Shifting Settlement Patterns & Mismatched Resources: The Landscape of Immigrant Organizations in Urban & Suburban Philadelphia

Abstract

Do urban or suburban neighborhoods provide greater access to organizations that offer immigrants needed services throughout various stages of the integration process? We pose this question in the face of historical shifts in immigration patterns: the bypassing of central cities for the suburbs as the direct site of immigrant settlement. In asking this question, we are concerned with immigrant resources as one aspect of neighborhood advantage. Using American Community Survey 2005-2009 five year estimates and original data of immigrant organizations in the Philadelphia region, we employ a method of spatial buffering to examine the distribution of immigrant organizations in greater Philadelphia region, including the cities of Philadelphia, PA, Camden, NJ, and Wilmington, DE and their surrounding suburbs. Our results reveal a critical spatial mismatch between current patterns of direct immigrant settlement in suburbs and a persistent urban advantage in access to immigrant resources. In the Philadelphia region, urban areas have, on average, approximately an additional 1.14 more organizations per census tract when compared to non-urban tracts, controlling for neighborhood characteristics. We find that this urban advantage varies by resource type. While for cultural maintenance organizations the urban advantage is only 0.9 additional organizations in urban tracts over suburban tracts, for subsistence and mobility organizations that provide immigrants essential services, the urban advantage more than doubles, with 2.0 more subsistence and 1.9 more mobility organizations in urban tracts compared to suburban ones. Suburban landscapes present far greater challenges to immigrant newcomers in terms of access to resources than urban landscapes so. The urban bias also varies by ethnic orientation of organizations. Organizations focused on providing resources to Asian and European immigrants have a stronger urban bias than those focused on providing resources to Latino and African immigrants, while organizations providing resources for all immigrants regardless of ethnicity have the strongest urban bias, with 1.6 more of these general organizations in urban tracts compared to suburban tracts. Last, we find that neighborhood poverty affects this relationship across groups differently, such that increases in poverty are positively linked to greater access to immigrant organizations providing services for Latino and African immigrants, but negatively linked to greater access to immigrant organizations aimed at serving Asian or European immigrants. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for understanding the unique contours of immigrant integration within a new and changing suburban context.