Lexington Books Sanctuary Ordinances: The Contemporary Politics of Immigrant Assimilation in America

The book examines contemporary immigration policy and immigrant assimilation with a focus on the adoption of sanctuary ordinances in US local governments in connection with Latino in-migration. It also investigates the adoption of anti-immigrant settlement local ordinances in many local governments with particular focus on local law enforcement positions taken on enforcement of federal immigration laws. The book investigates a wide range of county-level characteristics of 3,000+ U.S. counties (e.g., socio-economic and demographic traits, political culture, social capital, religious denominations present, etc.) to identify correlates of pro- and anti-immigrant settlement. The book also features the analysis of a national survey and three targeted surveys in pro-immigration (San Francisco), divided (Maricopa), and anti-immigration (Tulsa) counties to explore the individual-level factors associated with sentiments on immigration policy. Finally, the book presents findings from two case studies where active encouragement of Latino settlement (Twin Falls, ID) and active opposition (Hazleton, PA) characterize local reaction to Latino in-migration. The mixed methods study leads the authors to conclude that a funnel of causality concept, path dependency, pro-social attitudes, and the concepts of moral panic and moral dialogue collectively lead to great insight into the question of why some communities are open and accepting while others are exclusionary. Review Sanctuary Ordinances: The Contemporary Politics of Immigrant Assimilation in America asks a simple question: why do some communities in the U.S. embrace the arrival of immigrants, while others demonstrate great resistance? The authors provide a very rich answer. They do so through the analyses of national and local public opinion surveys, quantitative modelling of over 3,000 U.S. counties' policies regarding immigration, and two qualitative in-depth municipal case studies. Drawing from a variety of disciplines and research traditions, Lovrich, Pierce and Christopher Simon provide us with a much deeper understanding of the dynamics of local government behavior on an issue that has periodically reappeared at the center of the nation's political arena in recent decades. Anyone with a genuine interest in immigrants, immigration policy, and local governance should read this book.--William D. Schreckhise, University of Arkansas Moving forward, I cannot imagine any class about the social and political landscape of the United States, nor any study or commentary on immigration, that does not include a major conversation about Lovrich, Pierce, and Simon's Sanctuary Ordinances. It is as indispensable to this generation of social scientists as was Blalock's seminal Toward a Theory of Minority-group Relations to its generation.--Jonathon A. Cooper Sanctuary Ordinances fills a critical void in our knowledge of the treatment of immigrants in the U.S. This book assesses the response to in-migration in over 3,000 U.S. counties and focuses on county level data, an important unit of analysis for understanding government, law enforcement and citizen responses to immigrants. The use of mixed methods is one of the many strengths of this work, and the book focuses both on historical and contemporary pressures on the decisions to be a "welcoming" or "exclusionary" jurisdiction. This is a must-read for those who study criminal justice, as much of the responsibility for responding to the challenges of immigration is left to fall on the criminal justice system.--Scott H. Decker, Arizona State University The Trump administration has engineered a series of changes to federal immigration policy that are highly controversial, and arguably discriminatory. In many localities the influx of immigrants, particularly Hispanics, has stirred both positive and negative sentiments toward these newcomers. Despite the widespread nature of these developments we know relatively little about ho