males and 18 females) were purposively recruited as participants for the study. Each person participated in one of four digitally recorded focus group discussions. The data was analyzed to identify emerging themes that addressed the objectives of the study. Participants were final-year undergraduate and graduate university students, and their ages ranged between 22 and 34 years. Analysis of the data revealed that participants were eager and determined to leave Ghana, in order to seek better lives abroad. Improved standard of living, employment opportunities, and the prospects for further education featured prominently in participants’ discourses about intended migration. Additionally, the findings indicated that participants’ intentions to migrate were based on comparison between constraints in Ghana and opportunities abroad. The findings of the study draw attention to the need for research and policies that consider the aspirations, interests, and voices of youth who desire to migrate abroad.

Abstract: Confronted with structural demographic challenges, during the last decade European countries have adopted new labour migration policies. The sustainability of these policies largely depends on the intentions of migrants to stay in their country of destination for the long term or even permanently. Despite a growing dependence on skilled labour migrants, very little information exists about the dynamics of this new wave of migration and existing research findings with their focus on earlier migrant generations are hardly applicable today. The article comparatively tests major theoretical approaches accounting for permanent settlement intentions of Germany’s most recent labour migrants from non-European countries on the basis of a new administrative dataset. Although the recent wave of labour migrants is on average a privileged group with regard to their human capital, fundamentally different mechanisms are shaping their future migration intentions. In contrast to neo-classical expectations, a first path highlights economic factors that determine temporary stays of a creative class benefiting from opportunities of an increasingly international labour market. Instead, socio-cultural and institutional factors are the decisive determinants of a second path leading towards permanent settlement intentions. Three main factors—language skills, the family context and the legal framework—make migrants stay in Germany, providing important implications for adjusting and strengthening labour migration policies in Europe.

Abstract: Immigration poses a significant challenge to states’ existing social protection systems, especially in developing countries that are already struggling to provide social services for their citizens. In particular, immigration produces a tension between citizenship rights—those extended only to citizens, and social rights—rights extended by the state to others within their national territory. Immigration raises questions not only about the rights and access of migrants to health and other social services but also the level and quality of provisions to citizens. We draw on literatures on welfare regimes in Latin America, welfare magnets, and the legitimacy of social rights to examine the nexus of migration and health care policy in Costa Rica, Argentina, and Chile—three countries that have recently pursued immigration reform. We argue that variation in the extension of immigrants’ social rights to health is explained by the interaction of existing migration and social policies, the nature of the health care system in each country, and, in some cases, international and regional norms.

Abstract: In 2014, 53,518 unaccompanied immigrant youth, predominantly from Central America, arrived in the USA. By mid-2015, over 12,000 had already arrived (Office of Refugee Resettlement 2015). Despite experiencing a myriad of risk factors and challenges, these children display remarkable resiliency. An important component of this resiliency which, in turn, enhances the well-being of these populations, is the maintenance of hope. This paper reports on a study conducted in spring 2013 on the presence of hope among 138 unaccompanied immigrant children, ages 9–18, receiving services from 20 affiliates of a family reunification program in 12 states in the USA. The study found that children reported a high level of hope on the Children’s Hope Scale (Snyder et al., New York Free Press 1994; Psychological Inquiry 13(4):249, 2002). This article reports on these findings and discusses their implications for policy, practice, and research.

Abstract: This study theorizes double diaspora based on the experiences of Chinese Canadians in Beijing who had previously immigrated to Canada from China and later returned. The study reveals that Chinese Canadians are increasingly internationally mobile as a result of globalization, modern communications and transportation. Their transnational migration experiences can be classified as “double diaspora”—a hybrid experience that transcends boundaries of ethnicity and nationalism. The double diaspora is characterized by a number of dualities as both Chinese and Canadian, living in Chinese and Canadian diaspora, simultaneously diasporas and returnees, playing a double role as cultural and economic brokers between Canada and China. The double diaspora views the diaspora sojourn as neither unidirectional nor final, but rather as multiple and circular. It rejects the primordial notion of diaspora and theorizes diaspora as heterogeneous and conflictual forms of sociality. This study provides an alternative framework in understanding transnational migration and representing multiple ways of affiliations and belonging.

