Branching Out into Immigrant Neighborhoods: How Public Libraries Distribute Community Resources to Meet Immigrant Needs
by
Laura Humm Delgado
Bachelor of Arts Williams College Williamstown, Massachusetts (2005)
Master in City Planning Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts (2010)
Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Urban and Regional Planning
at the
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
May 2020
© 2020 Laura Humm Delgado. All Rights Reserved
The author hereby grants to MIT the permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of the thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created.
Author______Department of Urban Studies and Planning May 20, 2020
Certified by ______Professor Emeritus Phillip Clay Department of Urban Studies and Planning Dissertation Supervisor
Accepted by______Associate Professor Jinhua Zhao Chair, PhD Committee Department of Urban Studies and Planning
2 Branching Out into Immigrant Neighborhoods: How Public Libraries Distribute Community Resources to Meet Immigrant Needs
by Laura Humm Delgado
Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning on May 20, 2020 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Urban and Regional Planning
ABSTRACT
Local organizations play a critical role in providing access to resources and opportunities for those who are low-income, socially isolated, or marginalized. This is especially true for immigrants in the United States, where support with integration falls almost entirely on local organizations. Immigrants are more likely to live in poverty; yet, they are accessing the social safety net less for fear of discrimination and deportation. This research asks how one type of local organization, the neighborhood library branch, distributes resources to immigrants across urban neighborhoods and how neighborhoods shape organizational resources.
I approach this research through a mixed-method study of the Boston Public Library and its twenty- five neighborhood branches that relies on participant observation, interviews, and the analysis of archives, texts, and public library data. The first part uses an immigrant integration framework to examine how neighborhood branches contribute to English language learning and political, economic, and social integration. I address how immigrant services align with neighborhood needs and to what extent immigrants access these resources. I find that institutional resources are well targeted to immigrant neighborhoods, but community resources are more effective at reaching immigrants and provide intangible benefits that are tailored to neighborhoods. A reliance on community resources, however, can exacerbate inequalities across neighborhoods. The second part of this research addresses how the neighborhoods in which neighborhood branches are located shape library resources through 1) expressed community needs, 2) level of volunteerism, 3) cultural sharing practices, and 4) organizational partnerships.
Whereas scholars have addressed the question of how organizations provide access to resources for marginalized populations by looking at the geographic distribution of organizations, institutional funding, and brokered resources, this research asks 1) how neighborhoods shape organizational resources and 2) what factors, beyond geographic proximity, affect access to resources. The findings from this research have implications for how scholars and planners conceptualize and identify organizational resources at the neighborhood level. Additionally, this research offers lessons for what practices local organizations and government agencies can adopt to reach immigrant communities at a time when immigrants are becoming increasingly fearful of accessing government institutions, public benefits, and public spaces.
Dissertation Supervisor: Phillip Clay Title: Professor Emeritus
3 Acknowledgements
I am so grateful to have had a supportive, considerate, and knowledgeable committee who helped me tremendously with both my qualifying exams and my dissertation. Professors Phillip Clay, Justin Steil, and Roberto Fernandez, I have learned so much from each of you about what it means to do research and to mentor students with kindness, integrity, and compassion. Professor Clay, thank you so much for teaching me about research and helping me to move forward and complete the doctoral program while also being so kind and encouraging along the way. I am very lucky that I started the doctoral program as your advisee and that you stuck with me even after retirement. Every doctoral student should be so lucky to have an advisor, chair, and mentor such as you! Professor Steil, I am so grateful that you came to DUSP when you did. Your concern for your students and the way that you bring social justice into your research and teaching are inspirational. Thank you so much for the guidance, support, and encouragement you provided throughout my time at DUSP and for showing me how to do research and teach! Professor Fernandez, thank you very much for coming across campus to be on my exam and dissertation committees! You are an impressive scholar, and I am so grateful for the knowledge and expertise you’ve shared with me. From our first meeting through my dissertation defense, I have really appreciated how you have tried to ground my doctoral work such that it leads to a long-term academic career.
Thank you to Garnette Cadogan and Chris Bourg for supporting my love of libraries and this dissertation! Garnette, though you were not officially on my dissertation committee, you have been such an important mentor throughout! I am so lucky to have benefited from your knowledge and enthusiasm for libraries these past few years. I selected a somewhat less traditional dissertation topic, and you helped to keep me focused and excited about it throughout. Chris, thank you for the time you have taken to help me with this dissertation, for your encouragement, and for sharing your expertise and passion regarding libraries!
MIT and DUSP, in particular, has been an amazing place at which to study as both a master’s and a doctoral student. I am very grateful to the many faculty members who have made learning exciting and who have been so supportive. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to learn from you as a student, a researcher, and a teaching assistant! To Ellen Rushman, Sandy Wellford, Karen Yegian and all of the other staff members who have been so helpful, kind, and supportive throughout, thank you so much! You make DUSP run like a well-oiled machine, and you bring a lot of heart to the department.
