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Working group 1

Urban Economic Restructuring: Implications for Immigrants and Other Marginalized Populations

Kathleen Newland

International Migration Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, USA

The wide-ranging discussion of Working Group I focused on five broad topics. Within each of these, a cluster of policy-relevant research questions emerged. The working group also identified three more general characteristics of a research framework for the later Metropolis project, and concluded with a discussion of some methodological issues.

Three general issues for a research framework:

1. Policy Relevance: What is the role of public policy in shaping the answers to the following questions?
2. Comparative Perspective
3. Immediacy: focus on issues of first-generation immigrants

Research Questions

I. The role of the welfare state/fiscal structures/federalism.

1. How does the intervention of the welfare state affect the mobility, standard of living, and integration of immigrants. Compare the experiences and policies of European countries, the US, Canada and others.
   
2. The underground economy/informal sector: what is its relationship with immigration? How does it affect the integration of immigrants into the urban economy? How does public policy deal with the undocumented?
   
3. How does immigration affect the public finances of the "global city"? Providing services to immigrants (education, language training, medical care, housing) often falls on municipal budgets, whereas the tax contributions of immigrants accrue to the national treasury. What are various policy responses to this paradox? California’s Proposition 187 and U.S. immigration & welfare bills denying services to immigrants; Canada’s "landing" tax; Israel’s absorption policies, etc.
   
4. How does the form and level (municipal, national) of public finance and provisions of services affect public/community perceptions of immigration? Are new immigrants subsidized (Israel) or taxed (Canada)?
   

II. The relationship between immigrants and the native-born low-skilled or unemployed workers

1. What are the specific characteristics of native-born urban populations that differentiate the impact of immigration on the native-born? Racial composition, skills level, age profile, etc.
   
2. In which economic arenas do immigrants compete with the native-born? What is the effect on wage levels, unionization, and the social safety net of immigrant density in certain cities?
   
3. Does the method of immigrant selection affect immigrant integration?
   
4. Why and to what extent are new low-skilled jobs in the restructured urban economy taken by new immigrants rather than by native-born low-skilled workers?
   

III. Globalization/integration of national economies/restructuring of labor forces

1. What is the relationship between restructuring of national labor forces (as a result of globalization) and immigration flows? How does policy affect this relationship? For example, the US border control regime vis-à-vis Mexico has not altered the macro-economic framework or the motivations for migration. What policy could alter it?
   
2. In what industries/sectors do immigrants concentrate? What impact does immigration have on the structure of the economy of the receiving city? On its competitiveness?
   
3. What is the relationship between "high-end" immigration driven by globalization and "low-end" immigration driven by the same forces?
   
4. How do immigrants contribute to the trade opportunities of the receiving country and the position of the receiving city as a fulcrum of international trade?
   

IV. First-generation/second generation issues and policy/political timetables. The integration of second and subsequent generations is the real test of the success of the immigration process, and drives immigration to a considerable extent. But it is first-generation issues (economic competition with the native-born, cultural discomfort, language politics, costs of integration services) that drive the politics of immigration, as well as immigration policies.

1. Compare first generation/second generation dynamics in Europe and North America.
   
2. What is the relative weight of economic attraction versus other sources of attraction (ethnic networks, cultural compatibility) in the pole cities? Do labor markets respond to the presence of immigrant concentrations, or immigration flows to the character of the urban labor market?
   

V. Ethnic networks/immigrant entrepreneurship

1. Need for more empirical work on the character and extent of business formation by immigrants compared to the native-born.
   
2. What is the impact on the global city of immigrant entrepreneurship? Revitalization of urban neighborhoods, of the urban manufacturing sector?
   
3. Are immigrant businesses more prominent as a channel of wealth creation/upward mobility or as sheer survival mechanisms owing to a lack of other options?
   
4. How does reliance on ethnic networks affect the long-term mobility of immigrants? Is the ethnic niche an elevator or a trap?
   
5. Is reliance on immigrant networks primarily a phenomenon of Anglo-Saxon receiving countries? of particular immigrant groups?
   
6. What is the character of ethnic enclaves (economic or residential) positive and voluntary or negative and the product of exclusion?
   

Methodological issues

1. Second-generation studies. Does the second generation, which is by definition native-born, self-identify as an immigrant population?
   
2. Terminology. What do we mean by "immigrant"? Foreign-born? Non-citizen? Ethnic?
   
3. Differentiate among immigrant groups: by legal status, grounds of entry (family reunification, refugee, employer-sponsored, business immigrant, etc.) economic class country of origin, gender, country of destination.
   

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