Abstract: This paper examines the educational and occupational trajectories among second-generation immigrants of Turkish and Western-Balkan origin in Switzerland. Using a representative sample of 1107 respondents in two Swiss urban areas, the findings reveal that descendants of immigrants have reduced chances to follow a constant successful path from education to occupation, which is mainly determined by parental socioeconomic status. However, young adults of Turkish and Western Balkan origin are significantly more often upward mobile than the majority group, a pattern that is robust against a range of controls. We find parental monitoring and family cohesion to be positively related with upward mobility. Moreover, second-generation immigrants are more likely to be upwardly mobile than starting high in the education system but subsequently moving downwards—a profile that is more frequent among Swiss origin youth. Our multivariate results indicate that a lack of intense parent–child communication and perceived discrimination in school are affecting this downward process.

Abstract: The current economic crisis is worsening migrants’ living conditions and thus their social and economic integration into EU countries. However, recent literature has not sufficiently considered the strategies that unemployed migrants adopt to cope with this transformation. This article explores the economic and social impact of the recession on migrant workers. In particular, it analyses the coping strategies of unemployed Moroccan and Romanian migrants in Italy, who are the biggest national groups of foreigners. Drawing on 170 in-depth interviews carried out in one of the most dynamic areas of northeast Italy, we find that Moroccan and Romanian migrants adopt different strategies in order to cope with unemployment: the first suffer more from discrimination than the latter in the labour market but can enjoy the economic and social support of extended family and religious community, while for Romanians, it is easier to find a new job, because they can rely on a more diversified social network. Furthermore, migrants of both national groups rarely return to their country of origin, but Moroccans (non-EU nationals) seem to be geographically more mobile than Romanians (EU nationals), who show a resolve to remain in Italy. Finally, unemployed migrants are minimizing their living costs in a very similar way. This paper also studies other differences among interviewees that arise from their gender, age and family model.

Abstract: In the last two decades, temporary worker programs have experienced an unprecedented expansion as instruments of what is defined as the migration management approach. Various migrant rights activists have voiced concerns about the treatment of temporary migrants in these programs and taken initiative to advance their rights. For some migrant rights advocates, it is the temporary nature of migration that is primarily responsible for the rights deficit. Yet, other migrant rights activists accept the temporariness of labour migration while trying to ensure that migrants receive legal protections for their work rights and that these protections are enforced. Trade unions are among the actors who try to protect and advance temporary migrants’ labour rights, but their role in supporting or challenging the principles of temporary migration governance has been neglected in the scholarly literature. The article addresses this gap by highlighting the divergent position of Canadian and Spanish Unions on temporariness of this type of migration. As the article argues, the difference is related to the following four factors: (1) the degree to which the unions in question are institutionally embedded in immigration policy-making, (2) the social environment (that is, discourses on temporariness advanced by other unions and grassroots organizations), (3) the degree of protectionism unions express vis-a-vis new immigrant flows and (4) whether regulated temporary migration is contrasted with permanent or unauthorized migration.

Abstract: This article discusses the impact of Somali habitus and symbolic violence on the decisions of resettled Somali refugee women in the UK to obtain an education, which leads to employment. I highlight the significance of employment to their resettlement success and cultural capital. However, cultural capital continues to be unattainable in their host country because it was not present in Somalia. Self-sufficiency is a primary element of resettlement but depends heavily upon learning the host country’s language, which requires classes, time and a complete paradigm shift. Using Bourdieu’s cultural capital/symbolic violence as a framework, I discuss the dilemma these women faced in trying to attain cultural capital in their host country, and how a lack of it impacts upon their resettlement. Additionally, the norms of Somali patriarchal society exclude both girls and women from education, leading to illiteracy in English and, for most of the participants, in the Somali language. The research highlights the challenges faced by the women in their attempts to navigate the UK’s elite socio-cultural economy.

