Immigrant Settlement Research Articles

Immigration Policy, Settlement Service, and Immigrant Mothers in Neoliberal Canada: A Feminist Analysis

Abstract This paper critically reviews the current literature on immigration and settlement and provides a feminist analysis. It places a particular emphasis on immigrant mothers' experience in order to reframe research on Canadian immigration policies and practice. Through discussing how the three waves of feminism led to the historical development of Canadian immigration policies and settlement practice, this paper examines Nancy Fraser's (2008) thinking about the welfare state, misframing, and neoliberalism for rethinking the gender neutral literature on immigration policies and settlement services. Resume Cet article passe en revue d'un ceil critique la litterature actuelle sur l'immigration et l'etablissement d'etrangers et en fait l'analyse sous un regard feministe. Il met particulierement en exergue l'experience des meres immigrees afin de recadrer la recherche sur les politiques et la pratique en matiere d'immigration au Canada. En debattant de la maniere dont les trois vagues feministes ont historiquement mene au developpement des politiques d'immigration et pratiques d'etablissement d'etrangers au Canada, cet article examine les reflexions de Nancy Fraser (2008) sur l'etat providence, le >, et le neoliberalisme pour repenser la litterature > des politiques d'immigration et des services d'etablissement des etrangers. INTRODUCTION In the past twenty years, an increasing number of studies have examined immigration settlement policies and practice in Canada. These studies pay great attention to federal-provincial-municipal governmental relations on settlement issues (Clement, Carter, and Vineberg 2013; Tolley and Young 2011); history and ISOs' organizational/institutional change (Doyle and Rahi 1987; Reitz 2001); handing and distribution of delivery of settlement services (Mwarigha 1997; Sadiq 2005); and immigrants' needs in settlement programs (Beyene 2000). However, most studies do not examine immigration settlement policies and practice from a feminist perspective. The concepts of settlement, immigrants' needs, and the welfare state are problematic in that they have been constructed within an androcentric, capitalist, and imperialist discourse. These concepts should be understood through people's actual experience. Immigrant women's/mothers' experiences have long been ignored. Immigrant women closely interact with changing immigration policy and settlement services. Despite multicultural policies and access to settlement services, immigrant women/mothers still face tremendous barriers in settlement including the gendered wage gap, unpaid care work, lack of support for childcare, and the racialization and marginalization of their everyday experience. In this paper, I critically review the current literature and provide a feminist analysis of Canadian immigration settlement policies and services and argue that immigrant women's/mothers' experiences play a crucial role in reframing research on Canadian immigration and settlement. I explore three questions: How have neoliberal immigration policies and settlement practices been framed? How do immigrant mothers interact with neoliberal restructuring? How do we understand the interaction between the changing immigration policies and practice and immigrant mothers' experience? The paper comprises three parts. First, I review the literature on Canadian immigration policy and settlement services under the contextual framework of neoliberalism. Second, I examine the institutionalization of Canadian immigration policies and settlement practice from the perspective of immigrant mothers. Finally, I review the interaction between three waves of feminism and immigration policies in Canada. I analyze Nancy Fraser's work on welfare, misframing, and neoliberalism to reflect the gender neutral literature on immigration policies and settlement services. …

Panel Data Analysis of the Impact of Economic Freedom as Well as Economic Conditions, The Quality of Life, and Public Education Spending on U.S. Undocumented Immigrant Settlement Patterns

This study seeks to identify key factors influencing the geographic settlement pattern of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., with a particular emphasis on the impact of economic freedom, and to extend the OLS findings in previous related studies. Indeed, this study adds to the literature in several ways. First, it provides current insights into the link between the settlement patterns of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and economic freedom. Second, the study adopts a panel data-set and provides estimates using cross-section fixed-effects. Third, this study also endeavors to provide further insights into the impacts on the settlement patterns of undocumented immigrants of non-economic-freedom economic conditions, as well as the quality of life and spending on primary and secondary public education. The various state fixed-effects estimates provided in the present study yield several conclusions. In particular, according to these estimations, the settlement pattern of undocumented immigrants in the U.S is inversely a function of colder climates, higher crime rates, higher population density, and a higher cost of living. In addition, the interstate distribution of undocumented immigrants to the U.S. is positively a function of the annual per pupil outlays on public primary and secondary education; it is also positively a function of the degree of economic freedom, the principal focus of this study.

