Immigrant Crossroads

Globalization, Incorporation, and Placemaking in Queens, New York

“ The editors of and contributors to Immigrant Crossroads have done us all a huge favor by putting together this excellent and comprehensive book on the most interesting county in the United States. With chapters covering demographics, party politics, health access, community organizing, and much more, the breadth of this work is impressive. Importantly, all of the chapters locate Queens in much larger frameworks, and therefore the book is not just about Queens but about the forces shaping how all urban places and spaces are constructed in a globalizing world.”—James DeFilippis, Professor of Urban Planning at Rutgers University

“ A book dedicated to Queens is long overdue, and like the borough itself, this rich, edited volume is hyperdiverse. It not only gives readers a sense of dramatic demographic changes in the borough over the past few decades but also shows the financialization of our real estate landscape and the ways in which new and second-generation immigrants have both perpetuated and resisted established models of political incorporation and machine politics. Immigrant Crossroads illustrates how Queens defies facile platitudes and instead embodies key contradictions of American policy. The borough is thriving not because of but despite American neoliberal economic policies, and in today's political landscape, electing racially and ethnically diverse politicians to office is no guarantee of substantive representation. This book thus shows how Queens’ most significant dynamics and current tensions are a distillation and microcosm of issues we should consider and confront nationwide.”—Celina Su, Marilyn J. Gittell Chair in Urban Studies at City University of New York Graduate Center and Brooklyn College