Justin Peter Steil

The New Immigration Contestation: Social Movements and Local Immigration Policy Making in the United States, 2000–2011

Analyzing oppositional social movements in the context of municipal immigration ordinances, the authors examine whether the explanatory power of resource mobilization, political process, and strain theories of social movements’ impact on policy outcomes differs when considering proactive as opposed to reactive movements. The adoption of pro-immigrant (proactive) ordinances was facilitated by the presence of immigrant community organizations and of sympathetic local political allies. The adoption of anti-immigrant (reactive) ordinances was influenced by structural social changes, such as rapid increases in the local Latino population, that were framed as threats. The study also finds that pro-immigrant protest events can influence policy in two ways, contributing both to the passage of pro-immigrant ordinances in the locality where protests occur and also inhibiting the passage of anti-immigrant ordinances in neighboring cities.

'Small-town defenders': the production of citizenship and belonging in Hazleton, Pennsylvania †

Over the past five years an aggressive movement has emerged to return immigration enforcement powers to the local level in the US, and to some extent in Europe as well. Hazleton, PA, was home to the first local government in the US to pass an ‘Illegal Immigration Relief Act’ (IIRA), which subsequently became a model for other cities across the country seeking to implement their own immigration regulations. We argue that Hazletons IIRA was as much productive of tensions over migration as it was the product of them. Neoliberal economic restructuring left Hazleton residents feeling a sense of ‘class downgrading’ but the ordinance itself was central in creating divisions between the native-born white population and recent Latino arrivals. As much as the ordinance served to exclude undocumented immigrants, it simultaneously served to unify native-born white residents by repositioning Hazleton as ‘small-town USA’, no longer marginal but, instead, central to the defense of American ‘quality of life’. Control over housing became a key form of spatial and territorial control through the creation of a location in which outsiders could be defined as not-belonging and local citizenship could be imbued with new meaning. The paper illuminates the ways in which ‘Americanness’ and citizenship are locally constructed and highlights the significance of territorial control and collective identity in addition to economic restructuring in the resurgence of local immigration regulations.

Desvinculado y Desigual: Is Segregation Harmful to Latinos?

Despite the high levels of metropolitan-area segregation that Latinos experience, there is a lack of research examining the effects of segregation on Latino socioeconomic outcomes and whether those effects differ from the negative effects documented for African Americans. We find that segregation is consistently associated with lower levels of educational attainment and labor market success for both African American and Latino young adults compared with whites, with associations of similar magnitudes for both groups. One mechanism through which segregation may influence outcomes is the difference in the levels of neighborhood human capital to which whites, Latinos, and African Americans are exposed. We find that higher levels of segregation are associated with lower black and Latino neighborhood exposure to residents with college degrees, relative to whites. We also find support for other commonly discussed mechanisms, such as exposure to neighborhood violent crime and the relative proficiency of the closest public school.

Riding the Stagecoach to Hell: A Qualitative Analysis of Racial Discrimination in Mortgage Lending

Recent studies have used statistical methods to show that minorities were more likely than equally qualified whites to receive high–cost, high–risk loans during the U.S. housing boom, evidence taken to suggest widespread discrimination in the mortgage lending industry. The evidence, however, was indirect, being inferred from racial differentials that persisted after controlling for other factors known to affect the terms of lending. Here we assemble a qualitative database to generate direct evidence of discrimination. Using a sample of 220 statements randomly selected from documents assembled in the course of recent fair lending lawsuits, we code texts for evidence of individual discrimination, structural discrimination, and potential discrimination in mortgage lending practices. We find that 76 percent of the texts indicated the existence of structural discrimination, with only 11 percent suggesting individual discrimination alone. We then present a sample of texts that were coded as discriminatory to reveal the way in which racial discrimination was embedded within the social structure of U.S. mortgage lending, and to reveal the specific microsocial mechanisms by which this discrimination was effected.

