Strangers at the Gates: New Immigrants in Urban America (review)

Strangers at the Gates: New Immigrants in Urban America. Edited by Roger Waldinger. University of California Press, 2001. 339 pp. Cloth, $50.00; paper, $19.95.

Can today's immigrants make it economically? Scholars have asked this question many times, but this inquiry provides fresh and valuable answers by posing it within the context of America's immigrant capitals (in order of immigrant population size): Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Miami, and Chicago. More than half of America's immigrants live in these five gateway regions.

This fact alone justifies the book's focus, but there are others: Immigrants are more likely than natives to live in cities, they have become more regionally clustered in recent decades, and they are especially affected by changes in urban opportunity structures. As Mark Ellis shows in chapter 4, national models indicate that the growing wage gap between immigrants and their native-born counterparts is attributable to personal characteristics (e.g., inferior skills), but city-region models suggest that changes in the urban wage structure accounts for much of the difference. The regional perspective allays some of the disquietude over immigrant mobility, but there is still cause for concern, although for reasons largely rooted in urban structures and trends.

This kind of attention to context and rigor comes standard in every chapter. Waldinger (who not only edited the book, but also wrote or cowrote five of the nine chapters) succinctly summarizes the study's findings, anchors them in the literature, and underscores their importance in the first and last chapters. Many of the conclusions are noteworthy.

Drawing on chapters 6 and 7, in which Nelson Lim examines African American niches and Waldinger immigrant niches, respectively, Waldinger argues that immigrant specialization is more a function of ethnicity than locale. In general, immigrant groups occupy similar niches regardless of where they live. Of course, place matters. Min Zhou's examination of second generation decline in chapter 8 underscores this point. While confirming the independent effect of ethnic connections on structuring immigrant opportunities — be it a help or a hindrance — she finds that not all locations offer equal opportunities to all populations. Overall, though, Zhou concludes that the "most pessimistic renderings of second-generation scenarios lack warrant." Second generation progress, however, is far from even. Some populations are doing much better than others and, as Clark cautions in chapter 5, a new immigrant underclass may be emerging.

Waldinger and Lee provide a brief overview of U.S. immigration history, policy, and trends in chapter 2 with a special eye toward the top-five immigrant/urban regions mentioned above. They provide a focused immigration history for each locale and highlight the interactions between immigrants' origins and the profound changes taking place within America's cities (e.g., the shift from manufacturing to a knowledge-based economy). Waldinger focuses on those especially hard hit by such changes in chapter 3, particularly less-skilled immigrant women, as does Clark in chapter 5.

The regional comparisons and findings (of which only a few are mentioned here) invite a plausible reinterpretation of the Cuban narrative of success in Miami and explain why the "new economy" has not depressed demand for less-skilled immigrants. These findings also add another level of specificity and qualification to the modes of immigrant incorporation outlined by Portes and Rumbaut in Immigrant America. It offers fresh insights and gives scholars and students a comparative model worthy of imitation, an enduring achievement indeed.

Although some of the statistical matter may prove too difficult for undergraduate students, an instructor willing to unpack it and emphasize the big picture would be providing his or her students with an exemplary model of comparative social science scholarship. The book could profitably be used in social stratification, urban studies, and race and ethnicity classes. It is hard to imagine an immigration class without this book on the syllabus. Immigration scholars will undoubtedly benefit from a thorough read. It contributes to the...