927661ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYWELCOMING, TRUST, AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

research-article2020

Prior studies have sought to understand how immi-

grants integrate into U.S. society, focusing on the ways
in which local contexts and institutions limit immigrant
incorporation. In this study, we consider how interac-
tions among immigrants and U.S.-born within receiving
communities contribute to the process of immigrant
integration. We emphasize the extent to which immi-
grants perceive that they are welcome in their social
environments and the downstream effects of those
perceptions. Drawing on new representative survey
Welcoming, data and in-depth interviews with first-generation
Mexican and Indian immigrants in the Atlanta and
Trust, and Civic Philadelphia metropolitan areas, we examine what con-
stitutes feeling welcomed and how these perceptions

Engagement: are associated with immigrants’ interest and trust in the

U.S.-born and with their civic participation. Our focus
on two metropolitan areas with long-standing racialized
Immigrant dynamics, coupled with new waves of immigration,
provides insights about the role of welcoming contexts
Integration in in immigrant integration in the twenty-first century.

Metropolitan Keywords: immigrants; refugees; trust; welcoming;

integration; metropolitan America

America
Q uestions about whether and how new
immigrants integrate into U.S. society
have been at the forefront of immigration
debates for decades, if not centuries (see Alba
By
and Nee 2003). In prior studies of contempo-
DINA G. OKAMOTO,
rary immigration in the post-1965 era, scholars
Linda R. Tropp,
Helen B. Marrow, Dina G. Okamoto is the Class of 1948 Herman B. Wells
and Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for
Michael Jones-Correa Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society (CRRES) at
Indiana University. Her research addresses how group
boundaries and identities form and change, which has
broader implications for immigrant incorporation,
racial formation, and intergroup relations.
Linda R. Tropp is a professor of social psychology and
a faculty associate in the School of Public Policy at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst. For more than
two decades she has studied how members of different
groups experience contact with each other and how
group differences in status affect cross-group relations.
Correspondence: dokamoto@indiana.edu

DOI: 10.1177/0002716220927661

ANNALS, AAPSS, 690, July 2020 61

62 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

have pointed to the importance of the contexts of reception that immigrants must
navigate after arrival. Such contexts comprise formal institutions, state policies,
and local practices, all of which ultimately shape immigrants’ pathways to social
mobility and integration (Kasinitz et al. 2008; Portes and Rumbaut 2014; Portes
and Zhou 1993).
In this article, we advance research on contexts of reception and immigrant
integration in two ways. First, we build on existing scholarship that emphasizes
the importance of exclusionary institutions and policies and anti-immigrant atti-
tudes (see Massey and Sanchez 2010; Menjívar and Abrego 2012; O’Neil 2010;
Varsanyi 2011; Walker and Leitner 2011). We do this by focusing on welcoming
contexts and attitudes, which likely play a role in creating a sense of belonging
and inclusion for immigrants. Such a focus is especially warranted given the
recent growth in local initiatives designed to welcome immigrants throughout the
United States and Europe (see Fussell 2014; Welcoming America 2017) and their
potential downstream consequences for integration.
Second, to the extent that prior work has examined how inclusionary efforts
have influenced immigrant integration into host societies, it has primarily focused
on governmental policies and local institutions (see Bloemraad 2006; Jones-
Correa 2011; Schildkraut et al. 2019; Williamson 2018). In contrast, we focus on
the everyday interactions that occur between immigrants and the U.S.-born and
how immigrants perceive themselves and other groups. Even in places recog-
nized as welcoming cities with inclusive policies (see Huang and Liu 2018;
Marrow 2012; Welcoming America 2017), newcomers may still vary in the extent
to which they subjectively feel welcomed by the U.S.-born. Immigrants’ experi-
ences and encounters with members of host communities may signal acceptance
or rejection, and they are key in shaping a sense of welcome and belonging (see
Castañeda 2018; Tropp et al. 2018). Thus, we use new representative survey data
and in-depth interviews from immigrant populations in Atlanta and Philadelphia
to investigate the extent to which U.S. immigrants feel welcomed in their every-
day lives and how this sense of feeling welcomed contributes to engagement
within their new communities.

The Integration of Immigrants in the United States

To understand U.S. immigrant integration, past research has emphasized the
ways in which broader policy and institutional contexts influence the social and

Helen B. Marrow is an associate professor of sociology at Tufts University. She is author of New
Destination Dreaming: Immigration, Race, and Legal Status in the Rural American South
(Stanford 2011) and coeditor of “Health Care, Immigrants and Minorities: Lessons from the
Affordable Care Act in the United States” in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2017).
Michael Jones-Correa is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Political Science and direc-
tor of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Immigration (CSERI) at the University
of Pennsylvania. He is a co–principal investigator of the 2006 Latino National Survey and the
2012 and 2016 Latino Immigrant National Election Study.
WELCOMING, TRUST, AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT 63

