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Immigration & Society
Immigration and the City
The majority of immigrants settle in cities when they arrive, and few can deny the dynamic influence migration has on cities. However, a "one-size-fits-all" approach cannot describe the activities and settlement patterns of immigrants in contemporary cities. The communities in which immigrants live and the jobs and businesses where they earn their living have become increasingly diversified. In this insightful book, Eric Fong and Brent Berry describe both contemporary patterns of immigration and the urban context in order to understand the social and economic lives of immigrants in the city. By exploring topics such as residential patterns, community form, and cultural influences, this book provides a broader understanding of how newcomers adapt to city life, while also reshaping its very fabric.
This comprehensive and engaging book will be an invaluable text for students and scholars of immigration, race, ethnicity, and urban studies.
This comprehensive and engaging book will be an invaluable text for students and scholars of immigration, race, ethnicity, and urban studies.
200 pages, Hardcover
Published April 3, 2017
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January 25, 2018
The role of cities play in structuring immigration has been the subject of scholarly research for close on a century, with the work done by Ernest Burgess and the Chicago School of sociologists being seminal. Viewing urban space as a series of concentric zones, the early work saw immigrants progressing on the basis of their economic status from poor housing districts, passing through ‘transitional zones’, and eventually reaching places where better housing was on offer. This simple model was contingent on the view that (a) all immigrants were poor; (b) that they prized better housing on the traditional middle-class model above all other considerations; and (c), that time was the crucial factor that allowed them to achieve their goals. In short, integration, or ‘assimilation’, was the destiny of all immigrant communities.
Disputes opened up in the academic community and Walter Firey opened up a perspective which said that economic factors were not all that was in play when it came to considering social mobility for migrant groups. He argued that space was associated with cultural values, which also affected preferences for particular locations. The desire for close contact with members of the extended family, celebration of traditional festivals, access to cultural goods, such as food or clothing, would favour a degree of ethnic clustering not solely dependent on the economics of affordable housing.
Later additions to the theoretical discussion called for consideration of external factors in influencing the place immigrant communities held in the city. The place stratification model looked at the ways in which the policies of local government, real estate businesses, and financial institutions determined many aspects of the structure of communities, with the founders of this perspective, Douglas Massey and Richard Alba, being so bold as to label it as a type of ‘American apartheid’. Racism figured in this calculus, with institutions working to affect a separation between ‘white’ neighbourhoods and the encroaching newcomers.
The research discussed in Fong and Berry’s book draws on the American and Canadian urban experience. It seems likely that this was strongly affected by the way in which, in the case of the United States, city formation in the early-20th century was formed by the ‘Great Migration’ of six million African-Americans from the rural south to the industrial north of the country. The maintenance of strict residential segregation provided the impetus for a dual economy which concentrated opportunities for economic activity as well the structure of such public services as education and healthcare on the different ethnic groups in their own separate localities. Immigrants from abroad during this period had integration offered to them as the need to find their place in an already divided society, and to abide by the rules which provided the limited chance of moving up the social scale.
The Canadian journalist, Doug Saunders, has helped prise the discussion about the role in immigrant neighbourhoods into the broader perspective of urban growth under the impact of globalisation. His book ‘Arrival Cities’ ranges across the world to consider the role that migration plays in the expansion of cities from China, Bangladesh and India, through to Turkey and Europe as well as North America. His approach is useful because it helps us appreciate the diversity of the immigrant experience, extending beyond the idea of poor, desperate masses who exist in a state of victimhood, and to look at their world as one in which there is a constant striving for empowerment. When a number of positive factors are present in the space in which migrants establish themselves, and he names the availability of cheap housing within a short travel distance of abundant work, plus access to inexpensive supplies of food via street markets, then a form of social mobility is likely to commence which, within the space of a generation, will see not just the inhabitants but the entire neighbourhood move upwards to a high social and economic standing. The second generation finds itself in possession of assets which have risen in value and are able to be used for the next stage of integration.
Fong and Berry only hint at this dynamic in the chapters of their book which deal with housing attainment, community life, business opportunities, ‘foodscapes’ and ‘playscapes’. The city in which all of these happen seems to be a static entity which does not appear to change much and does not much more than offer ‘space’ to the people who make up its inhabitants. Saunders, on the other hand, sees it as the truly dynamic factor at play in the equations of immigrant arrival and integration, making use of the resources the newcomers bring with them to transform itself into the next thing it needs to be.
‘Global Cities’ theory, with the foundations laid by John Friedman and Saskia Sassen, advances our understanding of urban space in a way that makes better sense of the migrant experience. Cities are not just concentrations of buildings and other infrastructure. They ripple with the forces of capitalist market processes and exchanges which constantly work to try and change the environment to make it fit in better with the way in which the wider economic and political power structures work. When they succeed a London, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, Dubai, and Shanghai comes into being, each having arrived at its combination of capital, assets and market regulations that facilitate integration into the global economy. For most – though not all – this has meant making use of the migration to support labour markets which allow the demand for skills and labour to be met at prices the market is prepared to support. To do this successfully capital has to structure the physical environment of the city itself to bring about the integration of the workforce into its urban setting.
