Audrey Singer

The emergence of protective citizenship in the USA: naturalization among Dominican immigrants in the post-1996 welfare reform era

Despite the increase in scholarly attention to citizenship, few studies have examined how immigrants acquire formal citizenship through naturalization. We employ a qualitative, longitudinal case-study approach to examine whether immigrants naturalize in the U.S. or not, and how they understand naturalization and citizenship in the post-1996 Welfare Reform period. We found that for many immigrants, U.S. citizenship does not necessarily signify permanent settlement or incorporation in the U.S. Indeed, U.S. citizenship allowed older immigrants to continue a pattern of transnational residence, challenging the association between citizenship and permanent incorporation in a single locale and citizenship and integration. Our findings challenge both the national and post-national perspectives and argues for a transnational view of citizenship.

The World Settles in: Washington, DC, as an Immigrant Gateway

This study examines the ethnic geography of a new immigrant gateway, Washington, DC. According to Census 2000, more than 832,000 foreign-born individuals reside in the Washington metropolitan region. This research uses Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) data in an effort to map the residential decisions of immigrant newcomers by zip code from 1990 to 1998. Spatially, a very diverse, dispersed, and suburbanized pattern of newcomer settlement emerges, a pattern that contradicts many of the assumptions of the spatial assimilation model. Whereas the overall pattern is one of dispersion, an analysis of country-of-origin groups results in a settlement continuum ranging from concentrated (Vietnamese) to highly dispersed (Indians). Current research in Washington suggests that a pattern of heterolocalism (community without propinquity) may be a better model for understanding the role of immigrant settlement patterns and networks.