Mapping the Urban/Suburban Differences among Immigrant-Serving Organizations in the Greater Philadelphia Region

Alejandro Rivas, Princeton University
Andrea Pancho-Berry, University of Pennsylvania

Using public listings of immigrant-serving organizations in the Greater Philadelphia region, we analyze whether urban and suburban neighborhoods provide different types of organizational opportunities for immigrants. We divide resources provided by immigrant organizations into five categories according to immigrants needs: (1) subsistence, (2) mobility, (3) cultural maintenance, (4) integration, and (5) transnational. We argue that looking at organizations by the resources they offer provides a more nuanced picture of opportunity landscapes. Results show that urban areas do provide greater access to organizational resources for immigrants—approximately an additional 1.14 more organizations per census tract when compared to non-urban tracts. This urban advantage increases a great deal for subsistence, mobility, and integration resources, to 1.83, 1.62, and 1.18 more organizations per tract, respectively, while the urban advantage for cultural maintenance resources is less than the average at only 0.8 more organizations in urban areas than non-urban one.