Welcoming, Trust, and Civic Engagement: Immigrant Integration in Metropolitan America

Abstract

Prior studies have sought to understand how immigrants integrate into U.S. society, focusing on the ways in which local contexts and institutions limit immigrant incorporation. In this study, we consider how interactions among immigrants and U.S.-born within receiving communities contribute to the process of immigrant integration. We emphasize the extent to which immigrants perceive that they are welcome in their social environments and the downstream effects of those perceptions. Drawing on new representative survey data and in-depth interviews with first-generation Mexican and Indian immigrants in the Atlanta and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, we examine what constitutes feeling welcomed and how these perceptions are associated with immigrants’ interest and trust in the U.S.-born and with their civic participation. Our focus on two metropolitan areas with long-standing racialized dynamics, coupled with new waves of immigration, provides insights about the role of welcoming contexts in immigrant integration in the twenty-first century.