Thank you to my PhD cohort and to the many friends I have made along the way. Aditi Mehta, thanks for being my best friend in the MCP and PhD program! Can we please find a way to work at the same place for many years to come? To Melissa Chinchilla, Aria Finkelstein, Ella Kim, Haegi Kwon, Prassanna Raman, and Yasmin Zaepoor, I am so lucky to have shared this experience (and an office at some point!) with each of you! I hope our paths continue to cross. Finally, I am so grateful to have encountered many impressive, dedicated, and impassioned MCPs (too many to list!) throughout these many years at DUSP. I have always thought that it is too bad that you all come and go so fast, but I am particularly grateful to have gotten to know many of you.
* * *
4 One of the most enjoyable aspects of this research was having the excuse to talk with librarians across the Boston Public Library last summer. Each was impressive, intelligent, caring, passionate, and a joy to talk with. As I finished this dissertation, I reached back out to the librarians, and it so happened that the COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts were peaking when I did. I was so touched, and yet not surprised, by how warm their responses were. Thank you so much to all of the BPL librarians who generously took the time to talk with me! I wish I had the opportunity to work with all of you on a regular basis. I know you were busy when I reached out to you, and I am truly grateful for the time, thought, and care that you put into our interviews. It has been so wonderful to talk with all of you and see how devoted you are to your patrons, the work you do, and making the world a better place. The work you do takes time, expertise, and compassion, and I am very humbled by each of you. THANK YOU!
Thank you very much to the many other people who have taken the time to meet and talk with me about libraries! Maria Balestrieri, Chris Bourg, and Jan Seymour-Ford, thank you so much for pre- testing my interview schedule. Your feedback was invaluable! Thank you, also, to John Dorsey, Glenn Ferdman, Priscilla Foley, David Giles, Valerie Karno, Eric Klinenberg, David Leonard, Maria McCauley, Shelley Quezada, Jessamyn West, and Jason Yee. Each of you has been so helpful talking with me and providing invaluable information about public libraries.
Thank you, also, to the Ford Foundation, the Boston Area Research Initiative, the Bill Mitchell ++ Fund, and MIT for generously funding this research! I could not have done it without these sources of support.
* * *
A lot can happen during the time it takes to graduate from a doctoral program, and I am so grateful to have gained a partner and son and to have been able to live close to my family throughout most of it. I have relied on my growing family for companionship, laughs, food, support, guidance, and encouragement. The dinners, brunches, walks, movies, and vacations spent with all of you—Doug, Barbara, Mommy, Daddy, Oliver, and even Clem, our dog—mean the world to me and always will. Thank you, also, to my wonderful aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws, who have been so supportive throughout!
To Oliver, thank you for coming into our lives as I was writing this dissertation. Your smiles, giggles, and love of life are infectious, and you helped remind me what is important in life. Thank you, also, for coming to my virtual dissertation defense! I will always remember seeing your amazing, curious, little face on the screen. I love you with all my heart, and I cannot wait to see what excites you in life and to learn with you!
To Doug, thank you for your love, support, encouragement, and sense of humor! I am so grateful to go through life by your side, always learning, exploring, laughing, and growing together. We’ve always spent a lot of time together working from home, but having to do so during a pandemic with just a few walks here and there really reinforced how much I love being with you. I love you just as much when we are raising an infant during a global pandemic as I do when life feels like a vacation. I cannot wait until Oliver, you, and I can seek out adventures in the mountains of Vermont with our bikes and kayaks in tow!
5 To Barbara, thank you for being the most amazing and supportive sister that I could ever ask for! You are always so good to Doug, Oliver, Clem, and me, and you are the sweetest, most fun person I know. I am most definitely jealous of your boogie! Thank you, also, for welcoming Oliver into the family with love and compassion. He is so lucky to have you as his aunt! With my newfound time, I look forward to baking and cooking with you, more walks together, and talking with you every single day. I love you so much and always will!
To Mommy and Daddy, thank you for always believing in me, for teaching me how to do research from a young age, for encouraging me to do volunteer work, and for showing me what it means to be an academic and advocate with heart. Thank you for first introducing me to public libraries and for fostering a love of libraries along the way. I love you very much and am so grateful for the many hours spent talking about teaching and research with you, for the child care you provided during the first few months of Oliver’s life, for the many meals and groceries you have shared with us, for the daily phone calls, and for every other way in which you have sustained and loved me! You lead by example in all ways, and I hope I become as good a parent to Oliver as you have been to Barbara and me.
