Books edited by RISING co-founder Heather Smith
Given rapidly changing demographics, particularly in the US South, the Brookings Institution published a report (updated in 2014), categorizing cities as former, Post-WWII, emerging, re-emerging, and pre-emerging gateways. Emerging gateways have only relatively recently become major destinations for immigrants, with extraordinary growth rates since the 1990s. Compared to other gateway types, emerging gateways have small proportions of foreign-born who speak English well and are naturalized. Emerging gateways include Charlotte, Atlanta, Austin, Las Vegas, Durham, Greensboro, Raleigh, Nashville and Salt Lake City. For example, the Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, NC-SC metropolitan area experienced a 957.6% growth in the foreign-born population between 1980-2006. In the same time frame, foreign-born growth was 1291.4% in Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA, 1179.2% in Raleigh-Cary, NC, 902.3% in Durham, NC, and 862.2% in Greensboro-High Point, NC, among the highest in the nation (Singer, Hardwick and Brettell, 2008). In contrast with traditional immigrant cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami, new gateways often lack a comprehensive infrastructure to support newcomers. As such, we wish to help build an environment that provides immigrants access to resources and opportunities to be happy, healthy members of our communities.
Source: Migration Policy Institute (2011)
Source: RISING using Census data
RISING members Silva Mathema and Claire Schuch at the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities conference
Brisa Hernandez and Heather Smith presenting at the Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) Grantees’ Conference