economic progress of immigrants. Existing studies examine the patterns and

processes associated with anti-immigrant attitudes and policies at state and local
levels (Ebert and Ovink 2014; Ebert and Okamoto 2015; Hopkins 2010; Muste
2013; Varsanyi 2011; Walker and Leitner 2011), as well as the downstream effects
of exclusionary policy contexts (Bean, Brown, and Bachmeier 2015; Garcia 2019;
Menjívar and Abrego 2012). A handful of recent studies focus on inclusionary,
pro-immigrant efforts, attitudes, and policies (Fussell 2014; Haubert and Fussell
2006; Schildkraut et al. 2019). For example, Okamoto and Ebert (2016) exam-
ined patterns of collective efforts initiated by local residents to include immi-
grants in the larger community and found that metropolitan areas with larger
foreign-born populations and minority elected officials were more likely to expe-
rience pro-immigrant activity. Other recent studies have investigated the social
factors that encourage the adoption of inclusionary policies by local governments
(see Huang and Liu 2018).
Inclusionary governmental policies at various levels affect how immigrants
access public resources, build communities, and become formal citizens (see de
Graauw 2016; Williamson 2018; Huo et  al. 2018a, 2018b). For example,
Bloemraad (2006) found that settlement, citizenship, and multiculturalism poli-
cies in Canada facilitated the civic and political incorporation of immigrants and
refugees. Such policies offered material and symbolic resources to immigrants,
which in turn reflected a robust organizational infrastructure that enabled and
encouraged migrant newcomers to become full members of Canadian society.
Other scholars point to the importance of local policy contexts and institutional
actors in aiding immigrant integration (Jones-Correa 2008; Marrow 2009). In
particular, Marrow’s study (2012) showed how inclusive local policies in San
Francisco reinforced healthcare providers’ views that unauthorized immigrants
were morally deserving of care, allowing them to extend care to immigrants with-
out concerns about financial costs. In a study of police departments, Williams
(2015) found that welcoming departments engaged in substantive outreach, col-
laborated with local organizations and refused to participate in federal efforts to
detain undocumented immigrants, which contributed to building positive rela-
tions with newcomer communities.
Although local policies and institutional actors can affect immigrants’ access to
needed services, emerging research has also focused on the everyday interper-
sonal interactions that occur within institutions (Castañeda 2018; Gast and
Okamoto 2016; Mallet, Calvo, and Waters 2017; Williamson 2018). Relations and
interactions between individuals within local institutions and across daily encoun-
ters influence the extent to which immigrants feel like they are part of the host
society (see Calvo, Jablonska-Bayro, and Waters 2017; Fussell 2014; Gast and
Okamoto 2016; Jones-Correa et al. 2018; Tropp et al. 2018). Welcoming attitudes
bolster immigrants’ incorporation outcomes both symbolically and materially.
For example, Castañeda (2018) demonstrates that even though undocumented
Mexicans in New York did not have access to formal citizenship, they had
achieved a sense of belonging and feeling at home due to daily interactions with
host society members. By contrast, although they held French citizenship, North
64 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

Africans in Paris were stigmatized and treated poorly in everyday interactions

with local residents.
We examine immigrants’ perceptions of feeling welcomed and how these per-
ceptions shape their trust and interest in relations with the U.S.-born, as well as
their civic participation. Though specific experiences are likely to differ across
immigrant groups, feeling welcomed may have a similar effect on the attitudes
and behaviors of immigrant groups. Thus, we expect that when immigrants feel
welcomed by the U.S.-born, immigrants will have positive feelings toward host
society members and have higher levels of participation in local communities. Yet
we know that immigrant groups vary by socioeconomic and legal status; some
may be quite marginalized within institutional contexts—those who are undocu-
mented and with less material resources may not feel that they have access to
healthcare and social services, rights as workers and tenants, or even the ability
to approach local authorities for help. Therefore, for those who are included as
deserving citizens within institutional contexts and are recognized as equal mem-
bers of society by local policies, interpersonal interactions will play a less critical
role. At the same time, the positive associations between feeling welcomed and
perceptions of the U.S.-born and community involvement may be less effective
for marginalized groups. We investigate whether these patterns hold and pay
attention to how they may differ by race of U.S.-born group and national origin
of immigrant group.

Data and Methods

Our data come from a larger study on intergroup relations between immigrants
and the U.S.-born in the twenty-first century. To examine immigrants’ experi-
ences of feeling welcomed, we draw on two new sources of data: a representative
survey (N = 1,001) and in-depth interviews (N = 116) with first-generation
Mexican and Indian immigrants living in ten counties in the Philadelphia and
Atlanta metropolitan areas (see Jones-Corres et al. 2018; Tropp et al. 2018).

Research sites
We selected Philadelphia and Atlanta as research sites because they are com-
parable in population size (about 5–6 million people each) and are among the
most racially segregated metropolitan areas in the United States.1 Both metro
areas have racialized black-white histories, which are rapidly diversifying due to
immigration from across the globe. Though Philadelphia has had a more constant
history of immigration than Atlanta, it is only since the 1980s that both metropoli-
tan areas have become home to diverse streams of post-1965 immigrants (Singer
et al. 2008). Immigrants from Mexico and India constitute the two largest immi-
grant populations in Atlanta and Philadelphia, with each group composing at
least 10 percent of the foreign-born population in 2010. Mexicans in Atlanta are
an exception, as they constituted 20 percent of the foreign-born population in
WELCOMING, TRUST, AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT 65

2010 and upwards of one-third in more recent years. Mexico and India also rep-
resent the top two immigration source countries to the United States overall
(National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2015; see Jones-
Correa et al. [2018] for more on selection of sites).

Immigrant groups
We chose to study foreign-born Mexicans and Indians because, respectively,
they are emblematic of lower- and higher-status U.S. immigrant groups today
(Portes and Rumbaut 2014). Foreign-born Mexicans, on average, tend to have low
levels of education and high levels of employment in low-skilled sectors of the
economy; they also register low levels of English language proficiency and, follow-
ing decades of intense border and interior immigration enforcement, have high
levels of undocumented status (Bean, Brown, and Bachmeier 2015; Durand and
Massey 2019; Garip 2017; Telles and Ortiz 2008). In contrast, foreign-born Indians
are among the most highly educated and residentially dispersed U.S. immigrant
groups; they tend to be employed in high-skilled sectors of the economy, have
considerable fluency in English, and few are undocumented (Chakravorty, Kapur,
and Singh 2017; Leonard 2007; Mishra 2016; Portes and Rumbaut 2014).
Correspondingly, these two immigrant groups typically draw different reac-
tions from the U.S.-born. Mexicans are often perceived as poorly educated, ille-
gal, and unassimilable (Chavez 2008; Jiménez 2010), whereas Indians tend to be
viewed as well educated and talented, even though they may also be seen as
economic competitors and as nonwhite (Lee and Fiske 2006; Samson 2013).
More generally, public opinion polls suggest that Asian immigrants are viewed
more positively than Latin American immigrants (Pew Research Center 2015),
which may have implications for their experiences of feeling welcomed by the
U.S.-born in everyday life.