Key Informant Perspectives on the Government of Canada’s Modernized Approach to Immigrant Settlement

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) funds community-based organizations to provide services such as official language training, job placement, and community engagement in a decentralized model of immigrant service provision. This approach to settlement services has been simultaneously praised as a model of best practice and criticized for inefficiency. Partly in response to criticism, in 2008 IRCC implemented the Modernized Approach to Settlement Services, a management strategy that maintains the department’s decentralized approach to funding settlement service provision but introduces several important changes. First, the Modernized Approach consolidates settlement services into a single Settlement Program to streamline the application process. Second, the Modernized Approach focuses on project outcomes rather than just measuring inputs and outputs. And third, the Modernized Approach creates avenues for grass-roots organizations to have a voice in the governance of the Settlement Program. While a few studies have discussed the Modernized Approach to Settlement Services as a promising way forward, this is the first article to examine its impact empirically. Using key informant perspectives as a guide, this article provides an overview of the areas and extent to which it has created improvements over IRCC’s previous approach to settlement services, and it identifies areas for potential improvements. Resume: Immigration, Refugies et Citoyennete Canada (IRCC) finance des organisations communautaires pour fournir des services tels que la formation linguistique, acces a l’emploi, et l’engagement communautaire dans un modele decentralise de la fourniture de services aux immigrants. Cette approche a ete simultanement salue comme un modele de bonnes pratiques et critique pour son inefficacite. En partie en reponse a la critique, en 2008 IRCC mis en œuvre l’approche modernisee de services d’etablissement, une strategie de gestion qui maintient l’approche decentralisee du ministere pour la prestation de services d’etablissement, mais qui introduit plusieurs changements importants. Tout d’abord, l’approche modernisee consolide les services d’etablissement dans un programme de reglement unique pour simplifier le processus de demande. Deuxiemement, l’approche modernisee met l’accent sur les resultats des projets plutot que des entrees et sorties juste mesure. Et troisiemement, l’approche modernisee cree des avenues pour les organisations de base d’avoir une voix dans la gouvernance du Programme d’Etablissement. Bien que quelques etudes ont discute de l’approche modernisee de services d’etablissement comme une voie prometteuse. Ceci est le premier article d’examiner son impact empiriquement. Utilisation de perspectives des informateurs cles comme un guide, cet article donne un apercu des domaines et dans quelle mesure il a cree des ameliorations par rapport approche precedente IRCC aux services d’etablissement, et il identifie les domaines d’amelioration potentiels.

Negotiating Urban Environment and Economy in New York’s Little Syria, 1880-1946

Syrian immigrants populated New York’s Lower Manhattan, creating a neighborhood known as Little Syria. Sources employ “mother colony” and other evocative terms to highlight the unique importance of New York’s Arabic-speaking enclave to Syrian immigrant settlements throughout the United States. Yet no scholarly monograph on Little Syria, covering the entire period of its existence, from approximately 1880 to 1946, has been published. This article argues that early Syrian immigrants used their distinctive ethnicity to economic advantage within this urban enclave but exited its unhealthy environment as soon as they could. Like others, Syrians found unparalleled opportunities for mobility and financial success in New York. Manifesting an Arabic culture and an affinity for the middle class, they left Little Syria behind, and made no concerted attempt to preserve the old neighborhood. They embraced ethnicity as an economic virtue but distanced themselves from ethnicity as an environmental burden.

Traditions of Tolerance: The Long-Run Persistence of Regional Variation in Attitudes towards English Immigrants

This article builds on existing studies of the long-run persistence of geographical variation in tolerance towards other ethnicities. Using English data, the study tests whether the persistent characteristic is an attitude towards a specific ethnic group, or is an underlying cultural trait of which the attitude towards a specific group is just one expression. It finds evidence for the latter, identifying geographical variation in anti-immigrant sentiment in the twenty-first century that is correlated with patterns of immigrant settlement in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, despite the fact that modern immigrant groups are quite different from those in the Middle Ages.

