The Limits of Local Immigrant Political Incorporation: The US Case

What explains similarities and differences in the local civic and political integration of immigrants, even within the same national context?  What is the relationship between national and local integration?  And how far does local integration extend?    Drawing on survey and qualitative research in three metro areas (Philadelphia, Atlanta and Washington DC) and several counties in North Carolina, this project explores immigrant integration across a number of towns and cities in the United States, exploring similarities and variation across cities and counties, and between conservative and liberal regions.  The boundary between local efforts to incorporate immigrants and local intransigence can be a thin one. In some cases, local elected and non-elected officials reach out to involve immigrants in civic and political life before there are concrete demands they do so.  But there are real limits to this incorporation.   In liberal areas, incorporation efforts are seemingly real, but can end up being symbolic rather substantive.  In conservative areas, actors may be able offer immigrants a kind of limited local membership, but only by invoking national legal protections that offer only some protection from local anti-immigrant sentiment.   In each setting integration efforts take place, but with real limits on the extent of incorporation offered, in the end, to new immigrant arrivals.