Data collection
Our survey was administered in 2013, in English or Spanish for Mexican
respondents, and in English for Indian respondents.2 To be eligible, survey
respondents had to be at least 18 years old and reside in the Philadelphia or
Atlanta metropolitan area. In total, we surveyed 500 Mexican and 501 Indian
first-generation immigrants, with half from each of the two metropolitan areas.
We asked respondents about key demographic indicators, their perceptions of
and contact with other immigrant and U.S.-born groups, and their levels and
kinds of civic participation. We also asked respondents to report the cross streets
of their residence, which allowed us to match their geographic information with
tract data from the U.S. Census.3 We then linked variables measuring the racial
and socioeconomic composition of neighborhoods (measured as census tracts) to
our respondents.
In 2014, Mexican and Indian survey respondents were recontacted and invited
to participate in semistructured, face-to-face interviews. We conducted interviews
66 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

with fifty-eight Mexican immigrants (thirty in Philadelphia, twenty-eight in

Atlanta) and fifty-eight Indian immigrants (twenty-eight in Philadelphia, thirty in
Atlanta). Each interview lasted one to three hours in a public space (e.g., coffee
shop or municipal park) or at respondents’ homes. We asked about immigration
histories, settlement and adaptation experiences, how they navigated their daily
lives, and how they perceived and experienced relations with U.S.-born and
­foreign-born groups in their metro area. We recorded and transcribed each inter-
view. In the sections that follow, we use pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of
our respondents.

Results
We present findings from our analysis in two stages. First, we draw on the survey
and interview data to examine general patterns and experiences regarding
whether and how Mexican and Indian immigrants feel welcomed. We then con-
duct multivariate models with survey data to examine how feeling welcomed may
predict immigrants’ feelings of trust in the U.S.-born, immigrants’ willingness to
engage in contact with the U.S.-born, and immigrants’ reported levels of involve-
ment in the civic life of their local communities.

Feeling welcomed
The concept of welcoming signifies an openness to including members of
other groups within a community, with the expectation that all groups are
accepted and treated with respect (Fussell 2014; Livert 2017; Jones-Correa 2011;
Welcoming America 2017; Williams 2015). To assess welcoming, we asked our
immigrant respondents: “Overall, when you think about [whites/blacks] in
[greater Philadelphia/Atlanta], how often do you feel welcomed by them?”
Possible scores on these items ranged from 0 (never), 1 (rarely), 2 (sometimes),
to 3 (often).
We also coded the interview transcripts for key themes using Dedoose, a
qualitative data analysis program. We produced analytic memos, which identified
key themes, and then engaged in more inductive analysis, resulting in forty-eight
extensive thematic memos, each comprising hundreds of pages. In particular,
three of these memos highlighted the ways in which immigrants felt welcome or
unwelcome by the U.S.-born. We reviewed and discussed the thematic memos to
refine our understanding of emerging themes.
To begin, we estimated means of welcoming variables for both immigrant
groups. Table 1 shows that overall, Mexican immigrants reported significantly
lower levels of feeling welcomed by U.S.-born whites and blacks than Indian
immigrants did. This is a key difference across our two immigrant groups, which
is perhaps related to socioeconomic status, language, and legal status.4 But how
was welcoming experienced and talked about, if at all, by Mexican and Indian
immigrants? Our interview data, which we elaborate on below, reveals that
WELCOMING, TRUST, AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT 67

Table 1
Means for Feeling Welcomed among Mexican and Indian Immigrants

Variable Mexicans Indians

Welcomed by whites 1.575 2.259

Welcomed by blacks 1.365 2.129

NOTE: The minimum value for feeling welcomed is 0 and the maximum is 3. T-tests indicate
significant differences between Mexican and Indian immigrants’ perceptions of welcoming by
U.S.-born blacks and whites, respectively, at the p < .001 level.

Indians talked about feeling welcomed more often than Mexicans did, yet similar
processes regarding the importance and value of feeling welcomed appeared
across both immigrant groups.
Several Indian immigrants expressed that they felt welcomed in their upper-
middle-class and affluent neighborhoods, mostly by their white neighbors. For
example, Simon, a healthcare professional in his 40s who lives in Philadelphia,
explained that his neighborhood is extremely welcoming and people frequently
get together for neighborhood events:

Everybody is very friendly. We invite each other—that kind of stuff happens. And then
there’s always—somebody has some block party. . . . Here, honestly, we’ve just been
very fortunate. This neighborhood has something called a supper club and they wel-
come every new family to the supper club. . . . And you get to know all your neighbors.
So like when we go out for a walk, we know most of the people.

