From Ellis Island to LAX: Immigrant Prospects in the American City 1

This article seeks to bring the “urban” back into immigration research. Each immigrant receiving area has its own particular group of newcomers, and the economic and political structures of the immigrant receiving areas are also distinctive. Those structures are not all determining, as immigrant trajectories are shaped by the interaction between distinctive urban institutions and the specific characteristics of the relevant ethnic groups. But in the last analysis, the urban context makes a difference, as this study shows by examining the leading immigrant destinations – New York and Los Angeles.