Understanding this last point allows us to appreciate why, in most parts of the world, immigration has ceased to be the mass movement of the impoverished, and now takes place across all economic and skill levels. The diversity of the global economy means that it needs a diverse workforce to sustain it – highly skilled at one end and the diggers of ditches and carriers of heavy loads at the other. The modern global city appears to have need of both and then confronts the problem of needing to accommodate both its richest and poorest in the same urban space. It achieves this by segmenting its internal economy into districts which generate differential prices for housing, allowing ‘poor’ housing for immigrants and low-income natives, all the way up to low-medium, high-medium, and eventually ultra-rich neighbourhoods. In a addition to housing public services play a role in determining the internal structure of this city-wide market, with transportation, schooling, the maintenance of green and public spaces, all playing a role in deciding the levels of affordability and desirability.
Fong and Berry hint at this but, in choosing not to discuss the contextual issue of capitalism, leave the reader with the sense that, complicate and diverse as it might be, the route to social progress for the migrant is a matter of balancing and trading-off goods of intrinsic value (culture, family, etc), with those backed by economic power. Its not as simple as this.
Disputes opened up in the academic community and Walter Firey opened up a perspective which said that economic factors were not all that was in play when it came to considering social mobility for migrant groups. He argued that space was associated with cultural values, which also affected preferences for particular locations. The desire for close contact with members of the extended family, celebration of traditional festivals, access to cultural goods, such as food or clothing, would favour a degree of ethnic clustering not solely dependent on the economics of affordable housing.
Later additions to the theoretical discussion called for consideration of external factors in influencing the place immigrant communities held in the city. The place stratification model looked at the ways in which the policies of local government, real estate businesses, and financial institutions determined many aspects of the structure of communities, with the founders of this perspective, Douglas Massey and Richard Alba, being so bold as to label it as a type of ‘American apartheid’. Racism figured in this calculus, with institutions working to affect a separation between ‘white’ neighbourhoods and the encroaching newcomers.
The research discussed in Fong and Berry’s book draws on the American and Canadian urban experience. It seems likely that this was strongly affected by the way in which, in the case of the United States, city formation in the early-20th century was formed by the ‘Great Migration’ of six million African-Americans from the rural south to the industrial north of the country. The maintenance of strict residential segregation provided the impetus for a dual economy which concentrated opportunities for economic activity as well the structure of such public services as education and healthcare on the different ethnic groups in their own separate localities. Immigrants from abroad during this period had integration offered to them as the need to find their place in an already divided society, and to abide by the rules which provided the limited chance of moving up the social scale.
The Canadian journalist, Doug Saunders, has helped prise the discussion about the role in immigrant neighbourhoods into the broader perspective of urban growth under the impact of globalisation. His book ‘Arrival Cities’ ranges across the world to consider the role that migration plays in the expansion of cities from China, Bangladesh and India, through to Turkey and Europe as well as North America. His approach is useful because it helps us appreciate the diversity of the immigrant experience, extending beyond the idea of poor, desperate masses who exist in a state of victimhood, and to look at their world as one in which there is a constant striving for empowerment. When a number of positive factors are present in the space in which migrants establish themselves, and he names the availability of cheap housing within a short travel distance of abundant work, plus access to inexpensive supplies of food via street markets, then a form of social mobility is likely to commence which, within the space of a generation, will see not just the inhabitants but the entire neighbourhood move upwards to a high social and economic standing. The second generation finds itself in possession of assets which have risen in value and are able to be used for the next stage of integration.
Fong and Berry only hint at this dynamic in the chapters of their book which deal with housing attainment, community life, business opportunities, ‘foodscapes’ and ‘playscapes’. The city in which all of these happen seems to be a static entity which does not appear to change much and does not much more than offer ‘space’ to the people who make up its inhabitants. Saunders, on the other hand, sees it as the truly dynamic factor at play in the equations of immigrant arrival and integration, making use of the resources the newcomers bring with them to transform itself into the next thing it needs to be.
‘Global Cities’ theory, with the foundations laid by John Friedman and Saskia Sassen, advances our understanding of urban space in a way that makes better sense of the migrant experience. Cities are not just concentrations of buildings and other infrastructure. They ripple with the forces of capitalist market processes and exchanges which constantly work to try and change the environment to make it fit in better with the way in which the wider economic and political power structures work. When they succeed a London, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, Dubai, and Shanghai comes into being, each having arrived at its combination of capital, assets and market regulations that facilitate integration into the global economy. For most – though not all – this has meant making use of the migration to support labour markets which allow the demand for skills and labour to be met at prices the market is prepared to support. To do this successfully capital has to structure the physical environment of the city itself to bring about the integration of the workforce into its urban setting.
Understanding this last point allows us to appreciate why, in most parts of the world, immigration has ceased to be the mass movement of the impoverished, and now takes place across all economic and skill levels. The diversity of the global economy means that it needs a diverse workforce to sustain it – highly skilled at one end and the diggers of ditches and carriers of heavy loads at the other. The modern global city appears to have need of both and then confronts the problem of needing to accommodate both its richest and poorest in the same urban space. It achieves this by segmenting its internal economy into districts which generate differential prices for housing, allowing ‘poor’ housing for immigrants and low-income natives, all the way up to low-medium, high-medium, and eventually ultra-rich neighbourhoods. In a addition to housing public services play a role in determining the internal structure of this city-wide market, with transportation, schooling, the maintenance of green and public spaces, all playing a role in deciding the levels of affordability and desirability.
Fong and Berry hint at this but, in choosing not to discuss the contextual issue of capitalism, leave the reader with the sense that, complicate and diverse as it might be, the route to social progress for the migrant is a matter of balancing and trading-off goods of intrinsic value (culture, family, etc), with those backed by economic power. Its not as simple as this.
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