City and Immigration

Catalog description

This course explores how immigration has shaped the social, economic, and political development of American cities. We will examine urban governance, racial and ethnic politics, and the formation of immigrant communities through foundational theories and contemporary case studies. Students will engage with frameworks such as political machines (Erie, Banfield & Wilson), urban regime (Stone), urban growth regimes (Logan & Molotch), and political incorporation (Browning, Marshall, and Tabb), applying them to modern-day issues like sanctuary cities, gentrification, labor resistance, and coalition politics. Particular attention will be paid to Philadelphia-a city shaped by waves of migration, industrial transformation, and immigrant-led activism. American cities have always been built at the crossroads of aspiration and exclusion. From the German and Irish wards of 19th-century Philadelphia to Korean grocery stores in post-uprising Los Angeles, immigrant communities have created, contested, and redefined the urban experience. Yet these same communities have often been scapegoated, surveilled, or displaced by freeways, by finance, by reformers in the name of progress. This course invites students to trace these contradictions through the lens of gender, race, and class, from Chinese homecare workers in New York City to Puerto Rican migrants in Philadelphia to the immigrants resisting displacement today. We will read theory, walk the streets of Chinatown, and ask: who builds the city-and who is it for?