Coral reef fish populations can persist without immigration.

Determining the conditions under which populations may persist requires accurate estimates of demographic parameters, including immigration, local reproductive success, and mortality rates. In marine populations, empirical estimates of these parameters are rare, due at least in part to the pelagic dispersal stage common to most marine organisms. Here, we evaluate population persistence and turnover for a population of orange clownfish, Amphiprion percula, at Kimbe Island in Papua New Guinea. All fish in the population were sampled and genotyped on five occasions at 2-year intervals spanning eight years. The genetic data enabled estimates of reproductive success retained in the same population (reproductive success to self-recruitment), reproductive success exported to other subpopulations (reproductive success to local connectivity), and immigration and mortality rates of sub-adults and adults. Approximately 50% of the recruits were assigned to parents from the Kimbe Island population and this was stable through the sampling period. Stability in the proportion of local and immigrant settlers is likely due to: low annual mortality rates and stable egg production rates, and the short larval stages and sensory capacities of reef fish larvae. Biannual mortality rates ranged from 0.09 to 0.55 and varied significantly spatially. We used these data to parametrize a model that estimated the probability of the Kimbe Island population persisting in the absence of immigration. The Kimbe Island population was found to persist without significant immigration. Model results suggest the island population persists because the largest of the subpopulations are maintained due to having low mortality and high self-recruitment rates. Our results enable managers to appropriately target and scale actions to maximize persistence likelihood as disturbance frequencies increase.

New Destinations or Old Politics? Explaining Local Immigration Policing Practices in the United States

Previous research suggests two factors that may help explain differences in local government policies directed toward immigrants: the anxieties of “new destinations” (areas that have experienced a rapid, recent rise in immigrant settlement), and the “old politics” of local partisanship and political pressure. In this paper, we examine a previously unexplored aspect of the local immigration policy dynamic: do “new destinations” or “old politics” help to explain why the practices of law-enforcement agencies regarding immigrants differ among communities? Using multivariate analyses of data from three nationwide surveys of county sheriffs and police chiefs in large and small cities in the United States, our findings provide stronger evidence for the political-pressure hypothesis, although with differences across the three sets of respondents.

Welcoming Initiatives and Immigrant Attachment: The Case of Windsor

Welcoming Initiatives have been introduced across Canada together with federally funded local immigration partnerships to attract and foster long-term settlement of immigrants in smaller cities. This paper examines the context in which immigrant newcomers are welcomed to Windsor, Ontario. Through a multi-method approach that included interviews and focus groups with newcomer immigrants, interviews with key sector stakeholders, a local media analysis, and a survey of local organizations, we foreground the local ways in which immigrants are viewed as being part of the city and identify the social, cultural, and economic features that might support immigrant attachment. We argue that newcomers’ capacity to engage in and attach to various spheres of urban life is non-linear and varied: newcomers formed shifting and precarious attachments relative to their social, economic, familial, and migratory experiences. We argue that welcoming initiatives can be enhanced by more organic connections that reach beyond the settlement sector. Our conclusion calls for a place-based lens to foreground the wider local context in which welcoming initiatives are instituted to cultivate immigrant ties.

Brokering Identity and Learning Citizenship: Immigration Settlement Organizations and New Chinese Immigrants in Canada

This paper examines citizenship learning and identity construction of new Chinese immigrants in a Canadian immigration settlement organization (ISO). I address the gap between the concept of “settlement” and “citizenship” generated by government-funded ISOs and new immigrants’ actual practices in these programs. I adopt Dorothy Smith’s approach of examining the social organization of people’s everyday lives (Smith 2005) in order to unpack the ruling relations behind the immigrant settlement services and to take the standpoint of Chinese new immigrants. Under this framework, I analyze a Canadian federal government’s funding criteria for ISOs and a settlement program’s annual report to unpack the ruling relations behind the texts. I further conduct in-depth interviews with two Chinese new immigrants in a Canadian ISO to understand the ruling relations behind citizenship learning and brokering activities in Canadian ISOs from the immigrants’ standpoint.