6 Table of Contents
List of tables and figures ...... 9 Chapter one | Introduction ...... 10 Introduction ...... 10 Theoretical framework: Concentrated poverty, segregation, and organizational resources ...... 13 Are low-income neighborhoods, in fact, lacking organizational resources? ...... 15 Measuring access: Beyond geographic proximity and institutional resources ...... 19 Why immigrants and public libraries? ...... 23 Research questions ...... 28 Dissertation structure ...... 29 Chapter two | Literature review: Immigrants, access to opportunity, and public libraries ...... 30 Introduction ...... 30 Immigrant integration ...... 31 The immigrant social safety net ...... 40 Barriers to accessing organizational services ...... 43 Public libraries and immigrant integration ...... 45 Conclusion ...... 55 Chapter three | Context and methodology ...... 57 Introduction ...... 57 Context ...... 59 Data collection and analysis ...... 76 Chapter four | Meeting immigrants where they are: Access to immigrant programs and services across neighborhood library branches ...... 85 Introduction ...... 85 The neighborhood branches and their neighborhoods ...... 87 Immigrant programs and services ...... 91 The geographic distribution of immigrant services and programs ...... 106 Beyond geographic access: How immigrants are accessing immigrant programs ...... 113 Conclusion ...... 122 Chapter Five | The community is the collection: How neighborhoods shape the distribution of resources across neighborhood library branches ...... 125 Introduction ...... 125 Expressed needs of the community ...... 126
7 Level of volunteerism ...... 132 Cultural sharing practices ...... 137 Organizational partnerships ...... 141 Conclusion ...... 149 Chapter Six | Conclusion ...... 151 Introduction ...... 151 Summary of findings ...... 152 Implications for theory ...... 153 Implications for policy and practice ...... 161 Conclusion: Learning from public libraries ...... 168 Appendix A | Interview schedule ...... 170 Appendix B | List of programs and events attended ...... 177 Appendix C | Sample branch librarian job description ...... 178 References ...... 180
8 List of tables and figures
Table 1 Welfare utilization rates in the United States ...... 41 Table 2 BPL neighborhood branch usage, FY2019 ...... 73 Table 3 Neighborhood characteristics of BPL neighborhood branches, 2017 ...... 73 Table 4 BPL neighborhood branch data accessed ...... 80 Table 5 Programs by immigrant integration indicator ...... 106 Table 6 Neighborhood characteristics of branches offering immigrant programs ...... 108 Table 7 Concentration of immigrant programs within neighborhood branches ...... 112 Table 8 Immigrant access to programs ...... 114
Figure 1 U.S. household member used a public library in the past month by region of origin ...... 46 Figure 2 U.S. household used a public library in the past month by region of origin and education level of respondent ...... 47 Figure 3 Adults who trust information from different sources ...... 53 Figure 4 Immigration in Boston, 1970-2017 ...... 60 Figure 5 Socioeconomic characteristics of Boston’s population, 2017 ...... 61 Figure 6 Poverty rate of Boston’s population by immigration status, 2009-2017 ...... 62 Figure 7 Languages spoken by Boston’s immigrant population, 2017 ...... 63 Figure 8 Boston’s neighborhood populations by country of origin ...... 64 Figure 9 Map of the BPL's neighborhood branches and central branch ...... 75 Figure 10 Re-opening of the Jamaica Plain Branch and opening of the Chinatown Branch ...... 78 Figure 11 BPL programs and attendance, FY 2004-2019 ...... 89 Figure 12 Immigrant Information Corner at a neighborhood branch ...... 94 Figure 13 Flyers in English and Spanish and English and Russian at neighborhood branches ...... 165
9 Chapter one | Introduction
Introduction
On a late November afternoon in 2015, immigrants from countries around the world gathered with native-born neighbors in a heavily Latinx neighborhood of Boston to celebrate Arabic culture at their local public library. They gathered in a festively decorated room with flags and photos from Arab countries on the walls and traditional clothing and serving dishes on display.
Women and men, young and old, from a variety of backgrounds shared home-cooked Arabic food and indulged in pastries from a local Moroccan bakery. Children showed off their new henna tattoos and strung beads. This event emerged organically from the initiative of community members, bridged diverse populations, and created a safe public space in which the Arab community could convene and celebrate their culture with others.
The value of this event for the local immigrant and native-born community is undeniable, yet a traditional study of organizational resources would likely overlook it. No formal organization ran this event; instead, an informal group of female library patrons organized it in the library space.
Neither government grants nor nonprofit funding paid for it; rather, it came together through community volunteers, a donation from a local bakery, and a small food budget from the library.
The benefits of the event cannot be easily measured or quantified, but it created value in its community. Additionally, this event was unique to its neighborhood of Latinx and Arab residents, and one might argue that it could not have been so successful, or even have taken place, in any other
Boston neighborhood. This community-led cultural event provides an example of how local organizations connect individuals to resources in nontraditional ways and how communities have the power to shape organizational resources from the ground up.
10 For better or worse, organizations determine our ability to access services, material goods, information, and social supports. As a society, we get by and get ahead through organizations. They broker resources for those in need and create a social infrastructure that benefits all (Klinenberg
2018; Putnam 2000; Small 2009). This is especially true for those who are socioeconomically marginalized and socially isolated (Allard and Small 2013). Whereas those who have higher incomes and greater wealth may rely on local organizations for their employment, health care, and children’s schools, those who are low-income must also turn to local organizations for housing support, food, child care, legal aid, and other basic needs that they cannot necessarily afford to purchase. For those without social support networks, organizations may provide the only point of access to such resources in times of need (Klinenberg 2002). Local organizations can provide a safety net that helps to address inequalities and protect against socioeconomic shocks, but they must be accessible to populations in need to do so.