Abstract: Social and geographic displacement is a global phenomenon that precipitates novel stressors and disruptions that intersect with long-standing familial and social roles. Among the displaced are war-torn Iraqi refugee families, who must address these new obstacles in unconventional ways. This study explores how such disruptions have influenced associations between gender and apparent self-worth experienced by Iraqi refugee families upon relocation to the USA. Further, the psychosocial mechanisms requisite of any novel approach to a new social construct are explored and reveal that production in the family is at the core of instability and shifting power dynamics during resettlement, preventing family members from “seeing the life” in the USA that they had envisioned prior to immigration. Over 200 semi-structured qualitative interviews with Iraqi participants and mental health providers were conducted over the course of the study, which demonstrate a plasticity among social roles in the family and community that transcends the notion of a simple role reversal, and illustrate the complex positionalities that families under stress must approximate during such physical and social displacement.

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to identify factors that explain immigrant housing vulnerability, thereby contributing to the growth of a more substantial knowledge base on the intersection between immigration, housing and homelessness. Administrative data on housing support service recipients (n = 4168) in Alberta, Canada, were analysed to determine the varied demographic, socio-economic and health-related factors that contribute to living in a precarious housing situation (such as homelessness, couch surfing, staying with friends or family etc.). Logistic regression analysis shows that being an immigrant is a protective factor from living in a precarious housing situation. For the immigrant subsample (n = 525), logistic regression analysis demonstrates that living in a larger city, having a mental illness and being married were protective factors from living in a precarious housing situation. However, having an addiction and being precariously employed (such as only working part-time, having temporary employment or being unemployed) were risk factors for living in a precarious housing situation. Shared and distinctive vulnerabilities among the immigrant subsample and the full study sample are discussed, along with implications for specific policy and programmes that aim to address the housing needs of immigrants.

Abstract: Many first generation immigrants share a concern for retaining their heritage culture, though they still aspire to successfully assimilate into the country of residence society. Assimilation theories suggest facilitating factors for positive assimilation but differ in terms of whether the loss of heritage culture is inevitable. The Coptic diaspora illustrates that upward mobility can be achieved without loss of heritage identity. Religious structures can play an important role not only in sustaining heritage identity but also facilitating positive assimilation. A review of the Coptic Orthodox Church’s ministry in diaspora, along with findings of a Coptic diaspora survey may offer lessons for other immigrant groups. The study affirms some theoretical findings and raises questions for future research.

Abstract: Understanding of cultural and contextual factors that may influence settlement is vital for successful immigrant integration. This study explored the effect of social capital on employment outcomes of Zimbabwean immigrants (N = 103) in the USA using a triangulation mixed methods design. Participants completed a survey that assessed their social capital and employment outcomes. Twelve participants were selected from those who had completed the survey to participate in in-depth interviews that asked about their life experiences. The results of a multiple logistic regression analysis identified network diversity as a significant inverse predictor of underemployment (p = 0.04) controlling for educational attainment. Qualitative results elaborated on how social capital contributed to or minimized underemployment. Implications for practice are also suggested.

Abstract: Skilled migration is an increasingly important topic for both policy and research internationally. OECD governments in particular are wrestling with tensions between their desire to use skilled migration to be on the winning side in the ‘global war for talent’ and their pandering to and/or attempts to outflank rising xenophobia. One aspect that has received relatively little attention is skilled migration from the African Commonwealth to the UK, a situation in which skilled migrants have relatively high levels of linguistic capital in the language of the host country. We focus here on the case of Zimbabwe. In spite of its popular image as a failed state, Zimbabwe has an exceptionally strong educational tradition and high levels of literacy and fluency in English. Drawing on 20 in-depth interviews of Zimbabwean highly skilled migrants, we explore the specific ways in which the communicative competences of these migrants with high formal levels of English operate in complex ways to shape their employability strategies and outcomes. We offer two main findings: first, that a dichotomy exists between their high level formal linguistic competence and their ability to communicate in less formal interactions, which challenges their employability, at least when they first move to the UK; and second, that they also lack, at least initially, the competence to narrativise their employability in ways that are culturally appropriate in England. Thus, to realise the full potential of their high levels of human capital, they need to learn how to communicate competently in a very different social and occupational milieu. Some have achieved this, but others continue to struggle.

