Urban Contexts and Immigrant Organizations: Differences in New York,El Paso,Paris,and Barcelona

Abstract

This article compares immigrant and ethnic organizations in four major immigrant-receiving cities and reveals substantial variation across these immigrant gateway cities. Using data from ethnographic fieldwork and an original database of relevant organizations in New York City; El Paso, Texas; Paris; and Barcelona, I find differences in organizational type and density, as well as in their legitimacy and funding. This article contributes to a growing literature on immigrant organizations. Although immigrant organizations have a long history in some cities, they may not always operate in ways that enhance refugee and migrant integration. Comparing immigrant organizations is fruitful because it tells us more about city and national political systems and why distinct localities deal with cultural minorities differently. These comparisons can help the readers to understand the barriers and ladders that immigrants encounter in different cities and inform policy-makers in designing better approaches to incorporate immigrants.

Keywords

migrant civic participation urban belonging immigrant integration contexts of reception immigrant organizations

Immigrants often congregate and create organizations with people from their hometowns or countries of origin or those with whom they share a religion. These organizations may attenuate the nostalgia of leaving home. These groups can act as mutual aid societies to help people succeed in their place of residence, or they may have political aims for reform in their home country. Some organizations advocating for immigrant rights and services may be founded and staffed by nonimmigrants. Ethnic organizations are those that advocate for citizens who may be part of a racial, ethnic, or religious minority, and who are often the children or grandchildren of immigrants or the descendants of slaves or indigenous peoples. Examples of such organizations include the NAACP, the Antidefamation League, and UnidosUS (formerly known as the National Council of La Raz). The eruption of ethnic organizations in the political sphere is a way for these groups to be included in political decisions and to decrease the structural factors that create inequities and exclude these groups from access to opportunities, respect, and economic well-being. Community organizations, networks, leaders, spokespeople, and brokers make it easier to find solutions when conflicts occur. A lack of organizations and social capital may result in conflicts escalating faster, thus making violent confrontations and riots more likely to occur.

Immigrant and ethnic organizations may be central to the process of social and economic integration for refugees and migrants. Prior studies suggest that these organizations assist newly arrived migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees by offering information about family reunification and legal advice, providing community programs and services, and serving as advocates with external groups. Building on these studies, this article examines the characteristics of immigrant and ethnic organizations in four major cities. It investigates variation in the types of organizations by situating the differences in specific urban contexts to understand the implications for refugee and migrant integration. The results are of general importance because while many policy-makers, researchers, and philanthropists may think that immigrant and ethnic organizations represent communities, in reality, an organization can be grassroots or very detached from the everyday life struggles of the people for whom it is supposed to advocate. It is also important to remember that most immigrants and minorities are not active members of any of these organizations. These are not reasons to exclude these populations or to turn our back on some of these organizations, but they serve as a reminder that reaching out to members of excluded groups has to be done at the systemic level by government officials and one by one by people committed to inclusion and democratic practice.

Literature Review

Since the late 1990s, ethnic and immigrant organizations have been important foci of social science research. A transnational approach to migration documented many examples of groups abroad collecting and sending funds to towns of origin for collective purposes such as public works, painting churches, or building sports fields.

Social scientists have done insightful work on the effect of advocacy organizations. Minkoff (1993) examined the loss of the legitimacy of national women’s and minority membership organizations between 1955 and 1985; Bail (2014) investigated how anti-Muslim organizations influenced views of Muslims and Muslim Americans after the events of September 11, 2001; and Perez and Murray (2016) examined the ethnic- and class-based networks of Latinos serving on the boards of advocacy organizations. In migration scholarship, Bloemraad (2005) explains differences in the political incorporation of Portuguese immigrants and Vietnamese refugees in Canada and the United States by focusing on the role and use of community organizations and ethnic mobilization in each country. Chaudhary and Guarnizo (2016) reveal the complexity in the organizational space of Pakistani immigrant communities in Toronto and New York City, extending beyond the usual distinction between local immigrant integration and transnational organizations.

As newcomers, immigrants and refugees often form organizations or receive services from organizations that provide cultural activities, social support, and information about services and collective action. Voluntary organizations have a long history of influencing immigrant integration in the United States (Moya 2005; Cano and Delano 2007). In the mid-twentieth century, Handlin (1951, 165–66) noted that immigrant organizations were “taken as a matter of course,” such that every immigrant group had its own. These organizations assist in both incorporating immigrants into a society and promoting pro-immigrant policies. As Cordero-Guzmán (2005) pointed out, organizations aid immigrants in specific ways, such as reunifying families and resolving legal issues, facilitating integration, and advocating on their behalf.

