Neighborhood Immigration, Violence, and City-Level Immigrant Political Opportunities
作者利用多层次比较框架，研究城市政治环境如何影响移民社区与暴力犯罪的关系。他们结合政治进程和少数族裔融入理论，认为有利的移民政治机会（如少数族裔在民选职位中的代表比例、支持移民的立法）会强化移民集中度与社区暴力犯罪之间的负相关关系。数据来自全美邻里犯罪研究，涵盖87个大城市的普查区人口与暴力信息，并补充了城市层面的移民政治机会指标。多层次工具变量分析显示，在移民政治机会较好的城市，移民集中度与邻里暴力犯罪的负相关关系更强。作者推测，这是因为有利的政治环境通过增强信任和公共社会控制，加强了移民社区的社会组织。结论表明，边缘化社区（按族裔和出生地划分）的命运受政治行为体和结构对其诉求的回应程度影响。
Using a multilevel comparative framework, we propose that politically receptive city contexts facilitate the viability of marginalized neighborhoods. To illustrate this proposition, we examine the relationship between immigrant concentration and neighborhood violence. Drawing on political process and minority incorporation theories, we argue that favorable immigrant political opportunities will strengthen the often-found inverse relationship between immigration and crime at the neighborhood level. Unique data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study (Peterson and Krivo 2010a) provide demographic and violence information for Census tracts in a representative sample of 87 large cities. We append this dataset with city-level measures of immigrant political opportunities, such as the extent of minority political incorporation into elected offices and pro-immigrant legislation. Multilevel instrumental variable analyses reveal that the inverse relationship between immigrant concentration and neighborhood violent crime is generally enhanced in cities with favorable immigrant political opportunities. We speculate that this occurs because favorable political contexts bolster social organization by enhancing trust and public social control within immigrant neighborhoods. Our findings demonstrate that the fate of neighborhoods marginalized across ethnicity and nativity are shaped by the responsiveness of political actors and structures to their concerns.