Given the importance of public and private organizations for addressing poverty, isolation, and marginalization, the question arises as to how well organizations manage to allocate services to those most in need. Are organizations and the resources they offer geographically situated such that they serve those most in need? Are they accessible to diverse populations? How do organizational resources vary across neighborhoods in relation to local needs? Do low-income neighborhoods lack sufficient organizational resources? What about poor neighborhoods of color and immigrant neighborhoods? To what extent do organizational resources adjust over time to meet new and evolving community needs? How, if at all, do neighborhoods—through their structures, institutions, resources, and people—shape the availability of organizational resources?
This dissertation examines immigrant services in public libraries to address the question of how access to organizational resources varies across neighborhoods and to what extent organizations meet the needs of local marginalized populations. Moreover, it identifies through
11 what mechanisms, if any, neighborhoods shape the availability of organizational resources. In contrast to existing literature, I look at measures of access that go beyond geographic proximity, focus on organizations that experience uniform institutional supports and pressures, and consider non-monetary community resources.
Non-naturalized immigrants are an increasingly vulnerable population because they are more likely to live in poverty and experience linguistic and social isolation, the public supports available to them are declining, and they face mounting risks and fears when accessing public spaces and benefits. Public library branches offer a unique lens through which to study how organizational resources and access vary for immigrants across neighborhoods. They are the only organization that is free and open to all,1 and they have a long history of serving immigrant populations (Jones Jr.
1999). At the same time, they are not immune to anti-immigrant activism, and some even have faced pressure to eliminate foreign language collections and immigrant services (Cuban 2007;
Harrington 2012; The Associated Press 2005). Public library branches are part of bureaucratic government institutions, but they maintain discretion in regards to the types of programs they offer, how they do community outreach, and how they adapt their environments and practices to serve various populations, including immigrants. This discretion and flexibility allow public libraries to continually adapt their services and programs to immigrant needs as those needs evolve with new waves of immigration and federal policy changes.
For these reasons, I focus this research on public library branches to study how immigrant access to organizational resources varies across neighborhoods and what role local neighborhoods play in shaping access and resources. In doing so, I also address how public library branches engage
1 Many public organizations are free, but they are only open to those who meet certain qualifications. For example, public schools are open to all who are within a specified age range. Other public and private organizations, such as community centers, gyms, and businesses, are open to all, but they are not free. Public parks, on the other hand, are free and open to all, but they are not organizations. 2 As of 2017, 14.2% of the native-born population, 11.1% of naturalized citizens, and 22.9% of non- naturalized immigrants lived below the poverty level in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau 2017).
12 with the immigrant integration process at the local level. Immigrant integration is a two-way process of mutual adaptation, and public libraries participate in a few key aspects of immigrant integration:
English language proficiency, political participation, social interaction, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, socioeconomic attainment. For example, the Arabic Day event discussed above created an opportunity for local immigrants and the library community, which consisted of native and foreign- born residents, to celebrate, socialize, and learn about Arab cultures. At other times, immigrants turn to public libraries for help with computers, job applications, and public benefits. In some neighborhoods, they bring their children and grandchildren to bilingual story hours that allow for cultural sharing within families. Just as neighborhoods are unique, so are the communities of immigrants that neighborhood library branches serve. Moreover, these communities bring to neighborhood library branches unique and valuable resources that benefit both immigrants and native-born residents.
Theoretical framework: Concentrated poverty, segregation, and organizational resources
For decades, scholars have explored the question of how concentrated poverty and racial segregation affect the distribution of organizational resources across marginalized neighborhoods.
William Julius Wilson (1987) introduced deinstitutionalization theory, which posits that concentrated poverty leads to social isolation and the closure of basic institutions, such as stores, churches, and schools. According to Wilson, as middle-class households move out of urban neighborhoods, thereby concentrating poverty, they also take with them the buying power and leadership necessary to support local institutions. Even when institutions remain, they may lack access to resources and leadership. The result is increased poverty, social isolation, and deinstitutionalization, all of which compound the negative effects of living in poverty. By focusing on socioeconomic status and
13 market forces, though, deinstitutionalization theory largely ignores the role of segregation, racism, and political capital.
In contrast to Wilson’s deinstitutionalization theory, some scholars have proposed that poor, segregated neighborhoods have fewer institutional resources because of political dynamics, as opposed to market forces. These scholars theorize that discriminatory practices that lead to racially segregated, high poverty neighborhoods create marginalized communities that lack the political capital necessary to attract, demand, and retain resources (Logan 1978; Logan and Molotch 1987).
Meanwhile, affluent, predominantly white neighborhoods are able to use their political clout to secure more institutional resources and maintain their privileged position. Public schools in affluent areas provide a good example of this. In these schools, parents volunteer their time, donate resources, and lobby for additional resources from the public school system. These actions, along with limited public resources, can then lead to a redistribution of public resources towards schools in more affluent neighborhoods and away from schools in low-income neighborhoods (Cucchiara
2013).