Immigrant organizations can wield important political power. For example, de Graauw, Gordon, and Mollenkopf (2016) describe how community-based organizations have influenced the New York City Council and mayor to adopt immigrant integration policies in recent years. Today, in many cities worldwide, governments include offices of immigrant affairs that, despite limited funding, may make a difference for many migrants. These offices and their representatives promote understanding about immigrants and advocate—directly and indirectly—for policies that enhance integration.

Some authors differentiate between historical migrant clubs and ethnic organizations after the U.S. civil rights movement, which incentivized some minority communities to form panethnic or ethno-racial groups, such as Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Arabs (Okamoto 2006; Mora 2014). Immigrant organizations may also embed specific racial, ethnic, and national categorical hierarchies into their organizations (Castañeda 2018a). Yet although they may have overlapping constituencies, immigrant organizations, such as New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE) in New York, serve a different clientele and have different objectives than the ethnic New York City chapter of UnidosUS.

Studies underscore how immigrant organizations often intervene between migrant-sending and migrant-receiving communities. For example, hometown associations based in New York have helped to influence and fund public works in migrant-sending communities in Puebla, Mexico (Smith 2006, 1998). Some studies suggest that immigrant membership in hometown associations engaged in political advocacy in sending countries does not hinder U.S. immigrant integration (Portes, Escobar, and Arana 2009, 2008; Portes and Rumbaut 2006). Instead, such engagement is correlated with similar engagement in the United States. Engagement in immigrant organizations is also associated with political integration in Canada, Europe, and the United States (Bloemraad and Provine 2013; Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad 2008; Jacobs and Tillie 2004; Schrover and Vermeulen 2005).

Triandafyllidou and Vogel (2005) examine the civic and associational behavior of foreign-born citizens in Europe and found that immigrants are usually less civically active than natives. However, Voicu and Şerban (2012) report that after 20 years of residence in Europe, immigrants were as likely as natives to be part of a civic organization. Heyman, Fisher, and Loucky (2014) compare the bottom-up versus top-down approaches of running pro-immigrant organizations in France and the United States. Agius Vallejo (2012) focuses on how Mexican civic engagement is linked to participation in ethnic professional associations. Across these studies, one finding emerges: that “immigrant organisations can be large and well-established, but they can also be small, ephemeral and unstable” and “plagued by internal friction” such that they become “ineffective and do not comprehensively represent immigrant communities” (Schrover and Vermeulen 2005, 824).

Most prior studies tend to look at one organization and one city at a time, but there is a lot to learn when we compare sets of organizations in different social contexts and political jurisdictions. This article relies on data from a variety of sources and reveals contextual variation in how organizations influence the integration of immigrants in host countries. This variation relates to contextual differences across four urban areas. It shows how organizations do not exist in a vacuum; they are nested in broader urban contexts with particular histories related to immigrants and refugees. A few organizations may be innovative and push the limits, but it is essential to look at the whole organizational field (Bourdieu 2019; Castañeda 2012b), as organizations will tend to copy each other’s tactics and strategies (DiMaggio and Powell 1983).

Data and Methods

To best study how immigrant and ethnic organizations vary across cities, I needed data derived from a list of such organizations in each city. Because comprehensive directories of active local ethnic or immigrant-serving organizations do not exist, I compiled lists of organizations in each city. Most organizations on those lists come from tax records for the United States and France, and a Barcelona government list of organizations. I then complemented these lists by adding organizations found in city government webpages that contained services and resources for immigrants and from conversations with residents in each city. In addition to city organizations, these lists included large organizations in the metropolitan areas and suburbs around each city as well as less formal immigrant and minority organizations and hometown associations often not registered with local authorities.

For New York City and El Paso, Texas, I used Guidestar, a database of IRS-registered nonprofits.¹ This database contains tax records with information on U.S. registered nonprofit organizations. I added entries for organizations whose information and mission statements specifically mentioned servicing, advocating, or representing immigrants, foreign nationals, or ethnic minorities; and those working on intercultural understanding and international and minority cultures.