Abstract: This paper examines the acculturation process of male Central American-origin youths in Toronto, a group who are known to have a higher than average risk of dropping out of high school. Using data from semi-structured interviews with a small sample of male youths born in the region or born in Canada to parents from the region, we examine interrelated and shifting friendship patterns, ethno-social identities, and aspirations for schooling. The findings reveal that some youths become marginalized with weak friendship networks, diffuse ethno-social identities and low school completion aspirations, while others develop relatively strong affiliations exclusively with co-ethnic friends who have modest school completion goals. The strongest trend was toward being integrated with a mix of co-ethnic friends and those from other backgrounds, hybrid ethno-social identities, and higher schooling goals. The analysis examines whether the youths are aware of the relationships between social belonging and academic belonging, and whether they feel it possible to escape from being “boxed in” to acculturation patterns associated with poor school completion. These findings add to research on efforts to understand and improve schooling outcomes for “at risk” minority youth in a multicultural city.

Abstract: The present longitudinal study examined cultural adaptation (i.e., acculturation and enculturation) and its correlates in a sample of 189 Mexican and Dominican immigrant women. Acculturation and enculturation were measured within the domains of language competence, identity, and cultural knowledge at two time points over a 1-year period. Across groups and domains, cultural adaptation was generally stable over time; only American cultural knowledge showed change and only for MA women. Several correlates of cultural adaptation were identified. For Mexican women, living in poverty and in immigrant-dense neighborhoods was associated with lower acculturation. For Dominican women, age at immigration was the most robust correlate and was associated with more acculturation and less enculturation, though poverty and neighborhood characteristics emerged as significant for Dominican women too. Findings are consistent with the notion of cultural adaptation as a complex construct that is influenced by cultural context as well as individual immigrant characteristics.

Abstract: Immigrants known as “twice migrants” are those who arrive in Canada via an intermediate country, that is, not directly from their country of birth. With a focus on large contemporary immigrant groups in Canada—South Asians, Chinese and Filipinos in particular—this study develops socio-economic profiles of twice migrants and assesses their economic performance in comparison to that of direct migrants. The study uses custom tables of multiple national level datasets as well as qualitative interviews with a selected group of twice-migrant families to arrive at its findings. The results show that relative to direct migrants, twice migrants were older, more likely to speak a Canadian official language, slightly more educated and more skilled. These human capital characteristics did not however fully translate into economic success. Political and economic situations both in the country of birth and the country of last place of residence affect the flow of twice migration. Lack of job opportunities in Canada forced many twice migrant families to split between two countries.

Abstract: While the education of the children of immigrants is a much-researched theme, we know very little about the participation of adult immigrants in education. And yet, lifelong learning is a common demand in highly industrialized societies. This article provides a first empirical analysis of adult immigrants’ educational participation in Germany. It uses the novel German National Educational Panel Study with unique retrospective life-course data. By adopting a life-course perspective, both transnational continuities in the life-course as well as the ruptures caused by migration are captured. The analysis investigates in what ways participation in education is embedded in immigrants’ transnational life-course. It can be shown that immigrants’ participation in formal and nonformal full-time education is common. Hypotheses predict a central influence of (1) pre-immigration activities and (2) of legal immigration gateways. Sequence and cluster analysis detect two education-related incorporation patterns: one is marked by a dominance of educational activities and the other by phases in education alternate with employment and unemployment. The results of multivariate models underline the predictive power of pre-immigration activity, i.e., transnational continuity in immigrants’ life courses. But we can also observe substantial disruption like the transnational transition from employment to education which can be the enforced response to nonrecognition or devaluation of foreign educational credentials. Institutional opportunities and dispositions linked to legal immigration gateways are even more powerful predictors of educational participation. Altogether, the article illustrates how the interaction of structural opportunities and individual agency plays out in the formation of different incorporation trajectories of adult immigrants.

Abstract: This article examines the issue of skill utilization among highly skilled immigrants in Canada from an organizational perspective. It argues that bringing insights from organizational sociology more strongly into discussions of skill utilization—which tend to focus on returns to immigrant capital (human, social, cultural) or employer discrimination—would provide greater understanding of how, when and the extent to which each one of these factors matters for immigrant hiring within a particular employment sector. In order to illustrate this point, it draws on empirical material from 20 interviews with hiring managers at information and communication technology (ICT) companies in the Greater Toronto Area to show that there is organizational-level variation among firms in three key aspects of hiring that are relevant to discussions of immigrant skill utilization: definitions of ‘skills’, notions of ‘cultural fit’ and screening processes. The article concludes by pointing to avenues for further study and considering implications for settlement policy.

