Irene Bloemraad

Identifies, through an examination of municipal public funding for community-based organizations that serve disadvantaged immigrants in four cities in the Bay Area region of Northern California, the phenomenon of suburban free-riding where suburban officials rely on central city resources to serve immigrants, but do not build and fund partnerships with immigrant organizations in their own jurisdictions.

Examines how potentially distinct "publics" or subgroups react, finding significant differences in frame resonance between groups distinguished by political ideology. Underscore the challenges confronting the immigrant movement and the need to reevaluate the assumption that historically progressive rights language is effective for immigrant claims-making.

Asks whether parents' legal status as noncitizens or undocumented migrants leads U.S.-born youth to engage in active, compensatory political and civic participation or whether parents' legal exclusion generates apolitical, even alienated views of citizenship.

Reviews the existing empirical literature and offer some new statistical analyses to assess what we know about the harm or benefits of multi- cultural policies, focusing on sociopolitical outcomes. Argues that multicultural policies appear to have some modest positive effects on sociopolitical integration for first-generation immigrants and likely little direct effect, positive or negative, on those in the second generation.

Challenges universal birthright citizenship critics who contend that the practice flies in the face of liberal principles, in which both individuals and the state should consent to membership. Discusses how many immigrants equate “being American” with racial majority status, affluence and privilege and that membership through naturalization—the exemplar of citizenship by consent—does not overcome a lingering sense of outsider status.

Examines how social and public policies might eliminate or exacerbate such relations. Argues that problems associated with diversity are much stronger in societies marked by significant economic equality, while countries with diversity and multiculturalism polices show many fewer negative effects on public-mindedness.

Argues that greater state support for immigrant settlement in Canada and an official government policy of multiculturalism increase citizenship acquisition and political participation among the foreign born. Discusses the problems the U.S. experiences incorporating newcomers into the polity and suggests how successful political incorporation is not just a question of the type of people that countries receive, but also fundamentally of the reception given to them.