For Paris, I drew from French federal government records about financial support given to associations. I obtained these data for 2012, the latest available at the time (Ministère de l’Economie et des Finances 2014), and included organizations in metropolitan Paris (Paris proper and its near suburbs or petite couronne Departments 75, 92, 93, 94). These data are the most detailed, and they reflect the French centralized government and the many financial subventions, including many small ones, given to a variety of organizations for events and programming. For Barcelona, I generated a list of organizations from a Department of Justice database found at the Generalitat de Catalunya. It included associations working on immigration issues registered in the Province of Barcelona, including the city of Barcelona and surrounding Catalan municipalities (Generalitat de Catalunya 2017). I also obtained names of organizations from the welcoming office for immigrants and refugees (Servicio de Atención a Inmigrantes Extranjeros y Refugiados). To these data, I added organizations listed on Paris and Barcelona city government websites described as offering services to immigrants ranging from housing assistance to language classes.

For each city, my assistants and I coded organizations into five types: advocacy/political, cultural (nonreligious), religious, economic, and social services, following Chaudhary (2017). Although some organizations work on many types of activities, we created mutually exclusive categories by examining descriptions of the organizations and coding the type of activity that seemed preponderant. We harmonized the dataset across sites and coded them from descriptions of their main programs and organizational mission statements. Where possible, we also coded variables for the main source of funding (public, private, religious) and orientation (local, national, international/transnational).

Despite these efforts, there are limitations to these counts. In the United States, suburban organizations are likely to be undercounted, although this may be less problematic in cities where suburban residents depend on the central city for services (de Graauw, Gleeson, and Bloemraad 2013; Roth, Gonzales, and Lesniewski 2015). In addition, the data reflect organizations that exist at a particular time, even though new organizations may appear, and others may close in a given year. It is also difficult to know how much these data undercount the total number of existing organizations, given that it is likely that at least some of those are not registered with city governments. Also, those with small budgets, or not receiving government funding, will not appear in the dataset. Thus, although the lists compiled are not exhaustive, they approximate the fields of immigrant and ethnic organizations in these cities. Furthermore, much of the mutual aid may occur in churches, informal groups, trust networks, student clubs, and loose advocacy networks that are not registered as organizations.

In addition to generating the organizational lists, as part of a larger project (Castañeda 2018b), I observed immigrant organizations’ events either as a participant or observer—as a guest, member, donor, founder, or friend of board members or organizers. I also had conversations with community leaders and interviewed organization members. In New York, I conducted fieldwork and participant observation intermittently from 2003 to the present day. I conducted ethnographic observations in Paris and Barcelona in 2007 and 2008, with regular revisits in the years that followed; and in El Paso between 2010 and 2015. Speaking English, Spanish, and French allowed me to gain insights into the urban contexts in which these immigrant and ethnic organizations are embedded.

The Contexts: New York, El Paso, Paris, and Barcelona

Although the United States, Spain, and France have relatively similar shares of foreign-born residents—13.2, 12.1, and 11.7 percent, respectively—city populations in these countries vary widely (OECD 2015). New York City’s foreign-born represented approximately 37 percent of the city’s total population in 2018 (U.S. Census Bureau 2019). In contrast, El Paso County’s foreign-born population share was 24.8 percent (U.S. Census Bureau 2019); Paris’s urban area was 20 percent foreign born in 2014 (INSEE 2017); and Barcelona’s city was 24 percent foreign born (Ajuntament de Barcelona 2018) and, in the larger Province of Barcelona, 20 percent (Generalitat de Catalunya 2019). Next, I highlight several broad differences among these four urban contexts.

New York City

New York City has a long history of welcoming immigrants from all corners of the world, as symbolized by the Statue of Liberty, the Ellis Island and Tenement museums, and the city’s robust Office of Immigrant Affairs (Foner 2000, 2005). Not only does New York City house approximately 3.1 million immigrants, estimates also suggest that 18 percent of the population is unauthorized (Pew Research Center 2019). Recent initiatives illustrate the salience of immigration in this urban context. For example, in 2008, in contrast to many English-first initiatives elsewhere, Mayor Bloomberg signed an executive order requiring that all city-wide services and paperwork be conducted in any language. In 2015, Mayor de Blasio launched a city ID program as a way to provide official identification documents to the unauthorized population.² As a result of this history, New York City houses many formal and informal ethnic organizations, community-based organizations (CBOs), social clubs, and large nonprofits. These organizations represent the diverse backgrounds of New York City immigrants, including the largest national-origin groups of Dominicans, Chinese, Mexicans, and Jamaicans (Lobo and Salvo 2013; Fuentes 2007).

