Chicago's New Immigrants, Indigenous Poor, and Edge Cities

Abstract

The settlement pattern of new immigrants in the Chicago urban region diverges significantly from previous immigration periods, when employment was concentrated in the urban core. In recent decades, the rate of employment decentralization in the Chicago area has accelerated, giving rise to edge cities, which are acquiring an increasing share of the region's total employment. As a result, the new immigrants are in a far more favorable geographic position than the region's indigenous poor to compete in the local unskilled labor market. Meanwhile, with the absence of new immigrants settling the region's traditional port-of-entry neighborhoods, thus not replacing the exiting middle class, large sections of Chicago's urban core are being bypassed, further isolating the indigenous poor from the economic mainstream.