Nashville in the New Millennium: Immigrant Settlement, Urban Transformation, and Social Belonging

Nashville in the New Millennium: Immigrant Settlement, Urban Transformation, and Social Belonging

Replacing the nation in the age of migration: negotiating South Asian identities in Toronto

This essay examines the role of the national in shaping the geo-political divides and connections of the South Asian diaspora in Toronto. South Asian diaspora identities are explored through two contrasting political projects that reveal the ambivalent role of the nation in producing diasporic subjectivities and their shifting borders. First, by discussing the perceptions of South Asians in Toronto, it is contended that national and religious divides are reproduced in the diaspora as a means of national belonging to the society of settlement. Diasporic geo-political divides are not merely transposed from societies of origin to settlement, but rather lie at the intersection of transnational and multicultural politics that encompass societies of origin and settlement. The reproduction of national divides in the South Asian diaspora is situated in the neighbourhoods of immigrant settlement that are positioned as the objects of multicultural efficacy. The second political project reconstitutes the national through cross-national solidarities. Through a discussion of South Asian organizations and political initiatives in Toronto and other cities in North America, this section illuminates diasporic politics predicated on new understandings of history and connection that rejuvenate and politicize multicultural politics. The argument presented finds that national boundaries are re-inscribed in the diaspora at the intersection of the multiple claims of membership. Simultaneously, experiences and interactions in the diaspora provide the grounds for transforming and questioning the limits of national belonging.

Give me sanctuary! The impact of personal freedom afforded by sanctuary cities on the 2010 undocumented immigrant settlement pattern within the U.S., 2SLS estimates

This study has endeavored to identify key factors that influenced the settlement pattern of undocumented immigrants among the 50 U.S. states as of the year 2010. The principal focus of the study is the potential impact of Sanctuary cities on the settlement pattern of undocumented immigrants, although both economic and environmental (weather) conditions are included in the analysis as well. The model is estimated by 2SLS both in linear form and semi-log form. Both estimation results imply that the state-level settlement pattern of undocumented immigrants was an increasing function of per capita personal income while being a decreasing function of the cost of living, colder climate, and greater humidity. More relevantly, the state-level settlement pattern of these immigrants was found to be an increasing function of the number of Sanctuary cities in each state. Among other things, then, the results in this study imply that the well-being of the undocumented immigrant population residing in the U.S. was positively affected by a greater number of Sanctuary cities and the accompanying personal freedom afforded by non-reporting of suspected undocumented immigrants to federal authorities.

Comparative and transnational perspectives on the introduction of multiculturalism in post-war Sweden

In the 1970s, Canada, Sweden and Australia became the first countries in the West to adopt formally the idea of multiculturalism as a basis for the political management of immigrant settlement. This article compares the introduction of the idea and politics of multiculturalism in Sweden in the 1960s and 1970s to the introduction of multiculturalism in Canada and Australia during the same time period. The emergence of a politics of multiculturalism in Sweden shares many similarities with the emergence of Canadian and Australian multiculturalism: ‘white’ and ‘European’ immigrant minority groups; ethnic lobbying; expert and academic advocacy; multiculturalist public officials; and effectual claims-making based on the innovative idea of multiculturalism. The comparative perspective on the birth of Swedish multiculturalism furthermore highlights Finland as an important historical and transnational factor in the introduction of official multiculturalism in Sweden. The article contributes to research on the history of multiculturalism, the politics of ethnic diversity in Sweden and comparative research on modern Swedish history.