For each national origin immigrant group, there are many organizations. For example, Mexican immigrant organizations include Asociación Tepeyac, Mano a Mano, Mexican Coalition, Mi Casa es Puebla, Mixteca Organization, MASA-MexEd, and Qualitas. Many are self-funded, others sustain themselves through grants from foundations or corporations, and others receive funding from U.S. and Mexican government agencies. They also carry out fundraisers. In some cases, they are financed by successful migrant entrepreneurs such as Jaime Lucero, Erasmo Ponce, or Felix Sanchez de la Vega Guzman. These organizations sponsor ethnic cultural events that occur in a variety of settings and enhance group visibility. Most of these organizations serve a wide constituency; rather than representing refugees or economic migrants, their organizational missions are often complicated given the diverse experiences of their members, with some receiving asylum, others entering as refugees or economic migrants, some with close family still living in countries of origin, and others being U.S.-born children of immigrants.

Similar organizations exist for other immigrant and ethnic groups. Although established decades ago to welcome Jewish immigrants, the Jewish Board for Family and Children’s Services serves recent immigrant populations and is one of the largest social service organizations in the City. Puerto Rican ethnic organizations exist throughout the city and have strong political clout (Marwell 2007). Dominican organizations abound particularly in Washington Heights, the Bronx, and Brooklyn; Queens has, among others, Greek, Argentinean, and Egyptian organizations. These are but a few examples of a complex immigrant organizational ecology in New York City. Often these organizations begin as grassroot organizations, and, in some cases, they eventually receive formalized sponsorship from City government and/or foundations. Although these organizations may work with government and other formal institutions, they may also protest against them.

El Paso

El Paso lies at the southern U.S. border with Mexico, next to Ciudad Juárez. Approximately two hundred thousand immigrants reside in El Paso, and 83 percent of the county residents are Hispanic (U.S. Census Bureau 2019). Most Hispanics in El Paso do not define themselves as members of immigrant and ethnic organizations, even though some patronize these organizations to receive social services. As a result, active engagement in immigrant and ethnic organizations is limited. The sprawling nature of the City of El Paso and its reliance on cars, violence in Ciudad Juárez, and the 27 percent of its immigrant population identified as undocumented (Pew Research Center 2019) dissuade civic engagement in most forms except in churches. Many immigrants and Hispanic interviewees in El Paso did not feel the need to belong to an immigrant or ethnic association (Castañeda, Morales, and Ochoa 2014; Castañeda 2012b). Reflecting this sentiment, El Paso has relatively few organizations formed by and for immigrants despite being a border city and an immigrant gateway.

Ethnic and immigrant organizations that do exist in El Paso often have an important employment and service provision component (Castañeda et al. 2018). These nonprofit community-based organizations receive city, state, and federal grants, as well as in-kind donations and tax-deductible contributions. With the ebb and flow of grant dollars, they often expand and cut programs depending on available funds and struggle to remain open. Except for the Border Network for Human Rights, which organizes marches, publishes reports, and brings a yearly delegation to Washington, D.C., organizations’ advocacy and mobilization are limited and mainly local.

Since 2014, there has been a visible increase in migration from Central America, including family units and unaccompanied minors seeking asylum (Stinchcomb and Hershberg 2014). In 2014 alone, 53 percent of reported border apprehensions were of Central American nationals (Rathod, Hershberg, and Stinchcomb 2017, 7). Legions of volunteers have offered their resources and unpaid time to aid these children and their families, feeding them on their way north, helping them with their legal cases, and providing clothing and basic medical support.

One organization that has grown with the recent influx of Central Americans is Annunciation House, a shelter that originated in 1978 to help Central Americans in the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s (Rabben 2011). Along with affiliated shelters, it has provided housing for hundreds of thousands of migrants from all over the world. Most of its residents are seeking new lives for themselves and applying for asylum. Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center is a long-standing legal aid organization providing support to refugees, asylum seekers, and low-income immigrants in immigration proceedings. Churches, activists, students, and civil society volunteers often cook and carry out drives to feed and donate essential items to asylum seekers.

Paris

Like New York City, this French city also has a long history of receiving immigrants. Estimates from 2014 suggest that greater Paris houses approximately 2.1 million foreign born, most of whom were born outside of the European Union (INSEE 2017). In contrast to U.S. cities, France provides social services directly to immigrants and refugees, and therefore it relies much less on organizational intermediaries than do other cities.

