New Immigrant Destinations: A Pilot Project for a Multi-Site, Mixed-Methods Study
Supplemental Award: $35,000, June 2009
More and more newcomers to the United States are settling in areas beyond the traditional urban gateways of past immigration waves. This trend may have profound implications for the social and economic fabric of many communities and the nation as a whole. With support from the Foundation, a team of researchers led by Katherine Fennelly (University of Minnesota), Gordon Hanson (University of California at San Diego), Michael Jones-Correa (Cornell University), Douglas Massey (Princeton University) and Marta Tienda (Princeton University) will conduct a pilot project to test the research design for a study of immigration beyond traditional gateways.
The general goal of the study is to provide more systematic evidence than is currently available about how new host communities are reacting to the recent influx of immigrants, and how the new arrivals are faring in local labor markets and in their interactions with education, health, civic, and other local institutions. The investigators will conduct sample surveys of native and foreign-born residents in up to twelve new immigrant communities, purposefully selected to paint a broad picture of immigration today. Target communities will be matched with comparison communities that are similar in size and industry structure, but have not experienced a noticeable growth in the foreign-born population. The New Immigrant Destinations project will provide a wealth of information on such questions as how different communities facilitate or impede assimilation, whether settlement patterns result in higher or different levels of residential segregation and social isolation, and what conditions increase or decrease the likelihood of anti-immigrant sentiment.
A companion qualitative study will include in-depth interviews with key informants and focus groups with cross-sections of the native- and foreign-born groups. To test the proposed research design, the investigators will pilot the project in Chatham and Person counties in North Carolina, a rapidly growing new destination state. Outcomes from this pilot project will inform the larger study.