Abstract: Recent development in Myanmar has created stronger pull factors on emigrant Burmese workers to return to their motherland. Using a survey of 433 Burmese migrants in Thailand as a case study, this paper examines the impact of Myanmar’s development on the probability of the return of Burmese migrants to Myanmar from Thailand. Development factors such as more foreign direct investment, deregulation, and improvement of public services will encourage Burmese migrant workers to return home. Additionally, in terms of economic development, better job opportunities and political stability are also major pull factors for return migration. The main policy implication of these findings is that the chances that Burmese migrant workers will return home are high if investment opportunities followed by job availability and adequate wages can be found in Myanmar. Myanmar and Thailand should implement education programs set up by the Thai government and facilitate Burmese migrants’ children’s access to these programs as well as protecting migrants’ rights during the period of structural adjustment in Thailand.

Abstract: Since 2012 migrants arriving regularly in Italy must sign an integration agreement and declare their agreement with a ‘Charter of the values’. Insufficient integration (measured through a point-based system) results in deportation. While the point-based system discriminates against the poor, the less educated and qualified, the subordinate workers, and the nomads, the Charter is inspired by stereotypical and stigmatizing visions of Islam. This paper identifies the cases of discrimination, both legal (freedom of thought, presumption of innocence, principle of non-discrimination, right to an effective remedy, laicism of state) and symbolical, of the integration agreement, and analyses Italian integration measures before the background of the concept of differential inclusion: the incorporation of regular migrants requires them to pass under a symbolic and legal yoke, which increases their hierarchical differentiation. The integration agreement is also analyzed with regard to its relationship with border controls and with the concepts of ‘illegalization’ and ‘deportability’.

Abstract: In this paper, we analyse the return intentions and home investment of Ghanaian migrants living in Italy and Spain. We show that the migrants’ intention to resettle in Ghana is a strong motivation for them to invest there. Home construction is the primary investment activity that those who desire to return undertake, followed by setting up an income generating venture (retail shop, bakery, hairdressing salon, cash crop and poultry farms). However, in spite of high return intentions, actual return is largely dependent on economic success than failure. Moreover, the migrants’ desire to educate their children in the West, keep their European residence rights, and difficult socio-economic conditions in Ghana constitute key constraints to return. Consequently, the migrants prefer to establish a permanent home in Europe, with the hope to return home when their children grow up or after their labour market activity is over; and while those in Italy desire to move onward, those in Spain prefer to stay there.

Abstract: This article provides new evidence on the economic assimilation of immigrants from the British Isles in Canada during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using data from the 1901 and 1911 censuses and a pseudo-cohort methodology, we estimate both entry and assimilation effects. We find a non-negligible decline in entry earnings among successive cohorts of British and Irish immigrants, previously overlooked in the literature. Our estimates also reveal that the economic performance for Irish and older British arrival cohorts was better than previously reported. Overall, slow economic assimilation and sparse occupational mobility of immigrants have been a long-standing issue in the Canadian labour market.