Because Parisians have explicit beliefs about equality among all French people, the French government opposes ethnic and cultural distinctions among its citizens (Bowen 2007). Between 1939 and 1981, for example, it was technically illegal for foreigners to form civic associations in France (Dumont 2010). Since 1981, however, some have successfully framed ethnic and immigrant organizations as intégrationnistes,³ aiding assimilation into mainstream French society. Nevertheless, others continue to frame ethnic and immigrant organizations as communautaristes⁴ or différentialistes,⁵ leading to segregation and ghettoization (Baillet 2001; Montague 2013).

The Parisian metropolitan area is rich with associations of all types, yet the organizations emphasizing race and ethnicity lack legitimacy. Immigrants who form such organizations are accused of communitarianism and perceived to be ethnocentric, self-segregating, racist, and a threat to the French Republic. This makes it hard for ethnic organizations to recruit members and obtain public funds. Private philanthropy is not common, and bias against religious and minority associations discourages the existence of mutual aid societies and cultural organizations for French minorities. Widely accepted pro-immigrant organizations are those headed by French lawyers, who work with immigrants in individual or workplace litigation cases. These include The Human Rights League (Ligue des Droits de l’Homme), Gisti (Groupe d’Information et de Soutien aux Immigrés), and CIMADE Joint Committee for the Relief of the Displaced and the Evacuated (Comité Inter-mouvements pour l’Aide aux Déplacés et aux Évacués). These organizations use a top-down management approach in a context where the prevailing norms are against immigrants and refugees wishing to stay in France (Heyman, Fisher, and Loucky 2014).

An important grassroots movement is that of the sans papiers, whereby those without legal documents receive sanctuary and protection from deportation, often inside churches (Siméant 1998). The movement includes undocumented workers engaged in campaigns to stay in France, often one work site at a time (Kennedy and Tilly 2008). Also, a network of educators and allies help some undocumented youth to regularize their status (Ruszczyk 2018; 2019).

In recent years, organizations formed around ethno-racial identities have challenged the French official citizenship model. Among them are Les Indigènes de la République and Les Indivisibles, two organizations that make political claims for French minorities of color based on France’s history of colonialism. Others include CRAN (Conseil Représentatif des Associations Noires), an organization formed by and for black French people, as well as organizations guarding the memory and legacies of slavery in the French Empire (Fleming 2017); Stop le Contrôle au Faciès, an organization against the aggressive stop-and-frisk policies targeting youth of color in metro hubs and the French banlieues (suburbs) (Schneider 2014; Castañeda 2018b, 2012a; Goris, Jobard, and Lévy 2009); and Le Club XXIe Siècle, formed by professionals from diverse backgrounds who extol the benefits of diversity and affirmative action programs. SOS Racisme is one of the older organizations that emanated from the March for Equality and against Racism organized by the children of North African immigrants in 1983; although the Socialist Party coopted it (Juhem 2001). Others have an oppositional stance toward the government and denounce official governmental policies but do not aim to broker or gain concessions from the government.

However, in contrast to other cities, collectively petitioning the government or the public based on ethnicity or a shared marginalized identity is viewed as less legitimate in France. Identity politics worry many in the French mainstream, who believe in the traditional citizenship model of complete equality in the eyes of the state (Dumont 2010; Montague 2013) and secularism. They blame immigrants for asking for divisive religious accommodations and even falsely accuse them of aiding radical Islam. An issue of the magazine Marianne, published in May 2015, called ethnic and immigrant organizations “accomplices of Islamism” and attacked them for their tolerance of Islam. Such challenges in the French mainstream’s understanding of French Muslims (Bowen 2007; Geisser 2003) intensified after attacks on the headquarters of the magazine Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan concert hall in November 2015. In the media, politicians are often attacked for funding non-Catholic religious organizations or attending the openings of mosques and Muslim cultural centers. Thus, despite France’s strong and long-standing secular tradition about the separation of church and state, Catholic churches and practices remain accepted as the norm.

Parisian neighborhoods often host cultural events related to history, cultural anthropology, and folklore. Although foreign embassies sponsor film festivals and exhibit foreign art and culture, they rarely feature contemporary art and culture that French immigrant/minority artists produce. The banlieues are more likely to fund relevant grassroots organizations working with youth of color, but they do so by minimizing ethnicity and supporting the work via neighborhood-specific, rather than national, funding mechanisms (Doytcheva 2007). In addition, although government funds are given to ethnic organizations working on immigrant and ethnic issues related to housing, food, and gender equality, direct subventions to these organizations are mostly available for social and cultural events and to groups promoting French culture abroad and foreign culture in France.