Finally, other scholars have proposed that low-income neighborhoods are not necessarily deprived of institutional resources. This neighborhood revitalization perspective theorizes that low- income neighborhoods will actually have more institutional resources that derive from the public sector. According to Lester Salamon (1987), the nonprofit sector responds to market failures, and the government steps in when there are failures in the nonprofit sector. This perspective sees government’s role as meeting population needs, often through local organizations. Thus, as local needs grow, so will public resources for nonprofit organizations. Still, other organizational factors, such as culture, leadership, and capacity, may distort this relationship between the state and nonprofit organizations. Furthermore, in the current day, organizations rarely rely solely on public funding; instead, they must piece together funding from a variety of sources.
14 Are low-income neighborhoods, in fact, lacking organizational resources?
A convincing argument can be made for all three theories, but which theory is borne out in the data? Do low-income neighborhoods have fewer, equivalent, or more organizational resources compared to higher-income neighborhoods? Of course, not all organizations are equally desirable within neighborhoods, so more is not necessarily better. For example, communities may view day care centers and public libraries as assets and homeless shelters and substance abuse services as liabilities. Keeping this in mind, scholars have sought to answer the question of how aligned organizations are with neighborhood need by using data from different types of organizations across a variety of urban contexts. As it turns out, the answer is: it depends. It depends on the type of organization, whether the organization is public or private, what the racial composition of the neighborhood is, and how the city as a whole is structured.
More often than not, socioeconomic status alone does not lead to fewer organizations at the neighborhood level, and it is sometimes associated with more organizations. This suggests that there is support for the neighborhood revitalization perspective that predicts more services in low- income areas. In regards to urban services, such as schools, libraries, police and fire stations, and mental health services, there is little difference between the number located in low-income neighborhoods and high-income neighborhoods. When there is a difference, it leans towards there being more urban services, such as public schools, churches, and social service agencies, in low- income neighborhoods (Marwell and Gullickson 2013; Oakley and Logan 2007). In regards to organizations for children, low-income neighborhoods are more likely to house public schools and publicly funded child care centers, but they are less likely to have private schools and child care centers (Oakley and Logan 2007; Small and Stark 2005). Additionally, neighborhood poverty is associated with increased financial resources for nonprofit organizations. Local nonprofit social service agencies are more likely to receive public funding if they are located in socioeconomically
15 disadvantaged neighborhoods (Marwell and Gullickson 2013), and child care centers in low-income areas have more referral and collaborative ties than their counterparts in higher-income areas (Small
2009).
One might expect support for deinstitutionalization theory when it comes to for-profit businesses since they, like private schools and child care centers, rely on the spending power of local residents. To the contrary, poor neighborhoods may be less likely to have a couple of types of businesses, such as banks and grooming stores, but they are actually more likely to have hardware stores, grocery stores, convenience stores, pharmacies, credit unions, restaurants, and laundries
(Small and McDermott 2006). This suggests that lower buying power in poor neighborhoods does not necessarily result in fewer organizational resources.
As the above research demonstrates, scholars have found generally positive relationships between neighborhood poverty and access to public and private organizations, but the picture changes when racial composition is factored in. There is overwhelming evidence that black, in particular, as well as Latinx and Asian neighborhoods have less access to public and private organizational resources than their white counterparts. For example, whereas Mario Small and
Monica McDermott (2006) find a positive relationship between neighborhood poverty and for- profit establishments, they also find that the proportion of black residents is consistently associated with fewer commercial establishments. Similarly, Kathryn Freeman Anderson (2017) finds a positive relationship between the availability of health-related organizations and neighborhood poverty, but a negative relationship between black neighborhoods and some health-related organizations, such as restaurants, pharmacies, civic associations, and social services agencies.
Moreover, neighborhood poverty amplifies this negative relationship between black neighborhoods and health-related organizations.
16 Research shows a similarly negative relationship between publicly-funded organizations and populations of color (Allard 2008). Nonprofits are more likely to receive government funding as neighborhood poverty increases, but this only holds true in white neighborhoods. Black neighborhoods are actually less likely to receive government funding as neighborhood poverty increases (Garrow 2014). The process of “white flight,” whereby white residents move out and neighborhoods become increasingly of color, is also associated with a decline in nonprofit organizations (Garrow and Garrow 2014). Finally, though parks are not organizations, they are public resources, and there is evidence that black and Latinx neighborhoods have less access to public parks, and public funding exacerbates this inequality (Wolch, Wilson, and Fehrenbach 2005).
Overall, these findings are particularly troubling for low-income populations of color, who are less likely to have access to organizational resources due to both their race and socioeconomic status.
Furthermore, given the history of policies and practices that discriminate against populations of color in the United States, these groups are more likely to live in poverty from generation to generation than white populations (Sharkey 2008).