Abstract: Using the unit data from the 64th round of the National Sample Surveys, 2007–08 on employment, unemployment, and migration, covering 125,578 households, this paper estimates the level, depth, and severity of poverty among non-migrants and intra-state migrants, inter-state migrants, and emigrants in India. Based on the out-migration of any members of the household for employment at place of origin and using place of last residence definition, households are classified into intra-state migrants, inter-state migrant, emigrants, and non-migrant households. Economic well-being of migrant’s households at the place of origin is measured by consumption expenditure (income). A set of poverty indices, the poverty headcount ratio, poverty gap ratio, and square poverty gap, are estimated from the household consumption expenditure to measure the level, depth, and severity of poverty among migration categories. The official state-specific poverty line is used in estimating the poverty indices. Descriptive analyses and logistic regression analyses are used in the analyses. Results suggest that the level, depth, and severity of poverty among migrant households is lower than that among non-migrant households; however, it varies across migrant categories. The poverty head count ratio was 41 % among inter-state migrants, 31 % among intra-state migrants, 20 % among emigrants, and 39 % among non-migrants in India. The poverty gap ratio and squared poverty gap were highest among inter-state migrants. Two broad patterns emerge from the state level analyses. Barring Kerala and Punjab that have a higher percentage of emigrants, inter-state migration accounts for a larger share of employment-related migration from the less developed states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha while intra-state migration accounts for a larger share in the developed states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu. Second, the level, depth, and severity of inter-state migrants from less developed states is higher than that of intra-state migrants and non-migrants; however, the pattern is reversed in the more developed states of India. Adjusting for socioeconomic correlates, the odds of poor among intra-state migrants are lower than those among inter-state migrant’s households. The study supports the proposition that migration and remittances in India are not panacea to structural development constraints and that poor long-distance migrants need to be integrated in poverty alleviation programs.

Abstract: Studies on migration have focused on obstacles and barriers encountered by migrants when they arrive in a new country. Recognizing that there are difficulties, it is also important to know the resources used by migrants to overcome adversity. This study springs from a theoretical perspective of resilience, based on a culturally significant ecological model (Ungar M, Resilience across Cultures. British Journal of Social Work, 38(2), 218–235, 2008) to analyze the processes of cultural adjustment to the host country in migratory movements. Thus, it seeks to understand the various dynamics in adversity and in resources experienced by migrants in Portugal originated from Portuguese-speaking countries (Guinea, Cape Verde, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique). To this end, seven focus groups (N = 35) were facilitated for a discussion on the dimensions of resilience processes. The thematic analysis revealed five main themes in the adversity dimension with some of its topics further grouped in specific sub-topics. In the resources dimension, four salient themes have emerged. Data was discussed in an articulated perspective of themes, illustrating some of the difficulties and resources of migrants in the specificity of the Portuguese context. Implications for research on resilience are highlighted, and some bridges are built for the context of intervention in migrant integration.

Abstract: Social capital captures the idea that relationships hold value. While this idea has intuitive appeal, there is significant debate regarding its utility to political science research. This article employs original data collected in Rome, Italy, to test a new model that recognizes the distinction between levels of social capital and introduces the idea of conflict between these levels into the field’s current theorizing on immigrant political participation. The findings presented here lend further support for the proposed relationship between migration-related factors, such as language proficiency and length of stay and participation. The article’s main finding is that the interactions between group-level and individual-level social capital plays an important role in shaping participation. Specifically, because it reinforces group-level social capital, bonding social capital favors participation in the formal, institutionally sanctioned activity of voting, while bridging social capital—which mitigates the effect of group-level social capital—favors participation in the informal political activity, protest.

Abstract: Literature on the economic incorporation of immigrants to new destinations has been missing a discussion on how the strength of the local economy affects immigrants’ need for social networks and how it might also affect the relative importance of strong versus weak ties for immigrant job seekers. Through the use of in-depth interviews, the role and importance of social networks in the labor market incorporation of Hispanic immigrants in economically weak cities is examined, as well as the consequences to those immigrants who are unable to command or lack access to social networks and/or ethnic resources. This paper contextualizes the importance of strong ties for immigrants in economically weak new destinations and argues that in places with such a constricted labor market and stagnant economies, it is imperative for recent arrivals to access and/or construct these strong ties in order to more effectively gain entry into the host society’s labor market.

Abstract: Immigration continues to be an issue in the USA. In the absence of substantive Federal law, some local governments have passed ordinances related to immigrants living in their community. Some of these have had pro-immigrant orientations and some have had anti-immigrant orientations. In the literature, these types of policies have been found to have mixed effects on immigrant decisions to live in those communities. These cities have passed these ordinances in order to attract or repel them because of perceived impacts on city crime among other reasons. This study is the first assessment on whether these policies have attracted or repelled the foreign-born population in these cities, and it contributes to the ongoing literature on whether that foreign-born population is having an effect on city crime. It was found that these policies are not having a significant effect on attracting or repelling immigrants while the impact of this population on city crime is significantly negative. Further research is recommended on this important topic.