For Simon and many of our Indian immigrant respondents, neighborhood activi-
ties and a walking culture in these well-resourced neighborhoods facilitated
contact and deeper bonds between neighbors.
Sharmila, an Indian immigrant in her early 30s who works in the medical field
in Atlanta, also felt welcomed in her neighborhood. She too had gotten to know
her neighbors through neighborhood events and told us, “I’m still new to the
neighborhood, it’s not been too long—but everybody interacts really well.” Like
Simon and many Indian immigrants in our sample, Sharmila goes on walks in her
neighborhood, where she stops and chats with other neighbors doing the same;
she not only feels a sense of being welcome, but she also shares information with
neighbors and is often invited to participate in social and civic events.
Neighborhood activities, such as holiday cookouts and community meetings pro-
vided the context for conversations and friendly interactions that translated into
quick greetings and at times, hour-long conversations.
That said, not all Indian immigrants felt that their neighbors were welcoming.
In fact, instances of perceived welcome in our data are important precisely
because they differ from, and stand out against, other moments in which Indian
respondents described feeling unwelcome, or experienced hostility or even dis-
crimination. Chanda, a technology professional in her late 30s who lives in
68 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

Atlanta, shared an incident when she was waiting for the middle school bus with
her daughter in a parked car. It was raining out, and she wanted to make sure that
her daughter got onto the bus safely. A white resident approached her car and
asked her to leave, assuming that Chanda and her daughter did not live in the
neighborhood and, therefore, could not park there. She recalled, “And then he
said, ‘Okay, I’m going to call the cops. Show me that you do live here.’ I said, ‘No,
I’m not going to.’ So I just rolled up my windows because I don’t have to prove
that I live there.” Chanda felt deeply rattled by this experience, and it was clear
that she felt surveilled because of how she looked, that she did not “belong.” In
contrast, feeling welcome makes many Indians feel the opposite—that they are
valued and “belong,” or at least that they are not actively excluded.
Indian immigrants did not have much contact with U.S.-born blacks in or
outside of their neighborhoods, yet some Indian immigrants such as Arjun, who
lives in Philadelphia and has been in the United States for nearly 30 years,
expressed feeling welcomed by blacks, despite that contact with African
Americans was rare:

Actually, one thing I have to tell you is that the few African Americans that I ran into in
Philadelphia, they were some of the nicest and genuine people that I met. I think they
treat Indians very, very well. I don’t know if the reverse is true. But they do treat Indians
very well.

Likewise, Mexican immigrants expressed feeling welcomed by blacks and

whites at times, but in contrast to Indian immigrants, they generally did not feel
welcomed in predominantly white suburban neighborhoods. In fact, several
Mexican immigrants talked about how they felt out of place and surveilled in
such spaces. For example, Maricela, a woman in her late 20s who is undocu-
mented and lives in Philadelphia, recalled an incident when she was waiting for
her employer in a white neighborhood and began to feel uncomfortable. She said
that people stared at her, and a neighbor even came outside to ask her what she
was doing there. Raul, who lives in Atlanta and has been in the United States for
over a decade, talked about how people in white communities feel threatened
and are likely to call the police for any small thing. He explained, “Well, you have
to be more careful of neighbors because they could call the police on anything
you do.” Other Mexican respondents like Lucia, a professional who works in the
legal field, stated that they would never go to white, conservative neighborhoods
because that makes them feel unsafe. In general, our Mexican respondents—
regardless of socioeconomic or legal status—did not feel welcome in predomi-
nantly white areas of both cities.
Mexican immigrants also described feeling unwelcome at times in public set-
tings, especially in grocery stores or when riding public transit. In particular, our
respondents talked about receiving poor service—instances where a cashier
would throw change instead of putting it in the customer’s hand, or asking for an
ID when it is not required—or being stared at in public. While these small
actions were not overt forms of discrimination, they clearly sent a message to our
respondents that they were not welcome. In addition, Mexican respondents also
WELCOMING, TRUST, AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT 69

mentioned negative interactions with the police, who they perceived were suspi-
cious of immigrants.
Thus, for Mexicans, feeling welcomed was not tied to one’s neighborhood;
instead, a sense of belonging emerged in particular spaces such as places of wor-
ship, children’s schools, and community-based organizations, where Mexicans
typically had more interactions with whites than blacks. As an example, Antonio,
who is undocumented and lives in Atlanta, talked about his experiences attending
church each Sunday. He felt welcomed there through “smiles” and occasional
“hugs” afforded to him by U.S.-born whites, even though he did not have enough
language to communicate directly with them, and often attended services sepa-
rate from whites within the same congregation or church:5

Yes, I’ve learned, for example, how people are nice, how they treat each other, like for
example, in the world we don’t always greet each other, or always, we teach each other
these expressions, and these people [at my church] when they wave to you, a hug, a
smile, that basically teaches you that in reality you matter. When you go to church and
they receive you well, you feel like you are welcome, you feel as if you are at home, they
receive you in an adequate way.

Likewise, Valencia, who is in her early 30s, talked about how she regularly
attends events at her children’s school in Philadelphia. While she does not know
enough English to hold a conversation, other parents still try to engage and com-
municate with her. Valencia’s children usually translate for her, allowing conver-
sations and positive interactions to take place. Despite the language barrier, she
feels welcomed by other parents and teachers, and continues to return to her
children’s school events.
Some Mexican immigrants did say they felt welcomed in their neighborhoods,
though not to the same extent that Indian immigrants did. In such cases,
Mexicans reported having friendly neighbors, but did not seem to have deep rela-
tions with them. For example, Juan, who is in his 50s, lives in a racially mixed
neighborhood in Philadelphia and explained that his neighbors are friendly: “For
me, they have treated me very well. I talk to them, they answer me back.
Sometimes the neighbors are out just emptying the trash, like whites or blacks,
and they’ll chat with me. I’m even teaching some of them some words in Spanish,
can you imagine that?” For Juan and many other Mexican immigrants, they expe-
rience welcoming and friendly interactions with their white and black neighbors,
but they were not regularly invited to dinner or encouraged to participate in
neighborhood events, as noted in interviews with Indian respondents.

Immigrants’ trust and interest in U.S.-born, and community involvement

From our interviews, feeling welcomed appears to have the potential to shape
immigrants’ perceptions of and attitudes toward the U.S.-born. To investigate
these intergroup dynamics further, we analyzed a pooled sample of Mexican and
Indian immigrants from the survey data. Using ordinary least squares regression
models,6 we examined whether immigrants’ perceptions of feeling welcomed by
U.S.-born whites and blacks were associated with immigrants’ trust and interest
70 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

in knowing U.S.-born whites and blacks, and their participation in their local
community. We discuss and define our key variables next.

