This volume of The ANNALS brings together a leading set of scholars to present new research on trends in the spatial forms of immigration that are transforming the American landscape—the effects of "the world in a city." With a distinct analytic focus, the volume takes a comparative approach, examining recent immigration trends, disaggregating by ethnicity or immigrant type wherever possible, focusing on core features of the nation's social fabric (e.g., violence, legitimacy of social institutions, governance, economic well-being), and empirically going beyond the big cities of traditional concern to a host of smaller cities and towns reaching into far-flung pockets of the country. The lineup includes papers on both familiar cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami; as well as places as different as San Antonio; Nashville; Boston; Dublin; Hazleton, Pennsylvania; and St. James, Minnesota. While the places studied and features of their social fabric may differ, the social processes underlying the spatial forms of immigration are shown to be largely the same. This volume will be of interest to social scientists from a broad range of disciplines who engage in research and teaching on issues related to immigration; policy-makers; and individuals working on immigration-policy research.

An in-depth look at the many ways immigration has redefined modern America The impact of immigrants over the past half century has become so much a part of everyday life in the United States that we sometimes fail to see it. This deeply researched book by one of America’s leading immigration scholars tells the story of how immigrants are fundamentally changing this country. An astonishing number of immigrants and their children—nearly eighty-six million people—now live in the United States. Together, they have transformed the American experience in profound and far-reaching ways that go to the heart of the country’s identity and institutions. Unprecedented in scope, One Quarter of the Nation traces how immigration has reconfigured America’s racial order—and, importantly, how Americans perceive race—and played a pivotal role in reshaping electoral politics and party alignments. It discusses how immigrants have rejuvenated our urban centers as well as some far-flung rural communities, and examines how they have strengthened the economy, fueling the growth of old industries and spurring the formation of new ones. This wide-ranging book demonstrates how immigration has touched virtually every facet of American culture, from the music we dance to and the food we eat to the films we watch and books we read. One Quarter of the Nation opens a new chapter in our understanding of immigration. While many books look at how America changed immigrants, this one examines how they changed America. It reminds us that immigration has long been a part of American society, and shows how immigrants and their families continue to redefine who we are as a nation.

The Routledge Handbook of Small Towns addresses the theoretical, methodical, and practical issues related to the development of small towns and neighbouring countryside. Small towns play a very important role in spatial structure by performing numerous significant developmental functions for rural areas. At the local scale, they act as engines for economic growth of rural regions and as a link in the system of connections between large urban centres and the countryside. The book addresses the role of small towns in the local development of regions in countries with different levels of development and economic systems, including those in Europe, Africa, South America, Asia, and Australia. Chapters address the functional structure of small towns, relations between small towns and rural areas, and the challenges of spatial planning in the context of shaping the development of small towns. Students and scholars of urban planning, urban geography, rural geography, political geography, historical geography, and population geography will learn about the role of small towns in the local development of countries representing different economic systems and developmental conditions.

This book sheds light on one of the most controversial issues of the decade. It identifies the economic gains and losses from immigration--for the nation, states, and local areas--and provides a foundation for public discussion and policymaking. Three key questions are explored: What is the influence of immigration on the overall economy, especially national and regional labor markets? What are the overall effects of immigration on federal, state, and local government budgets? What effects will immigration have on the future size and makeup of the nation's population over the next 50 years? The New Americans examines what immigrants gain by coming to the United States and what they contribute to the country, the skills of immigrants and those of native-born Americans, the experiences of immigrant women and other groups, and much more. It offers examples of how to measure the impact of immigration on government revenues and expenditures--estimating one year's fiscal impact in California, New Jersey, and the United States and projecting the long-run fiscal effects on government revenues and expenditures. Also included is background information on immigration policies and practices and data on where immigrants come from, what they do in America, and how they will change the nation's social fabric in the decades to come.

Latino Homicide is the first empirically based, but readable book for courses to counter the conventional wisdom that immigrant populations only contribute crime to their communities. For this second edition, Martinez further emphasizes his argument with updated data and the addition of a new city, San Antonio. With fascinating case studies from police reports and actual cases from six varied cities, Latino homicide rates are revealed to be markedly lower than one would expect, given the economic deprivation of these urban areas. Far from dangerous or criminal, these communities often have exceptionally strong social networks precisely because of their shared immigrant experiences. Martinez skillfully refutes negative stereotypes in a coherent and critically rigorous analysis of the issues.

The Nurture Versus Biosocial Debate in Criminology: On the Origins of Criminal Behavior and Criminality takes a contemporary approach to address the sociological and the biological positions of human behavior by allowing preeminent scholars in criminology to speak to the effects of each on a range of topics. Kevin M. Beaver, J.C. Barnes, and Brian B. Boutwell aim to facilitate an open and honest debate between the more traditional criminologists who focus primarily on environmental factors and contemporary biosocial criminologists who examine the interplay between biology/genetics and environmental factors.