Migrants to the Metropolis

Immigration today touches the lives and economies of more people and places than ever before.Yet the places that are disproportionately affected by immigrant flows are not countries but cities. This remarkable collection examines contemporary global immigration trends and their profound effect on specific host cities. The book focuses not only on cities with long-established diverse populations, such as New York, Toronto, and Sydney, but also on less known gateway cities, such as Birmingham (UK), Marseille, and the emerging gateways of Johannesburg, Washington, D.C., and Dublin.

The essays gathered here provide a global portrait of accelerating, worldwide immigration driven by income differentials, social networks, and various state policies that recruit skilled and unskilled laborers. Gateway cities vary in form and function but many are hyperdiverse, globally linked through transnational networks, and often increasingly segregated spaces. Offering penetrating analysis by the leading scholars in the field, Migrants to the Metropolis redirects the global narrative surrounding migration away from states and borders and into cities, where the vast majority of economic migrants settle.