Trust in outgroup members.  Outgroup trust is a measure of intergroup atti-

tudes and has broader implications for community social capital, civic life, and
political engagement (see Citrin and Sides 2008; Fukuyama 1995). The main
item used to measure immigrant respondents’ trust in each U.S.-born group was,
“Overall, when you think about [whites/blacks], how often do you feel that you
can trust them?” Responses were scored on a scale: 0 (never), 1 (rarely), 2 (some-
times), or 3 (often).

Interest in outgroup members.  Another measure tapped immigrants’ interest

in developing deeper relations with blacks and whites. This concept connotes a
level of personal motivation and investment, such that individuals with interest in
knowing other groups are likely to engage with and learn more about them
(Brannon and Walton 2013; Tropp and Mallett 2011; Ron et  al. 2017). Using
separate items in reference to U.S.-born blacks and whites, immigrant respond-
ents were asked, “Thinking about [U.S.-born blacks/whites] who live in [greater
Philadelphia/Atlanta], to what extent are you interested in getting to know them
better?” Responses were scored on a scale ranging from –2 (not interested at all)
to 2 (very interested).

Participation in civic life. To understand immigrants’ involvement in their

communities, we asked them about whether they had participated in any of the
following activities within the last year: attended a community group meeting,
organized a neighborhood event, worked with others in your community to solve
a problem, participated in or helped organize a festival or cultural celebration in
a public space, or contacted a local public official. These items are considered
standard measures of civic engagement (see Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad 2008;
Uslaner and Brown 2005). To test the robustness of a measure including these
items, responses to all five items were entered into a principal components
analysis (varimax rotation). Only one factor emerged with an eigenvalue greater
than 1.0 (2.34; factor loadings ranging from .59 to .76), and accounted for nearly
half of the variance (46.8 percent) in participants’ responses. Although the alpha
coefficient is sensitive to scale length (Schmitt 1996) and can underestimate scale
reliability when dichotomous indicators are used (see Raykov, Dimitrov, and
Asparouhov 2010), Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of reliability was acceptable for
this five-item measure (α = .72).

Controls.  We included a number of standard controls for respondents in our

models: age, ethnicity, gender, education, employment status, homeownership
status, English proficiency, partisanship, and metropolitan area of residence. We
also included a control for whether respondents were surveyed in person or by
phone.
WELCOMING, TRUST, AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT 71

We also constructed census-tract variables to assess the extent to which neigh-

borhood socioeconomic status, racial composition, and stability shaped immi-
grants’ perceptions of welcoming. We used 2010 U.S. Census summary file (SF1)
to create these measures. Outgroup size captures the size of a racial outgroup in
a geographic area and is measured by percent of relevant outgroup in a census
tract. For example, if we are modeling immigrants’ trust in blacks, outgroup size
is defined as percent black in the census tract. Neighborhood stability is defined
as percentage of respondents living in the same house for the past five years. If
there is less stability in a neighborhood, this could be associated with less trust
and less willingness to engage in the community. As additional contextual con-
trols, we included the percent of residents in poverty and percent foreign-born.
Table 2 displays means for all outcome, predictor, and control variables.
Similar to the patterns for feeling welcomed, Mexican immigrants report signifi-
cantly lower levels of trust and interest in knowing both blacks and whites than
Indian immigrants. Mexican immigrants also report significantly lower levels of
participation in community life. These descriptive statistics are consistent with
our interview data, and in many ways, these differences are not surprising given
that 78 percent of the Mexican immigrants in our sample are noncitizens and 36
percent are undocumented. Nearly half arrived within the last 12 years and spoke
English “pretty well or very well.” About 79 percent of Indian immigrants were
U.S. citizens, 1 percent were undocumented, nearly one-third arrived in the last
12 years, and a vast majority (96 percent) spoke English pretty well or very well.
Despite these differences, it is still important for us to understand the extent to
which immigrants’ perceptions of welcoming by the U.S.-born are related to how
they, in turn, express trust and interest in the U.S.-born.7

Predicting trust.  Table 3 displays results from regressions predicting immi-

grants’ trust in U.S.-born whites and blacks.8 Models 1a and 2a include individual
and contextual controls, and models 1b and 2b add immigrants’ perceptions of
feeling welcomed by U.S.-born whites or blacks. Estimating the models with
controls first and then including our key independent variables helps us to under-
stand the extent to which perceptions of welcoming explain variation in immi-
grants’ trust in the U.S.-born beyond our control variables.9
Our results show that feeling welcomed by whites and blacks (Table 3, models
1b and 2b) have positive and significant effects on immigrants’ trust in whites and
blacks, respectively. Thus, when immigrants feel welcomed by U.S.-born whites
and blacks, they report higher levels of trust in whites and blacks respectively, all
else being equal. These effects remain robust when individual-level variables
measuring socioeconomic status and other key demographics, as well as contex-
tual variables capturing neighborhood characteristics related to socioeconomic,
racial composition, and residential stability, are included in the models.
Interestingly, the effects of national origin, English proficiency, type of inter-
view, and neighborhood stability are significant in the reduced models (models
1a and 2a), indicating that Mexicans, as well as immigrants who can speak English
less well, who were surveyed in person, and who lived in more stable neighbor-
hoods, reported higher levels of trust in U.S.-born whites and blacks. Yet once
72 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

Table 2
Means for Variables among Mexican and Indian Immigrants

Variable All Immigrants Mexicans Indians Min. Max.