Latino Immigrants and Rural Gentrification: Race, “Illegality,” and Precarious Labor Regimes in the United States

This article examines the emergence of immigrant-based precarious labor regimes in U.S. rural areas undergoing gentrification. Drawing on field-based research in rural Georgia and Colorado, we explore how Latino and Latina immigrant workers were recruited to places that had been largely off the map of Latino immigrant settlement prior to the late 1990s to work in service and construction employment stimulated by gentrification. We trace evolving recruitment and labor practices that drew on hierarchies of race and “illegality” to fundamentally improve the productivity and profitability of gentrification-linked sectors. Key to this process was the active recruitment of Latino workers in the 1990s and early 2000s (usually recruited off subcontracted crews hired out from distant metropolitan areas) and the establishment of personal relations of loyalty and dependence between those workers and their white bosses. Over time, these personal relationships often produced informal labor brokers for business owners, brokers who facilitated access to immigrant networks necessary for further recruitment of immigrant workers and critical to producing the high degree of flexibility and discipline that began to characterize these emerging labor regimes. Our analysis makes two key theoretical contributions. First, by exploring how precarious labor regimes become instantiated into rural spaces we decenter the urban in our understanding of these regimes as theorized by Theodore and others. Second, we highlight the importance of attending to the imbrication of class, race, and “illegality” in rural gentrification research.

Nashville in the New Millennium: Immigrant Settlement, Urban Transformation, and Social Belonging. By Jamie Winders. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2013. Pp. xx+318. $39.95 (paper).

<i>Nashville in the New Millennium: Immigrant Settlement, Urban Transformation, and Social Belonging</i>. By Jamie Winders. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2013. Pp. xx+318. $39.95 (paper).

Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict by Maud Mandel (review)

Reviewed by: Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict by Maud Mandel Daniella Doron Maud Mandel. Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. 272 pages. Hardcover $35.00. ISBN: 9780691125817. The issue of Muslim-Jewish relations in France took center stage in 2014, once again. As the 2014 war in Gaza unfolded in the Middle East, a video recording of pro-Palestinian protesters attacking a Jewish synagogue in the 11th arrondissement of Paris went viral. Newspapers across the globe reported on the modest but steady rise of French Jews immigrating to Israel, a trend commonly attributed to France’s purportedly inhospitable environment for Jews, and the rise of antisemitism amongst France’s Muslim youth. Cultural commentators in France and abroad advanced several explanations for the rise of antisemitism among French Muslim minorities, and the disconcerting tendency to attribute current events in Israel to diaspora Jewry. Some commentators pointed to the disadvantaged position of Muslim youth within French social and economic life, while others blamed age-old Muslim antisemitism, and yet others directly linked developments in France to the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. [End Page 211] Maud Mandel’s timely and superb historical study Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict nuances these reductive explanations. French Jews and Muslims indeed have a shaky relationship that has devolved in recent decades, as evidenced in the antagonistic reactions to the 2014 events in Israel by both communities. Muslims and Jews in France seeks to explain how these two French minorities, who share multiple political concerns and by all logic should strike an alliance, have instead built a relationship characterized by mutual suspicion and enmity. But rather than reducing this conflict to timeless and intractable Muslim antisemitism or ephemeral events in Israel, Mandel attributes the current state of “conflict” to developments in North Africa and France between the 1948 war in Israel and the 1980s “right to be different.” Mandel’s argument is threefold: she argues that conversations amongst Muslims and Jews that were seemingly about the Middle East actually functioned as forums to voice dissatistfaction with French administrative and socio-economic inequalities; the particular dynamics of French decolonization in North Africa and immigrant settlement patterns in France were critical in helping shape the trajectory of future French Jewish and Muslims relations; and, finally, the framing of Muslim-Jewish interactions as necessarily polarized or as a binary relationship papers over the exceedingly complex social reality and the diversity of French Jewish and Muslim experience. Throughout the study, Mandel turns to the port city of Marseille to illustrate how French Muslims and Jewish individuals could live harmoniously side by side and yet all the while decolonization, events in the Middle East, and French minority politics could inflame tensions between the two communities. The book begins in Marseille in 1948 as war breaks out in the Middle East over the establishment of the State of Israel. Unlike elsewhere in France, the situation was especially heated because Marseille was both the new home of Algerian Muslim laborers and a hub for postwar illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine. Mandel argues that the events in Israel actually functioned as a “barometer of the country’s fluctuating and contradictory commitments to some of its most insecure citizens” (33). Postwar French Jews, who had been so recently stripped of citizenship, encouraged French administrators to support the State of Israel and ignore the stream of migrants and munitions passing through Marseille’s ports, while poor and disadvantaged Muslim laborers and pan-Arab nationalists, for their part, prodded the French state to stem the tide of illegal Jewish immigration but, just as crucially, to remain true to its stated commitment to equality of citizenship. The government’s ultimate willingness to turn a blind eye to Jewish illegal immigration brought into stark relief, for some politically active Algerian Muslims, the inequities inherent in the French system and their disadvantaged position. The second chapter turns to decolonization in North Africa, and perceptions about the migration of North African Jews to France and Israel. Though North African Jewish migration occurred in the larger context of European migration, Mandel argues that a specifically Jewish narrative emerged...

