The role of cities in shaping immigrant rights: the case of Houston, Texas

Scholars have long argued that national laws most strongly affect immigrant rights, but recent research questions if that is still the case. With growing immigration policy activism by cities in the United States, Europe, and beyond, scholars increasingly underscore the relevance of also city contexts for shaping new immigrant rights. 

In recent years, cities have created sanctuary policies, as well as noncitizen voting, identification, labour, and language access rights. Most of them are superdiverse gateway cities with large immigrant populations, progressive politics, and numerous civil society organisations, like New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. But what do immigrant rights struggles look like in cities with less hospitable contexts of reception, such as Houston, Texas?

Houston’s challenging context for immigrant rights

Houston, the fourth largest city in the United States with 2.3 million residents, has undergone a demographic transformation as a result of sustained international migration since World War II. Today, the city is one of the most diverse in the United States and home to over 660,000 immigrants, including many who are undocumented. Despite clear demographic pressures for more immigrant rights policies and integration programs, city officials have resisted the enactment of new immigrant rights, and there is a relative paucity of civil society organisations that focus on immigrant rights.

With Shannon Gleeson, I conducted four case studies of immigrant rights in Houston:

1. the creation of a city-run immigrant affairs office,
2. local police collaboration with federal immigration officials,
3. local implementation of federal immigration benefits, including the U.S. citizenship program and a deportation relief program for undocumented youth, and
4. protection of immigrant labour rights.

Across these case studies, we learned key lessons about how local demographic, political, and civic contexts shape immigrant rights.

Immigrant demography is not immigrant rights destiny

Roughly one third of Houston’s 2.3 million residents are foreign-born, and two-thirds of them are noncitizens (including many undocumented immigrants). Mexicans are the city’s largest immigrant group, but Houston has attracted newcomers from all over the world, including immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. They speak a staggering 145 different languages, which makes providing language access for them a key issue. The vastly different circumstances of their arrival also create a need for a range of other immigrant-specific programs, including food and family assistance, immigration legal services, employment assistance, and physical and mental health supports.

Read the full blog post here.