Resettlement cities: A mixture model analysis of the dispersion and placement strategy of U.S. refugee policy

Abstract

Critical migration scholarship examines cities' economic, sociopolitical dimensions that not only shape migration patterns via a demand for migrant labor, but also forge complex social relations between migrants and their new neighbors. Drawing from critical migration theories, this study interrogates the dispersion or placement strategy of U.S. refugee policy, which resettles refugees into cities largely without a systematic, deliberative process. Meanwhile, refugee placement has become politicized. State and city governments are divided on resettling refugees in their jurisdictions. Using mixture model analysis, we examined city-level factors in 3000 U.S. cities where about 73,000 refugees were placed in 2010. Findings show that 90% of refugees were placed in just three types of resettlement cities: one parallels ‘traditional immigration gateways’ and two parallel ‘new immigrant destinations’. We find that what is salient in resettlement cities is not the availability of jobs per se, but that of low-wage jobs specifically, pointing to cities' demand for refugee labor. Findings along sociopolitical dimensions suggest that the typical resettlement city is simultaneously anti-refugee in political party affiliation but have integrative local policies, reflecting tensions between “contact” and “threat” hypotheses in migration literature. This study reveals contradictions inherent to U.S. resettlement policy that heretofore has been undetected.