Research Programs: Global Cities in an Age of Immigration

A Dialogic Workshop on the Urban Immigrant Gateways

Overview

The research program “Global Cities in an Age of Immigration” focuses on how globalization, the growth of cities and the global movement of people are becoming increasingly interrelated processes. Globalization, the growth of cities and the global movement of people are increasingly interrelated processes. For most immigration scholars the state is the container of convenience and immigrant data are analyzed at the country level. Yet the majority of contemporary economic immigrants go to cities that are increasingly linked to the global economy. Identifying these immigrant destinations, examining their ethnic composition, mapping their patterns of settlement, determining how they are linked with other cities, and exploring how these cities respond to hyperdiversity is the focus of this dialogic workshop.

Directors

Dr. Marie Price
Associate Professor of Geography and International Affairs, The George Washington University
Chair, Geography Department

Dr. Lisa Benton-Short
Associate Professor of Geography, The George Washington University
Director, Center on Urban and Environmental Research (CUER)

Forthcoming Book

Migrants to the Metropolis: The Rise of Immigrant Gateway Cities
Edited by Marie Price and Lisa Benton-Short
Published by Syracuse University Press, Spring 2008

Immigration today touches the lives and economies of more people and places than ever before. Yet the places that are disproportionately affected by immigrant flows are not countries but cities. This remarkable collection examines contemporary global immigration trends and their profound effect on specific host cities. The book focuses not only on cities with long-established diverse populations, such as New York, Toronto, and Sydney, but also on less known established gateway cities such as Birmingham (UK) and Amsterdam and the emerging gateways of Johannesburg, Washington, D.C., Singapore and Dublin. The essays gathered here provide a global portrait of accelerating, worldwide immigration driven by income differentials, social networks, and various state policies that recruit skilled and unskilled laborers. Gateway cities vary in form and function but many are hyperdiverse, globally linked through transnational networks, and often increasingly segregated spaces. Offering penetrating analysis by the leading scholars in the field, Migrants to the Metropolis redirects the global narrative surrounding migration away from states and borders and into cities, where the vast majority of economic migrants settle.

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