Key independent variables

  Welcomed by whites 1.914 1.575 2.259 0 3
  Welcomed by blacks 1.745 1.365 2.129 0 3
Outcome variables
  Trust in whites 1.868 1.543 2.203 0 3
  Trust in blacks 1.577 1.135 2.031 0 3
  Interest in whites 0.457 0.289 0.626 –2 2
  Interest in blacks 0.228 –0.054 0.513 –2 2
  Community involvement 1.115 0.680 1.543 0 5
Individual control variables
  Gender (Male = 1) 0.509 0.500 0.539 0 1
 Age 39.98 34.96 45.06 18 91
 Education 3.856 2.498 5.247 1 6
  Employed (=1) 0.671 0.636 0.706 0 1
  Homeownership (=1) 0.503 0.215 0.803 0 1
 Partisanship 0.229 0.083 0.387 –2 2
  Years in the US 18.55 15.96 21.33 1 55
  Interview type (in person = 1) 0.248 0.400 0.096 0 1
  English proficiency 2.089 1.156 2.611 0 3
  Metro (Philadelphia = 1) 0.500 0.500 0.501 0 1
Contextual control variables
 Percent white 53.93 39.75 65.16 0.510 95.29
 Percent black 18.12 24.29 13.22 0.604 97.95
 Percent foreign-born
 Percent poverty 12.41 18.49 7.589 0.000 61.60
 Percent living in same house in 85.05 82.94 86.72 39.80 98.70
last 5 years

SOURCE: Study of Immigrants and Native-Born in Atlanta and Philadelphia (SINAP).

NOTE: Contextual control variables are measured at the census-tract level. For partisanship,
higher values indicate more liberal.

feeling welcomed is included in the models, these effects disappear. This sug-
gests that feeling welcomed is indeed important for understanding immigrants’
trust in U.S.-born groups, and may be particularly important for Mexican immi-
grants who are less likely to be well integrated with the U.S.-born in local com-
munities, compared to their Indian counterparts. We also note that the
individual-level socioeconomic variables showed no discernable effects in pre-
dicting immigrants’ trust in U.S.-born blacks and whites in the full models,
though more education was associated with higher levels of trust in blacks.10 In
addition, percent poverty in one’s neighborhood is associated with less trust in
WELCOMING, TRUST, AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT 73

Table 3
Effects of Immigrants’ Perceptions of Feeling Welcomed on Trust in
U.S.-Born Blacks and Whites

Variables Model 1a Model 1b Model 2a Model 2b

  Trust in Whites Trust in Whites Trust in Blacks Trust in Blacks

Key predictors
  Welcomed by whites — .426*** — —
(.039)
  Welcomed by blacks — — .422***
(.040)
Individual controls
  Homeowner (=1) –.014 –.013 –.048 –.027
(.088) (.079) (.094) (.088)
  Employed (=1) –.068 –.098 .054 .011
(.080) (.068) (.081) (.073)
 Education .014 .009 .101* .083
(.037) (.031) (.043) (.036)
 Age –.004 –.002 –.002 –.000
(.004) (.003) (.004) (.003)
  Male (=1) .082 .045 –.013 .025
(.071) (.062) (.082) (.070)
 Partisanship .017 .012 .076 .052
(.048) (.044) (.058) (.048)
  Metro area .002 –.026 –.056 –.052
(.078) (.072) (.081) (.078)
  Mexican (=1) –.253* –.133 –.306* –.107
(.117) (.100) (.136) (.116)
  Interview type –.342** –.148 –.233* –.198
(.111) (.100) (.114) (.102)
  Years in U.S. .002 .000 .004 .002
(.005) (.004) (.005) (.004)
 English .164** .090 .153** .043
(.065) (.051) (.056) (.055)
Contextual controls
 Percent white .003 .002 — —
(.002) (.002)
 Percent black — — –.002 –.001
(.002) (.002)
 Percent poverty –.006 –.009* –.011** –.010**
(.005) (.004) (.004) (.003)
 Percent foreign-born –.001 –.002 –.008** –.006*
(.003) (.002) (.002) (.002)
 Percent in same house in last 5 years –.010* –.006 –.011* –.006
(.004) (.004) (.004) (.004)
Constant 2.690*** 1.821*** 2.454*** 1.442**
(0.496) (0.445) (0.516) (0.517)
Observations 600 600 599 599
R-squared .233 .394 .329 .459

SOURCE: Study of Immigrants and Native-Born in Atlanta and Philadelphia (SINAP).

NOTE: Robust standard errors in parentheses. Contextual control variables measured at the
census-tract level.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
74 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

both U.S.-born groups, and percent foreign-born is associated with less trust in
U.S.-born blacks.

Predicting interest.  When we turn to models 1b and 2b in Table 4, we find

highly significant and positive associations between immigrants’ feeling wel-
comed by U.S.-born whites and blacks, and their greater interest in knowing
whites and blacks, respectively. We also found that while national origin does not
have a significant effect, years spent in the United States is negatively associated
with immigrants’ interest in knowing whites. In the models predicting interest in
knowing blacks, metro area, and percent foreign-born both have significant
effects: immigrants who reside in Philadelphia and who live in neighborhoods
with higher percent foreign-born are less interested in knowing U.S.-born blacks
than their counterparts who live in Atlanta and in neighborhoods with smaller
foreign-born populations.
We also estimated interactions between national origin and welcoming. Here,
we observed that the effects of feeling welcomed by whites differentially pre-
dicted trust and interest in knowing U.S.-born whites among Mexicans and
Indians. While feeling welcomed by whites was generally associated with greater
interest in knowing whites among both immigrant groups, this effect was espe-
cially strong among Mexican immigrants (analyses available upon request). The
remaining interactions were not significant, indicating that the effects of feeling
welcomed by blacks on trust and interest in blacks did not differ significantly for
Mexican and Indian immigrants.
Finally, in Table 5, we turn to models predicting immigrants’ community
involvement. For this analysis, we created a composite measure of feeling wel-
comed by blacks and whites, because these two measures were highly correlated
(r = .64). Similar to our other analyses, our results show that when immigrants
feel welcomed by whites and blacks, they display greater involvement in the local
community, all else equal (model 1b). We also found that English proficiency is
a significant predictor of community involvement, such that immigrants who are
more proficient in English show greater involvement in civic activities. We found
that no other individual and contextual controls have significant effects, and that
when we estimated interactions between feeling welcomed and national origin,
no significant effects appeared when predicting community involvement.