Immigrants are marginalized similarly to communities of color in many respects, but a different organizational pattern emerges for immigrant neighborhoods. Instead of fewer organizational resources, scholars actually find a more positive relationship between the concentration of immigrants and organizations. For example, immigrant neighborhoods have been found to have more hardware stores, grocery stores, laundry facilities, banks, pharmacies, hospitals, and doctors offices, although they have fewer restaurants, child care centers, and religious institutions (Freeman Anderson 2017; Small and McDermott 2006). These findings provide support for immigrant enclave theory, which proposes that immigrant entrepreneurship leads immigrant neighborhoods to have more organizations (Aldrich and Waldinger 1990; Portes and Bach 1985;
Logan, Zhang, and Alba 2002). Immigrant enclave theory may hold true as it relates to immigrant
17 entrepreneurship, but immigrant neighborhoods may still face discrimination when it comes to political processes. Immigrant neighborhoods have been found to lack access to nonprofit organizations, such as immigrant organizations and social service providers (Joassart-Marcelli 2013;
Roth and Allard 2016).
Just as organizations are embedded in neighborhoods, they and their neighborhoods are embedded in cities and larger political and economic fields. Public agencies function within larger political contexts and funding environments. Businesses rely on government incentives, must conform to government regulations, and are shaped by large institutional lenders. As such, scholars have found that the overall composition of cities affects the distribution of resources across neighborhoods. In cities with a history of racial segregation, black neighborhoods have consistently less access to social services than white and Latinx neighborhoods (Allard 2004; 2008). In regards to for-profit organizations, the picture may be more complicated. Metropolitan area segregation is associated with less access to banks, but greater access to grocery stores, for black and Latinx populations (Steil, De la Roca, and Ellen 2015).
Overall, research suggests that the decline of organizations encountered in some urban neighborhoods is more a function of segregation and depopulation rather than concentrated poverty
(Massey 1990; Massey and Denton 1993; Small and McDermott 2006). In fact, poor neighborhoods are able to support businesses, and governments appear to target resources to neighborhoods with higher poverty levels. This holds true, however, only so long as the poor neighborhoods are predominantly white. Once race is taken into account, poor communities of color have access to fewer organizational resources, and political and economic processes exacerbate the inequality between white communities and marginalized communities of color. The story is different for immigrant communities, but clarity is lacking in regards to how racial composition interacts with the concentration of immigrants.
18 Measuring access: Beyond geographic proximity and institutional resources
The location of organizations and distribution of funding across low-income neighborhoods of color is important insomuch as it provides access to resources for marginalized populations, but what does it mean for these populations to be able to access organizational resources? In the above referenced research, scholars address the question of access by looking at geographic proximity to organizations. This generally takes the form of the organizational density of neighborhoods or census tracts. Sometimes it accounts for the potential demand placed on an organization, such as the number of low-income people who live nearby (Allard 2008). Either way, these measures are derived from the fact that people are more likely to engage with organizations that are located within a few miles of their homes (Allard, Tolman, and Rosen 2003). For starters, it takes less time to travel to an organization if it is located nearby, something that is particularly important for those who work multiple jobs, take care of children, or have limited transportation options. Additionally, people are more likely to be aware of organizations and the resources they provide if the organizations are located within their neighborhood.
Another measure of access focuses on the distribution of public funding and asks whether organizations in marginalized neighborhoods are more likely to receive public resources than those in more socioeconomically advantaged neighborhoods. This measures is valid because individuals and families are having to access the social safety net increasingly through organizations, and public funding is a fundamental determinant of organizational resources (Allard 2008). Moreover, in recent decades, nonprofit organizations have become more reliant on public funding to serve populations in need (S. R. Smith and Lipsky 1995).
In addition to relying on public funding, organizations broker non-monetary resources, such as information, services, and material goods (Small 2009; Small, Jacobs, and Massengill 2008). For example, organizations garner information, such as updates on immigration, schools, and health care
19 policies and laws, from community partners, and they share that information with community members. They refer individuals to organizations, and they invite outside organizations to provide services on-site. They also receive and distribute non-cash material goods, such as food and museum passes, to members and clients. In studying child care centers in New York City, Mario
Small (2009) finds that influence from the state and large nonprofits, more than neighborhood characteristics, determines how many inter-organizational ties organizations form. For government- funded child care centers, in particular, the state and nonprofit funders exert pressures on centers to form ties and broker resources as a condition of funding.
Whether scholars look at the distribution of funding, regulatory guidelines, or funding incentives, the focus remains on how institutions determine the distribution of organizational resources across neighborhoods. In the case of funding, governments and large nonprofits may directly decide where grants and contracts go and what criteria are used to allocate resources. For inter-organizational ties, these same public and private funders are able to exert pressure on grantees to broker certain resources as a condition of funding. A focus on institutional funding and pressures, however, overshadows how communities themselves shape the distribution of resources.
To fully understand how organizations shape opportunity at the neighborhood level, scholars have to look beyond geographic proximity to services, the distribution of public funding, and the influence of institutional pressures. These are all key measures of access, but they are not the only ones that affect how likely low-income populations of color and immigrants are to benefit from organizational resources. As Nicole Marwell and Aaron Gullickson (2013, 325, emphasis added) point out, a focus on where organizations are located is “hampered by the reality that the existence of an NPO in a particular location is an indirect proxy for understanding the availability of service resources in that location.” Geographic location is not the only indirect proxy that can be used.
