Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Variegated Landscape of Local Immigration Policies in U.S. Metropolitan Areas

虽然美国的移民执法传统上是在联邦一级运作，但在过去十年中，数百个地方政府考虑或实施了地方规模的移民政策，以处理其社区的非法移民问题。许多关于移民政策相对较新的本地化的学术研究主要集中在这些政策的法律和政治方面，因此忽视了这些政策的性质在大都市地区内是如何变化的。似乎，虽然中心城市倾向于包容性政策，但它们的郊区往往是移民人口增长最快的地方，往往采取相反的路线，制定排他性举措。事实上，这样的政策让人想起过去郊区的法令，这些法令帮助产生了大都市的居住隔离。这一博士论文研究项目探索了影响当地移民政策实施的因素和条件，以及大都市地区对移民的政治反应如何变化。具体地说，这项研究还考察了推动郊区地方移民政策的动机。该项目利用为芝加哥、华盛顿特区和凤凰城大都市区收集的数据，并使用统计建模、基于地理信息系统的空间分析、文件分析和关键线人访谈来调查这些地方政策的实施如何以及为什么在不同的空间有所不同。这项研究旨在展示当地社会人口特征和社会空间认同的差异如何帮助在美国大都市地区培育新出现的地方移民政策拼凑。这项研究项目考察了郊区社区对快速人口变化的反应方式。这样的过程有可能极大地重塑美国大都市地区的人口特征。随着美国各地的郊区因移民而经历戏剧性的变化，了解美国移民政策和当地大都市特征之间的交集如何影响郊区对这些变化的反应是至关重要的。因此，该项目将关于移徙的学术与关于郊区化和居住隔离的工作联系起来。它还有可能为美国大都市地区有关移民融合和社会不平等的城市政策提供信息。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将为有前途的学生建立独立的研究生涯提供支持。

While immigration enforcement in the United States has traditionally operated at the federal level, hundreds of local governments in the past decade have considered or implemented local scale immigration policies to deal with issues of undocumented immigration in their communities. Much of the scholarship on this relatively new localization of immigration policy has focused primarily on the legal and political aspects of these policies, and has thus neglected how the nature of these policies varies within metropolitan areas. It appears that whereas central cities tend to prefer inclusionary policies, their suburbs, where immigrant populations are frequently growing the fastest, often take the opposite route and enact exclusionary initiatives. Such policies, in fact, are reminiscent of past ordinances in the suburbs that helped produce metropolitan residential segregation. This doctoral dissertation research project explores the factors and conditions influencing the implementation of local immigration policies and how political responses to immigration vary within metropolitan areas. Specifically, the research also examines the motivations that drive local immigration policies in the suburbs. This project draws upon data collected for the Chicago, Washington DC, and Phoenix metropolitan areas, and uses statistical modeling, GIS-based spatial analysis, as well as document analysis and key informant interviews to investigate how and why the implementation of these local policies varies across space. This study aims to demonstrate how variations in local socio-demographic characteristics and socio-spatial identities have helped foster an emerging patchwork of local immigration policies within US metropolitan areas. This research project examines the ways in which suburban communities are responding to rapid demographic changes. Such processes have the potential to dramatically re-shape the demographic character of metropolitan areas in the United States. As suburbs across the US experience dramatic changes due to immigration, it is vital to understand how the intersections between US immigration policy and local metropolitan characteristics influence suburban responses to these changes. This project thus links scholarship on migration with work on suburbanization and residential segregation. It also has the potential to inform urban policies concerned with immigrant integration and social inequalities within US metropolitan areas. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish an independent research career.