Welcoming, Trust, and Civic Engagement: Immigrant Integration in Metropolitan America

• Author: Helen B. Marrow,Dina G. Okamoto,Linda R. Tropp,Michael Jones-Correa
• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716220927661
• Published date: 01 July 2020

ANNALS, AAPSS, 690, July 2020 61

DOI: 10.1177/0002716220927661

Welcoming,

Trust, and Civic

Engagement:

Immigrant

Integration in

Metropolitan

America

By

DINA G. OKAMOTO,

LINDA R. TROPP,

HELEN B. MARROW,

and

MICHAEL JONES-CORREA

927661ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYWELCOMING, TRUST, AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

research-article2020

Prior studies have sought to understand how immi-

grants integrate into U.S. society, focusing on the ways

in which local contexts and institutions limit immigrant

incorporation. In this study, we consider how interac-

tions among immigrants and U.S.-born within receiving

communities contribute to the process of immigrant

integration. We emphasize the extent to which immi-

grants perceive that they are welcome in their social

environments and the downstream effects of those

perceptions. Drawing on new representative survey

data and in-depth interviews with first-generation

Mexican and Indian immigrants in the Atlanta and

Philadelphia metropolitan areas, we examine what con-

stitutes feeling welcomed and how these perceptions

are associated with immigrants’ interest and trust in the

U.S.-born and with their civic participation. Our focus

on two metropolitan areas with long-standing racialized

dynamics, coupled with new waves of immigration,

provides insights about the role of welcoming contexts

in immigrant integration in the twenty-first century.

Keywords: immigrants; refugees; trust; welcoming;

integration; metropolitan America

Questions about whether and how new

immigrants integrate into U.S. society

have been at the forefront of immigration

debates for decades, if not centuries (see Alba

and Nee 2003). In prior studies of contempo-

rary immigration in the post-1965 era, scholars

Dina G. Okamoto is the Class of 1948 Herman B. Wells

Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for

Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society (CRRES) at

Indiana University. Her research addresses how group

boundaries and identities form and change, which has

broader implications for immigrant incorporation,

racial formation, and intergroup relations.

Linda R. Tropp is a professor of social psychology and

a faculty associate in the School of Public Policy at the

University of Massachusetts Amherst. For more than

two decades she has studied how members of different

groups experience contact with each other and how

group differences in status affect cross-group relations.

Correspondence: dokamoto@indiana.edu

62 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

have pointed to the importance of the contexts of reception that immigrants must

navigate after arrival. Such contexts comprise formal institutions, state policies,

and local practices, all of which ultimately shape immigrants’ pathways to social

mobility and integration (Kasinitz etal. 2008; Portes and Rumbaut 2014; Portes

and Zhou 1993).

In this article, we advance research on contexts of reception and immigrant

integration in two ways. First, we build on existing scholarship that emphasizes

the importance of exclusionary institutions and policies and anti-immigrant atti-

tudes (see Massey and Sanchez 2010; Menjívar and Abrego 2012; O’Neil 2010;

Varsanyi 2011; Walker and Leitner 2011). We do this by focusing on welcoming

contexts and attitudes, which likely play a role in creating a sense of belonging

and inclusion for immigrants. Such a focus is especially warranted given the

recent growth in local initiatives designed to welcome immigrants throughout the

United States and Europe (see Fussell 2014; Welcoming America 2017) and their

potential downstream consequences for integration.

Second, to the extent that prior work has examined how inclusionary efforts

have influenced immigrant integration into host societies, it has primarily focused

on governmental policies and local institutions (see Bloemraad 2006; Jones-

Correa 2011; Schildkraut etal. 2019; Williamson 2018). In contrast, we focus on

the everyday interactions that occur between immigrants and the U.S.-born and

how immigrants perceive themselves and other groups. Even in places recog-

nized as welcoming cities with inclusive policies (see Huang and Liu 2018;

Marrow 2012; Welcoming America 2017), newcomers may still vary in the extent

to which they subjectively feel welcomed by the U.S.-born. Immigrants’ experi-

ences and encounters with members of host communities may signal acceptance

or rejection, and they are key in shaping a sense of welcome and belonging (see

Castañeda 2018; Tropp etal. 2018). Thus, we use new representative survey data

and in-depth interviews from immigrant populations in Atlanta and Philadelphia

to investigate the extent to which U.S. immigrants feel welcomed in their every-

day lives and how this sense of feeling welcomed contributes to engagement

within their new communities.

The Integration of Immigrants in the United States

To understand U.S. immigrant integration, past research has emphasized the

ways in which broader policy and institutional contexts influence the social and

Helen B. Marrow is an associate professor of sociology at Tufts University. She is author of New

Destination Dreaming: Immigration, Race, and Legal Status in the Rural American South

(Stanford 2011) and coeditor of “Health Care, Immigrants and Minorities: Lessons from the

Affordable Care Act in the United States” in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2017).

Michael Jones-Correa is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Political Science and direc-

tor of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Immigration (CSERI) at the University

of Pennsylvania. He is a co–principal investigator of the 2006 Latino National Survey and the

2012 and 2016 Latino Immigrant National Election Study.