20 The ability of organizations to provide meaningful access to resources requires more than a physical presence in the neighborhood and the ability to secure public funding. For example, an organization may be located in a neighborhood, but it does not provide much value to individuals if it is not open outside of work hours, has limited resources, or is unknown to community members.
Immigrants who do not speak English may feel more comfortable accessing an organization that employs people who speak their language and have similar ethnic backgrounds, and undocumented immigrants may be more likely to access services if they do not have to disclose personal information. As Michael Lipksy (1980) illustrates in Street-Level Bureaucracy, how front-line public employees treat individuals affects how likely those individuals are to try to access public benefits.
Access is shaped by social, economic, political, psychological, and physical factors, at a minimum. Location, hours of operation, and staffing levels determine whether one can get to an organization and receive assistance when they do. How friendly employees are and the comfort of the physical environment influences how welcoming an organization is for those who visit. Those who are older adults, have disabilities, or travel with children in strollers rely on buildings being physically accessible. Overall, access requires that individuals know about the organization and the services it offers, are able to travel to the organization while it is open, feel comfortable going into the organization’s building, and feel welcome when they are there. Moreover, once reached, the organization has to be able to provide access to resources of value.
Another important consideration when looking at access is that it may not be extended uniformly to all in a community. Most organizations target resources to specific populations, such as children or members of a religious group; they target them to those who are able and willing to pay for services; or their services are means-tested and reserved for those who can prove they are low-income. Within organizations, resources may be more accessible to some groups than others, even though all are considered target audiences. This can be seen in some public schools where
21 parents have managed to target resources to higher income, white students at the expense of low- income students of color, even though both populations attend the same school (Cucchiara 2013).
It is also apparent in gentrifying communities where longtime residents start to feel politically or socially displaced from community-based organizations to which they belong, despite the fact that they still technically have access to these organizations (Hyra 2017). These are but a couple of examples of how organizational presence alone does not guarantee equal access for all participants.
In general, organizations are not monolithic structures with rational, clearly defined interests.
Rather, one organization may have multiple interests that are uncoordinated and competing (Meyer and Rowan 1977).
The ability of organizations to broker resources that are public and private, institutional and community-based should be taken into account when looking at how resources are distributed across organizations. For starters, not all organizations that help marginalized populations to get by and get ahead rely primarily on institutional funders. Additionally, private community resources may also shape organizations that rely on institutional funders. Such community resources may come in the form of volunteers and non-monetary donations from community members. For example, a community member may bring in friends, family, and colleagues who then offer resources.
Alternatively, an informal community group may look to reach a broader audience by connecting with a formal organization. A range of organizations—from public schools to nonprofits to religious institutions—rely on these types of community resources.
Despite the use of community resources across some types of organizations, there are at least three reasons why scholars may overlook these types of resources in favor of institutional resources. First, data on institutional funding is relatively accessible to researchers, whereas organizations may not keep track of community resources. Records of public contracts and grants, in particular, are likely available because governments publish them or researchers can request them
22 through the Freedom of Information Act. Second, institutional funding is easily quantifiable, and focusing on funding allows researchers to measure disparities across organizations. Third, most organizations need more than donations and volunteers to operate. Even those that rely on community resources need large sources of funding to pay for staff, space, and utilities. Thus, there are undeniable reasons to study institutional funding, but I argue that there are also compelling reasons to look at how communities shape organizational resources and access, even if the resources they provide are more difficult to identify and measure.
In addition to incorporating community resources, I propose that new measures of access be considered. First, outreach on the part of organizational staff helps to ensure that community members are aware of organizations and the services they provide. Second, whether individuals access an organization and the resources it provides will be shaped by how comfortable they feel doing so. Welcoming practices, such as friendly, knowledgeable, and bilingual staff, make individuals feel more comfortable going to an organization and asking questions of staff. Third, practices that make individuals feel more comfortable spending time in an organization and returning to it increase access over the long-term. Such practices might include signs and materials in multiple languages, coordinated activities for children and adults, and the ability to access resources anonymously. These measures are not necessarily quantifiable, but practices that increase access along these dimensions have tangible results for marginalized populations.
Why immigrants and public libraries?
If the focus is on organizational resources and access to them by marginalized populations, why look at immigrants and public libraries? One reason is that immigrants occupy an increasingly precarious position in American society, and they are facing more and more barriers to accessing support. Non-naturalized immigrants are over sixty percent more likely to live below the poverty
23 level than the native-born population.2 Despite this greater need, immigrants living below the poverty level are less likely than those who are poor and native-born to access public supports.
Policy changes since the 1990s have cut benefits for immigrants, and recent changes to the “public charge” rule are discouraging immigrants from accessing benefits for which they qualify. In addition, immigrants must generally access any support in-person through local organizations because there is no national infrastructure for immigrant integration. This is becoming increasingly difficult, though, as immigrants face greater risks of being stopped by immigration officials when going out into public places, not to mention traveling to and from these places. Overall, local organizations that provide immigrant services are charged with providing greater supports to immigrants and maintaining access despite growing barriers to reaching immigrants.