Innovative Responses to Foreclosures: Paths to Neighborhood Stability and Housing Opportunity

This Article argues that the current foreclosure crisis illustrates how economic stability and racial justice are intertwined. Recent research has found that the more racially segregated a metropolitan region is, the higher the number and rate of its foreclosures. Indeed, the high levels of racial residential segregation in the U.S. facilitated discriminatory and abusive lending practices and contributed to instability in regional housing markets. The Article contends that current fair housing laws alone are insufficient to dismantle the economic and political structures that continue to produce segregation, particularly the architecture of fragmented and unequal local governments competing with each other for resources. Responses to foreclosures provide an opportunity to chip away at these incentives for segregation by encouraging regional collaboration and shared-equity homeownership structures. Two promising examples of such collaboration are examined: first, a partnership between local governments and non-profits conducting targeted redevelopment through the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program; and, second, a joint effort by a community development financial institution and a community development corporation to buy portfolios of distressed notes at a discount in order to rehabilitate scattered-site properties as affordable housing. Building on these examples, the Article proposes that the next significant step toward creating durable solutions is for municipalities to support shared-equity homeownership structures designed to create permanent affordability and neighborhood stability. Innovative responses to foreclosures from federal, state, and local policymakers hold the promise of advancing both economic security and racial justice.

The Significance of Segregation in the 21st Century

Researchers have vigorously debated the significance of the reductions in residential segregation by race that U.S. metropolitan areas have experienced. While some argue that we have witnessed the “end of the segregated century” (Vigdor and Glaeser 2012; Vigdor 2013), others highlight the persistence of high levels of segregation in many areas (e.g., Logan 2013). There has been far less debate about the relationship between segregation and access to opportunity in the 21st century. Yet such exploration is critical to a richer understanding of the significance of segregation. Almost two decades ago, David Cutler and Edward Glaeser (1997) found that in 1990 a one-standard-deviation reduction in levels of residential segregation would eliminate one-third of the gap between whites and blacks in high school graduation rates, earnings, rates of single motherhood, and the likelihood of being simultaneously out of work and out of school. Cutler and Glaeser (1997) also found that only one-third of the effects of segregation could be explained by exposure to less educated neighbors, distance from jobs, or parental background. Analyzing data from 1940 through 1980, however, William Collins and Robert Margo (2000) subsequently found that some of the negative socioeconomic effects of segregation identified by Cutler and Glaeser (1997) were actually a relatively recent development. For instance, Collins and Margo (2000) identified no significant relationship between segregation and the likelihood of employment or single motherhood between 1940 and 1970. These findings suggest that some of the negative effects of black–white residential segregation emerged primarily with the economic restructuring and dramatic neighborhood change of the 1970s (Wilson 1996). Together, these results indicate that the effects of segregation vary over time in relation to broader social, economic, and political developments. There are at least three key questions to explore about the effects of segregation in the 21st century. First, does segregation continue to constrain economic and social mobility for minority groups? Second, are the effects similar for the two largest non-white groups in the United States, African Americans and Latinos, despite their different historical experiences of segregation? Third, and perhaps most importantly, how does segregation

The social structure of mortgage discrimination

Abstract In the decade leading up to the US housing crisis, black and Latino borrowers disproportionately received high-cost, high-risk mortgages—a lending disparity well documented by prior quantitative studies. We analyse qualitative data from actors in the lending industry to identify the social structure though which this mortgage discrimination took place. Our data consist of 220 depositions, declarations and related exhibits submitted by borrowers, loan originators, investment banks and others in fair lending cases. Our analyses reveal specific mechanisms through which loan originators identified and gained the trust of black and Latino borrowers in order to place them into higher cost, higher risk loans than similarly situated white borrowers. Loan originators sought out lists of individuals already borrowing money to buy consumer goods in predominantly black and Latino neighbourhoods to find potential borrowers, and exploited intermediaries within local social networks, such as community or religious leaders, to gain those borrowers’ trust.

book review: Gentrification. By Loretta Lees, Tom Slater and Elvin Wyly. New York and London: Routledge. 2007. xxvii + 310 pp.

(pp. 54–56) in which Farrelly asks, ‘When did architects stop wearing bow ties?’, and ‘Churches against beauty’ (pp. 69–73), in which she notes evangelical churches, which lack the beauty of ‘nice old churches’, are ‘spreading like cane toads’. Although a vast array of topics is covered in Blubberland (for example, climate change, nature, addiction, feminism) it is the material on architecture, urban form and consumer excesses that is likely to compel cultural geographers to want to have this book on their shelves.