Nashville in the New Millennium: Immigrant Settlement, Urban Transformation, and Social Belonging, by JamieWinders, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2013. 318 pp. $39.95 (paper). ISBN: 9780871549334.

Nashville in the New Millennium: Immigrant Settlement, Urban Transformation, and Social Belonging, by JamieWinders, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2013. 318 pp. $39.95 (paper). ISBN: 9780871549334.

Exploring the Experiences of Newcomer Women with Insecure Housing in Montréal Canada

The objective of this study was to explore housing insecurity among women newcomers to Montreal, Canada. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 26 newcomer women who had experienced housing insecurity and five women’s shelter service providers. The primary cause of housing insecurity for newcomer women was inadequate income in the face of rapidly rising housing costs, coupled with unfamiliarity with the dominant culture and the local housing system. Specific events often served as tipping points for immigrant women—incidents that forced women into less secure housing. To avoid absolute homelessness, most women stayed with family, couch surfed, used women’s or educational residences, shared a room or an apartment, lived in hotels, single rented rooms, or transitional housing. These arrangements were often problematic, as crowded conditions, financial dependency, differing expectations and interpersonal conflicts made for stressful or exploitive relationships, which sometimes ended abruptly. Only two of the 26 women interviewed described their current living situation as stable. Based on the findings on the study, we recommend training for housing and immigration service providers, wrap-around services in terms of health, housing and immigration settlement programs that take into account a broad range of immigration statuses and transitional housing that caters to the specific needs of migrant women.

Pottery and Society in Iron Age Philistia: Feasting, Identity, Economy, and Gender

The Aegean-inspired pottery of Iron I Philistia has received a great deal of scholarly attention. Many have studied the various influences that shaped it, its development during the Iron I, the ethnic identity of its users, and even its disappearance at the beginning of the Iron II. While constantly changing during the first 150 years after the initial settlement of the new immigrants in Israel' southern coastal plain, this decorated pottery grew in popularity, and steadily increased its percentage in the ceramic assemblages of the Philistine centers. Later, in the early Iron II, this Aegean decorative tradition disappeared. The decorated pottery in Iron II Philistia (Ashdod Ware) was more akin to Phoenician decorative traditions, was applied to different vessel forms, and was far less popular than its predecessor. It is the aim of the present article to reevaluate the developments of the Aegean-inspired pottery during the Iron I and to reexamine the drastic transition from this decorated pottery to a local type of decorated ware in the Iron II, in order to learn about processes of development and change within the society of Philistia and about the relations between the Philistines and their neighbors, both within and without Philistia, at that time.

Exploring Dissuasion as a (Geo)Political Instrument in Irregular Migration Control at the Southern Spanish Maritime Border

This article analyses the evolution and implementation of Spanish policy to control irregular immigration via maritime routes over the past two decades. Starting from the premise that this policy was based on a comprehensive strategy of dissuasion to prevent, contain and hinder the arrival and settlement of irregular immigrants, for analytical purposes the article introduces the concepts of preventive dissuasion, coercive dissuasion and repressive dissuasion to describe actions of diverse categories, hierarchy and scope that sequentially and simultaneously shape and structure the logic behind dissuasion used in different “territorial settings”. Spain has deployed a great deal of this policy – mainly preventive and coercive dissuasion strategies – through bilateral agreements and formal practices with African countries. This article is based on fieldwork carried out between 2008 and 2012 in different Spanish border areas, including interviews with different actors and visits to border posts and surveillance installations.