Barcelona

Since the late 1990s, Barcelona has attracted many international migrants. With Spain’s entry in 1986 into the European Union, tourism and retirement in the Spanish seaside increased, and this influx created economic growth that did not slow down until the 2007 financial crisis. By 2018, of its approximately 268,000 residents, 24.6 percent of Barcelona’s population was foreign born (Ajuntament de Barcelona 2018). This foreign-born share represents an increase from just 3.5 percent of its residents in 2000.

Spain’s integration policies emphasize immigrant participation and interculturalism as a two-way process. Integration policies openly recognize the importance of immigrant organizations in formulating and successfully implementing immigration policies (Aragón Medina et al. 2009, 22–23). In addition, immigration laws offer institutionalized support for immigrant integration into society and labor markets. Government initiatives include the Interministerial Commission for Alien Affairs, Forum for the Social Integration of Immigrants, Permanent Immigration Observatory, High Council for Immigration Policy, Pluralism and Co-existence Foundation, and the Strategic Plan for Citizenship and Integration approved by the Spanish government in 2007 (Bezunartea, López, and Tedesco 2009).

Over the last few decades, the national government has increasingly delegated immigrant integration policies to local governments. In 1993, Catalonia developed its First Interdepartmental Immigration Plan with corresponding institutional offices and budgets. For the 2008–11 Interdepartmental Immigration Plan, the government consulted with more than four hundred immigrant, ethnic, and neighborhood associations and labor unions (Aragón Medina et al. 2009). In 1989, the Barcelona City Council created SAIER (Servicio de Atención a Inmigrantes Extranjeros y Refugiados), which coordinated a set of city social services offered to immigrants. Since then, in partnership with SAIER, a group of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) help with housing, employment, and legal matters; and they offer free Spanish and Catalan classes to approximately twenty-five thousand people per year (Aragón Medina et al. 2009). Furthermore, the Barcelona municipal government has hired immigrants as advisors on minority policies and has dedicated considerable funds to finance immigrant-led cultural events and initiatives.

Thus, immigrant organizations reflect official city goals to be proactive on immigrant integration policy and, at the same time, to allow migrants to retain their respective cultures. Morales and Jorba (2010) write that “immigrant integration is viewed as a ‘natural’ process that will emerge from immigrants’ equal access to all social welfare services, which are based on the same principles and requirements [as] for pre-existing residents” (2010, 272).

Summary

Table 1 summarizes differences across these four cities. On the whole, the findings suggest substantial variation across these contexts. For example, despite their differences, the two U.S. cities are similar in that immigrants in these destinations work together with city officials to solve problems and promote integration. Although it may offer some funds for certain services to immigrants and newly arrived refugees in these cities, the U.S. federal government offers little in the way of widespread integration policies, programs, or resources. As a result, religiously affiliated agencies and nonprofit organizations work with refugees as resettlement agencies and government subcontractors, and other local organizations work with both refugees and migrants to facilitate integration. In contrast, the two European cities implement a different approach, in which government employees work directly with migrants. In Paris, the federal government works directly with immigrants and refugees to manage their integration rather than working with larger organizations that represent them. In Barcelona, federal and local governments actively work together with immigrants, refugees, and their collectives to offer organizational services and resources and facilitate integration.

Table 1

Key Dimensions of Social Contexts: New York, El Paso, Paris, and Barcelona

Dimension	New York	El Paso	Paris	Barcelona
Levels of policy-making and implementation	State and local	State and local	Centralized federal and local	Central federal, regional, and local
Legitimacy of minority religious and cultural practices in public	High	High	Low	Medium
Legitimacy for making claims on an ethnic basis	High	Medium	Low	High
Legitimacy of ethnic organizations	High	High	Low	High
Legitimacy of immigrant organizations	High	Medium	Medium	High
Funding	Some public funding is available, but most organization receive grants from private foundations / donations.	Some public funding is available, but most organizations receive grants from private foundations / donations.	Mainly state funding. Very little private funding for ethnic organizations.	Public funding for organizations.

Immigrant and ethnic organizations have different degrees of legitimacy, and whether and how city governments see them as valid varies. In France, the government promotes a unified civic culture that underplays religious differences and ethnic particularisms (Beaman 2017; Castañeda 2018b; Fleming 2017). In contrast, in the United States, one legacy of the civil rights movement is the institutionalization and recognition of racial and ethnic political organizations as valid interlocutors of minorities (Okamoto 2006; McAdam 1999; Tilly, Castañeda, and Wood 2020). The 1960s riots encouraged the formation of organizations to channel discontent (Perez and Murray 2016; Schneider 2014).

