Report cover featuring black and white images of diverse people protesting and holding signs
Immigrant Inclusion & Racial Justice

September 2011

By Manuel Pastor, Juan De Lara, and Justin Scoggins

Please note: reports dated earlier than June 2020 were published under our previous names: the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) or the USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII).

The movement of immigrants, particularly Latinos, into traditionally African American neighborhoods has transformed the urban landscape with new businesses, new churches and new ways of living, but it has also generated a palpable sense of loss in the Black community—one exacerbated by the negative impact of immigrants on less skilled and less connected Black workers.

While the overall media focus on interethnic tensions and conflicts makes for good reporting, it misses daily accommodations in neighborhoods and schools, common struggles to reduce over-policing and disproportionate incarceration, and efforts to organize across race and ethnicity for safer housing, better jobs and a healthier environment.

“All Together Now? African Americans, Immigrants and the Future of California” “provides organizers and activists with much-needed facts and insightful analysis surrounding African American-immigration relations in California,” according to the Black Alliance for Just Immigration’s Gerald Lenoir. The authors dug deep into data on residential integration, wage and employment outcomes, and best practices of grassroots organizers to understand what’s happening in neighborhoods, and ultimately offered implications for building a new set of alliances through the frame of “everyday social justice.”

Read our other publications by research area

    Immigrant Integration & Racial Justice

    Our work on immigrant integration and racial justice brings together three emphases: scholarship that draws on academic theory and rigorous research, data that provides information structured to highlight the process of immigrant integration over time, and engagement that seeks to create new dialogues with government, community organizers, business and civic leaders, immigrants and the voting public to advance immigrant integration and racial equity.

    Economic Inclusion & Climate Equity

    In the area of economic inclusion, we at ERI advance academic theory and practical applications linking economic growth, environmental quality, and civic health with bridging of racial and other gaps; produce accessible and actionable data and analysis through the data tools; and establish research partnerships to deepen and advance the dialogue, planning, and actions around racial equity, environmental justice, and the built environment.

    Social Movements & Governing Power

    ERI’s work in the area of governing power includes: conducting cross-disciplinary studies of today’s social movements, supporting learning and strategizing efforts to advance dialogues among organizers, funders, intermediaries, evaluators, and academics, and developing research-based social change frameworks and tools to inform—and be informed by—real-world, real-time efforts towards a vision of deep change.

    Publications Directory

    In 2020, the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) and the USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) merged to form the USC Equity Research Institute (ERI).

    The full list of publications published under our previous and current names can be found in our publications directory.

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