Mass Migration and Local Outcomes: Is International Migration to the United States Creating a New Urban Underclass?

Abstract

For earlier migrant streams, labour migration was a means of economic advancement. Moreover, migrants by and large were welcomed by the host societies, even recruited in the widely used guest worker programmes in Europe. Now, in the late 20th century, with changing economic conditions and very large-scale migrant flows, the context is changing; immigrants are less welcome and appear less well equipped to deal with the changing economies of post-industrial societies. An analysis of flows to a sample of large metropolitan areas in the US shows that the new immigrants are substantially poorer in educational levels than both earlier immigrants and the native-born population, with consequently lower incomes and greater likelihoods of being in poverty. If the new immigrant groups do not constitute a new underclass, it certainly raises the possibility that a larger number of new immigrants are likely to have a more difficult time making the transition to self-sufficiency than was true of earlier groups.