Thus, in the United States, racial and ethnic organizations have legitimacy; but in Paris, such organizations have widespread legitimacy only if their members are expatriates from highly developed nations, or if organizations are not explicitly formed along ethnic or racial lines. In contrast to New York, El Paso, and Paris, Barcelona formally funds immigrant and ethnic organizations and views them as intermediaries facilitating integration. In fact, the link to governmental funding in both Barcelona and Paris is more direct than in New York or El Paso. In both U.S. cities, decision-making about immigrant integration occurs mainly at the local level with their organizations funded mostly by private contributions and foundations, or indirectly by public funds through competitive grants and special programs.

Table 2 presents the broad demographic and organizational characteristics of the four metropolitan areas. New York City stands out as the city with the largest share of foreign born and the largest immigrant and minority populations. However, it houses approximately 503 immigrant and ethnic organizations, ranking last out of the four cities in organizational density. El Paso contrasts with New York City. In 2018, its 841,000 population was approximately 25 percent foreign born, and more than three-quarters were immigrants or minorities (defined as all but non-Hispanic whites, and including third-generation and higher Mexican-Americans). In addition, although it houses the smallest number of organizations, its estimated density was comparable to that in New York City.

Table 2

Demographic and Organizational Characteristics: New York, El Paso, Paris, and Barcelona

Metropolitan Area	New York^a	El Paso County^a	Paris (Unité urbaine)^b	Province of Barcelona^c
Approx. population in metropolitan area (millions)	8.4	0.841	10.659	5.66
Percentage majority	32.1	11.6	55	70
Percentage foreign born	37	24.8	20	19
Percentage minority	30.9	63.6	25	10
Percentage foreign born and minority	67.9	88.4	45	30
Approx. immigrant and minority population (millions)	5.70	0.74	4.80	1.70
Approx. number of immigrant and ethnic organizations	503	67	522	1,372
Immigrant organizational density^d (organizations per million immigrants and minorities)	0.88	0.90	1.10	8.00

U.S. Census Bureau (2019).

INSEE (2017).

Generalitat de Catalunya (2019).

Multiply by 10E-5.

Of the Paris metro area’s 10.7 million residents, 4.8 million were immigrants or minorities, defined here as having at least one immigrant parent or grandparent. Its 522 immigrant and ethnic organizations and population count led to a slightly higher density of organizations than the U.S. cities. Finally, Barcelona’s 5.66 million residents were served by approximately 1,372 immigrant and ethnic organizations, creating the largest organizational density relative to the other three cities.

Table 3 examines organization type in each of the four cities. In New York City, we can see that one-third of the organizations were classified as social service, cultural, and advocacy organizations. New York City and El Paso were also the only cities with multiple organizations whose main activities were openly religious. In contrast, Barcelona had organizations that advocate for Muslims and other religious minorities, but their purpose was not to evangelize or manage spaces of prayer or temples. Barcelona had many organizations that showcased the cultures of different immigrant groups. Although Paris had the largest proportion of advocacy organizations, their focus was largely international. In addition, national-origin-specific associations received less funding than other types of organizations. There were place-based grants for organizations in high-need banlieues in the Parisian metropolitan region and those with diplomatic, international, development, or cultural missions.

Table 3

Types of Organizations: Simplified Organizational Typology

Percentage by City	New York	El Paso	Barcelona	Paris
Advocacy	25.3	22.7	27.2	40.8
Cultural	29.5	19.7	55.9	32.6
Social services	31.0	37.9	9.5	26.6
Economic	5.0	3.0	7.1	0
Religious (only)	8.5	12.1	0.1	0
Unclear/other	0.8	4.6	0.4	0
Total percentage	100	100	100	100
N (total count)	503	63	1,372	522

NOTE: Bold indicates the largest percentage in each column.

Discussion

The way that immigrants behave and organize collectively is not only dependent on social networks and immigrants’ culture, but it is also profoundly shaped by how politics and advocacy are conducted in their new places of residence. Proactively allowing immigrants and minorities to express their needs and demands collectively is an effective way to include them in public decisions and intercorporate them into the cities that they want to call home. In this article, I examined differences in four immigrant gateways in the United States, France, and Spain: New York City, El Paso, Paris, and Barcelona. I find that each city has its own context of immigrant integration, ethnic politics, and perceptions about immigrant integration. In addition, funding for immigrant organizations varies across cities and is in line with prevailing integration models (Casey 1996). New York City is a de facto multicultural city; El Paso is a bicultural one. Alternatively, Paris is a city that promotes the assimilation of immigrants into the mainstream, but Barcelona implements an integration program that values a two-way assimilation process. Thus, the cities featured here house organizations with different missions, levels of legitimacy, and funding sources.