Discussion and Conclusion

Given recent debates about whether and to what extent immigrants integrate
into the U.S. context (see Alba and Nee 2003), this article advances past research
by focusing on immigrants’ perceptions of their communities. We argue that the
structural contexts that immigrants must navigate—namely, institutions and
­policies—are important for understanding immigrant integration, but they con-
stitute only one piece of the puzzle. We must also examine immigrants’ percep-
tions of and everyday interactions with the U.S.-born, as these can have important
WELCOMING, TRUST, AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT 75

Table 4
Effects of Immigrants’ Perceptions of Feeling Welcomed on Interest in
U.S.-Born Blacks and Whites

Model 1a Model 1b Model 2a Model 2b

Interest in Interest in Interest in Interest in

Variables Whites Whites Blacks Blacks

Key predictors
  Welcomed by whites — .291*** — —
(.060)
  Welcomed by blacks — — — .337***
(.057)
Individual controls
  Homeowner (=1) –.132 –.126 –.043 –.027
(.133) (.132) (.158) (.149)
  Employed (=1) –.101 –.119 –.089 –.085
(.103) (.099) (.106) (.103)
 Education .069 .056 .035 .016
(.052) (.050) (.058) (.059)
 Age .003 .004 –.001 .001
(.005) (.005) (.005) (.005)
  Male (=1) .014 –.010 –.049 –.063
(.094) (.091) (.101) (.095)
 Partisanship .126 .126 .077 .063
(.072) (.108) (.075) (.072)
  Metro area –.100 –.107 –.427*** –.417***
(.110) (.108) (.119) (.114)
  Mexican (=1) –.100 –.037 –.273 –.135
(.188) (.185) (.195) (.182)
  Interview type –.515*** –.381** –.589*** –.559***
(.147) (.140) (.149) (.150)
  Years in U.S. –.013 –.014* –.005 –.007
(.007) (.007) (.006) (.006)
  English proficiency .030 –.018 .179** .091
(.090) (.092) (.072) (.072)
Contextual controls
 Percent white –.000 –.002 — —
(.003) (.003)
 Percent black — — –.005 –.004
(.003) (.006)
 Percent poverty .002 –.003 .003 .004
(.007) (.007) (.006) (.006)
 Percent foreign born –.003 –.004 –.009* –.008*
(.004) (.004) (.004) (.004)
 Percent in same house in last 5 years –.004 –.002 –.013* –.010
(.006) (.006) (.006) (.006)
Constant 1.038 0.547 1.847** 1.058
(0.795) (0.798) (0.704) (0.720)
Observations 614 614 611 611
R-squared .075 .123 .173 .228

SOURCE: Study of Immigrants and Native-Born in Atlanta and Philadelphia (SINAP).

NOTE: Robust standard errors in parentheses. Contextual control variables measured at the census-tract
level.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
76 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

Table 5
Effects of Immigrants’ Perceptions of Feeling Welcomed on Community Involvement

Variables Model 1a Model 1b

Key predictor
  Welcomed by whites and blacks — .245**
(.081)
Individual controls
  Homeowner (=1) .259 .265
(.146) (.146)
  Employed (=1) –.029 –.041
(.133) (.133)
 Education .109 .102
(.068) (.067)
 Age –.000 .001
(.007) (.112)
  Male (=1) –.075 –.090
(.113) (.112)
 Partisanship .038 .033
(.116) (.113)
  Metro area –.068 –.061
(.143) (.141)
  Mexican (=1) .061 .147
(.246) (.247)
  Interview type –.165 –.103
(.176) (.178)
  Years in U.S. .004 .003
(.008) (.008)
  English proficiency .241** .188*
(.095) (.095)
Contextual controls
 Percent white .002 .002
(.003) (.003)
 Percent poverty –.004 –.005
(.006) (.006)
 Percent foreign-born .001 .000
(.004) (.004)
 Percent in same house for past 5 years .005 .007
(.007) (.007)
Constant –.410 –.863
(.794) (.803)
Observations 608 608
R-squared .148 .164

SOURCE: Study of Immigrants and Native-Born in Atlanta and Philadelphia (SINAP).

NOTE: Robust standard errors in parentheses. Contextual control variables measured at the
census-tract level.
*p < .05. **p < .01.
WELCOMING, TRUST, AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT 77