The United States has a long history of immigrant and ethnic associations and organizations. Many religious, immigrant, and ethnic groups have formed mutual aid societies, hometown associations, clubs, and ethnic halls throughout American history (Moya 2005). Despite a high tolerance for immigrant and ethnic associations, many of these organizations are not institutionalized or long-lived, and most tend to be local (Hung 2007). France provides only limited support for immigrant or ethnoreligious community organizations, whereas Barcelona uses organizations based on religious, national-origin, and other collective identities as a key mechanism to support the integration of refugees and migrants.

One strength of this article is that it analyzes a sizable number of immigrant organizations to get a sense of the organizational field as a whole. It also reveals how cities, political opportunity structures, and especially city-specific public conceptions of who belongs are associated with the roles, functions, and visibility of these organizations. In New York City and El Paso, the U.S. government does not view immigrant organizations as necessary to ensure successful immigrant integration. In Paris, the federal government supports only those organizations that promote cultural understanding, and these are viewed as important for refugee and immigrant assimilation. However, in Barcelona, the federal government actively supports these organizations to enhance the cultural, economic, and political integration of refugees and immigrants.

It is interesting to note that a long history of immigration by itself does not explain the density of immigrant organizations. Both Paris and New York City have long legacies of integrating refugees and immigrants, but they support and treat organizations for these newcomers very differently. Thus, immigrant organizations engage in different activities in each city that reflect these contextual and cultural differences (Castañeda 2018b; Koopmans et al. 2005). These organizations may advance immigrants’ rights through advocacy, political mobilization, and collective action; they also emphasize the arts or provide social services and support (de Graauw 2016). All of these cities purposefully delegate some state functions to these community organizations (Marwell 2007) and use some for their own purposes. Other organizations are independent of city government, while yet others are reactive to policies that encroach on the limited rights and economic gains of immigrants (Prieto 2018). Immigrant organizations can be an important way to incorporate immigrants politically and civically. Nonetheless, schools, access to housing, and the workplace play a larger role in their overall integration. Therefore, many grassroots organizing focuses on these bread and butter issues.

Like all research, this project has several limitations. One key limitation is that the data collected for this project do not permit to control statistically for factors that may explain these contextual differences in immigrant and ethnic organizations. I am also unable to assess how immigrant and ethnic organizations have changed in each city, especially during the last two decades that represent varying economic conditions and different periods of immigration enforcement. In addition, my coding of organization type was limited to the information I could access about organizations, which may not fully capture what they do.

Despite these limitations, understanding how contexts of reception vary for immigrants and refugees has been central to migration scholarship for decades (Portes and Rumbaut 2006). These cities also provide different incentives to immigrant entrepreneurship (Castañeda, forthcoming), and transnational engagement (Castañeda, Morales, and Ochoa 2014). Comparing differences in the roles that immigrant and ethnic organizations play yields insights into the process by which immigrants and refugees integrate into host communities and the agency they have as they integrate. Immigrants and minorities may start new organizations or decide when and how to become members of existing organizations. Urban contexts are important for integration because they are related to the ways in which local and national organizations may explicitly work to integrate refugees, immigrants, and minorities.

Footnotes

Note:

I would like to thank Heather Rosoff, Marco Rojas-Machazek, Fernando Rocha, Daniel Jenks, and Maura Fennelly for their research assistance in creating the databases. I presented the first version of this article at the 2016 meeting of the American Sociological Association, and I thank the audience there and at other conferences and seminars for their questions and comments. I also appreciate the feedback from Norma Fuentes-Mayorga, Robert C. Smith, Concha Maiztegui Oñate, Els de Graauw, Nuria Vilanova, Max Friedman, Elke Stockreiter, Stephen Ruszczyk, Ali Chaudhary, Rene Flores, Mike Bader, Randa Serhan, Nicole Angotti, Rachel Robinson, Nina Yamanis, Gloria Elena Rendón Toro; and especially Katharine Donato, Elizabeth Ferris, and several anonymous reviewers; as well as Tom Kecskemethy and Emily Babson. All errors remain my own.

Notes

Ernesto Castañeda is an associate professor of sociology at American University. He is the author of A Place to Call Home: Immigrant Exclusion and Urban Belonging in New York, Paris, and Barcelona (Stanford University Press 2018).

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