downstream effects on social integration and engagement with local

communities.
In this article, we focused on immigrants’ perceptions of feeling welcomed by
the U.S.-born. While welcoming by members of a host society can be a symbolic
gesture, it can also be an important signal to immigrants and other marginalized
groups. Acceptance and belonging are not simply produced by institutional poli-
cies and practices; they also reflect interactions and local practices of recognition
and inclusion (see Bloemraad 2018; Glenn 2011).
We found that Mexican immigrants have significantly lower levels of feeling
welcomed by the U.S.-born than do Indian immigrants. This is not surprising
given the socioeconomic and legal status differences between these two groups.
We also discovered that Indian immigrants often felt welcomed in their neigh-
borhoods, as they chatted with their mostly white neighbors and were invited to
local events, where they further developed interpersonal ties and relations. For
Mexican immigrants, feeling welcomed by the U.S.-born sometimes took place
in racially mixed neighborhoods, but most often in the context of their children’s
schools, community-based organizations, and places of worship. Mexicans talked
about welcoming less than Indians did, and feeling welcomed was expressed a bit
differently between the two immigrant groups. Nevertheless, similar processes
regarding the importance and value of feeling welcomed appeared across both
immigrant groups.
To understand how feeling welcomed mattered for immigrant integration, our
analysis of the survey data revealed that when immigrants felt welcomed by U.S.-
born blacks and whites, they were more likely to trust and express interest in
blacks and whites, respectively, and more likely to engage in civic activities in
their communities. These effects were robust, as we included a battery of indi-
vidual measures of socioeconomic status and other demographic variables, and
contextual measures for neighborhood racial and immigrant composition, socio-
economic status, and stability. Although neither socioeconomic nor national ori-
gin variables consistently predicted immigrants’ trust and interest in U.S.-born
populations, feeling welcomed was positively and significantly related to trust and
interest in the U.S.-born in all the models. In short, these findings suggest that
successful immigrant integration involves interpersonal and interactional pro-
cesses beyond formal institutions and policies. In other words, an inclusionary
policy context may not produce optimal outcomes if immigrants do not feel wel-
comed in their interpersonal interactions with the U.S.-born. Existing theoretical
frameworks of immigrant integration should further consider how individuals’
perceptions of everyday encounters with others operate as a key part of the inte-
gration process.
How might our results apply to other immigrant groups, or even refugees or
migrants with temporary or discretionary statuses? Given that the positive effects
of welcoming held across two differently positioned immigrant groups, we sur-
mise they may also hold for other groups as well. For example, refugees often
have lower average levels of human capital and less English language fluency
than economic migrants do, but they also benefit from policies that provide ser-
vices and resources, including legal status and access to material support upon
78 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

arrival. Yet despite the support embedded in resettlement programs, refugees

also face uneven and at times hostile receptions from local communities, and
their governmental supports have recently declined to “modest” and “temporary”
levels compared to the past (Fitzgerald and Arar 2018, 397–98; Fujiwara 2008;
Portes and Bach 1985).
In many ways, the Mexican immigrants in our sample have similar profiles to
those of refugees. In this vein, Fitzgerald and Arar (2018) broadly critique the
idea that migrants and refugees are distinct and argue that the “categorization of
refugees is malleable both from above and from below” (pp. 388–91). We posit
that the distinction between refugees and migrants may be even more malleable
in terms of host society perceptions and attitudes, especially since host society
members often do not understand official categories or state-sanctioned differ-
ences between them. Thus, future research should investigate linkages between
broader institutional and political contexts, hosts’ attitudes toward immigrants in
their communities, and immigrants’ perceptions of both to clarify how welcoming
within a community fits into broader patterns of social integration and exclusion
and how it varies for migrants with different legal-political statuses.

Notes
1. In Philadelphia, the white-black dissimilarity index in 2010 was 73.3 and in Atlanta it was 58.3,
indicating that a majority of whites (or blacks) would need to move within and across neighborhoods to
achieve racial integration within the larger metropolitan area. Further, both metropolitan areas exhibited
high levels of racial isolation. In 2010, the average black and white resident lived in neighborhoods with
relatively high percentages of their own racial groups (for whites, 80.0 percent in Philadelphia and 67.0
percent in Atlanta; and for blacks, 62.9 percent in Philadelphia and 58.1 percent in Atlanta) (Logan and
Stults 2011).
2. Using the entire Philadelphia and Atlanta metropolitan areas for our sampling frame, the survey
employed a stratified sampling design to reach foreign-born Mexicans and Indians. We drew a random
sample from cell phone lists as well as surname dictionaries, in conjunction with an oversampling of high-
density census tracts based on American Community Survey (ACS) block-group level estimates of where
Mexican and Indian immigrants live, as well as some face-to-face survey administration to subsamples of
Mexican and Indian immigrants.
3. We compared characteristics of respondents who did and did not provide cross-street information
for their place of residence; respondents who provided cross-street information tended to be older, were
more likely to be homeowners, and had higher levels of education than those who did not provide cross-
street information.
4. In general, Mexicans as a group and in our sample are more marginalized than Indians, as Mexican
immigrants are less likely to be supported by institutional and policy contexts and by everyday publics
(Bean, Brown, and Bachmeier 2015; Massey and Sanchez 2010).
5. These separate church services for Mexicans and whites are referred to as “parallel services” within
the same congregation or church (López-Sanders 2012; see also Jiménez 2017).
6. We also estimated our models using ordered logit models and the results were generally the same
as the ordinary least squares (OLS) models. We ultimately chose to use OLS models for ease of interpreta-
tion of results.
7. Immigrants’ interest and trust were moderately correlated for U.S.-born whites (.36) and blacks
(.42). As such, we treat them as separate outcomes in our analysis.
8. We included weights for age and income to ensure that our sample is representative of the larger
Atlanta and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. Additionally, because our models include individual and
census-tract level predictors, we estimated robust standard errors.
WELCOMING, TRUST, AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT 79

9. We checked for collinearity and calculated variance inflation factors (VIFs) for each model and for
individual variables. The mean VIF across our models ranged from 1.6 to 2.6, and nearly all of the contex-
tual variables reached individual VIF values within the range of 1.6 to 2.3. Percent white was the exception
with an individual VIF value of 3.4, which is within an acceptable range, as VIF values above 10 warrant
further investigation.
10. In reduced models estimated only with individual-level controls, we find that immigrants’ education
is positively associated with trust in both blacks and whites, though the effect is marginal (p < .10).
Additionally, when we included a measure of undocumented status in our full models, this did not change
our results, as the effect of feeling welcomed remained positive and highly significant. Tables are available
upon request.

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