Public libraries are not part of the traditional social safety net, but they provide a range of programs and services for immigrants. Since they first proliferated across the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, public libraries have cultivated resources, designed programs, and engaged in community partnerships to serve immigrant populations (Jones Jr. 1999).
While the programs and resources have changed somewhat over time, this active engagement with immigrant populations continues to this day and facilitates immigrant integration. It takes the form of citizenship preparation materials and programs, English as a Second Language classes, foreign language collections, bilingual programs, and trainings on how to protect one’s rights when approached by immigration officials (Cuban 2007; Koerber 2018). Some public libraries even provide assistance to small immigrant businesses (Stephens 2015). According to Eric Klinenberg, they provide more English language instruction and citizenship classes than any other public institution (Mars, n.d.).
2 As of 2017, 14.2% of the native-born population, 11.1% of naturalized citizens, and 22.9% of non- naturalized immigrants lived below the poverty level in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau 2017).
24 What distinguishes public libraries from other organizations that provide similar services is that public libraries do so for free and are open to all. Additionally, the services they provide are not means-tested benefits that are targeted to only those who qualify. Rather, their services and resources are available to everyone regardless of age, familial status, income, employment status, place of birth, citizenship status, race, ethnicity, religion, or any other ascriptive characteristics.
Furthermore, individuals can use library spaces, ask for help, and attend programs anonymously.
For those who want library cards, they can often apply for one without having to provide government-issued identification. This ability to access resources anonymously helps to provide a sense of security for immigrants who may be concerned about identifying themselves and their immigrant status.
Public libraries are also useful sites of inquiry from a theoretical perspective because they are organizations that are responsive to community needs and draw from community resources. There are a few key ways in which public libraries are particularly attuned to the needs of their communities. First of all, the library profession encourages libraries to provide services that are
“user-centered.” The term “implies a sense of agency on the part of the users, with services that meet users at their point of need, in the manner in which they want to be served” (Barniskis 2016,
138). This results in services that adapt to the unique needs of libraries’ communities. Moreover, public librarians actively try to anticipate and meet the evolving needs of their communities, as illustrated by Rachel Scott (2011, 192):
Some people do not recognize that they are paying for library services with their tax dollars and that the library is there to serve them. It is our job as librarians to help the public understand that the library is there for them and that our mission is to meet their needs. To do this effectively, we need to ask people what they need and want from their library and actually listen to what they have to say. Then, we should adjust our services to best meet these needs.
To meet community needs, library staff exercise discretion in regards to the types of programs they offer and the populations they target. Second, public librarians broker resources from their local
25 communities and through partnerships with community groups and organizations. Third, public libraries serve as community repositories of sorts. Library staff collect information about their communities, share that information with patrons, and inform community organizations about their libraries’ offerings (Anderson 1994; Lankes 2015).
Finally, public libraries are local government agencies, but they also differ from other government agencies in a few key respects. According to Institute for Museum and Library Services,
A public library is established under state enabling laws or regulations to serve a community, district, or region, and provides at least the following: 1.) an organized collection of printed or other library materials, or a combination thereof; 2.) paid staff; 3.) an established schedule in which services of the staff are available to the public; 4.) the facilities necessary to support such a collection, staff, and schedule, and 5.) is supported in whole or in part with public funds. (American Library Association, n.d.)
Similar to other government entities, they are established by enabling laws or regulations, are funded at least in part with public funds, and are accountable to the public. Like some public agencies, they are primarily funded at the local level. At the same time, public libraries, and especially their neighborhood branches, share more in common with local private organizations than other government agencies.
First, many people trust the information that comes from public libraries more than that which comes from other government institutions (Horrigan 2016; 2017). This is particularly important for immigrant populations as they become increasingly fearful of government agencies.
Second, public libraries are viewed as safe spaces, and librarians even have a history of not cooperating with law enforcement agencies when they have suspected that cooperation would pose a threat to the civil liberties of patrons (Matz 2008). Third, public libraries are one of the oldest examples of public-private partnerships in the United States. Private citizens helped to fund the country’s first large public library in Boston, and it was through a combination of private capital investment from Andrew Carnegie and public operating funds that public libraries proliferated in the
26 late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries across the country.3 In the current day, public libraries continue to draw on donations, volunteers, and partnerships with local organizations. This ability to broker community resources and secure private sources of funding has helped to integrate public libraries with their local communities.
Public libraries are bureaucratic public institutions, but they also offer an opportunity to study how communities shape organizational resources independent of institutional forces.
Neighborhood branches function as small organizations within larger institutions in that they occupy a physical space within a neighborhood, serve a community of patrons, and are run by a dedicated staff that has the discretion to determine and meet the needs of its community. As
Klinenberg points out, “Libraries have reinvented themselves, and one of the things that is so striking about them is that the local staff has the capacity and agency to develop programming that works for the community that they’re in” (Mars, n.d.). Additionally, community members organize around and support their local neighborhood branches, especially when their branches are threatened. This dynamic is epitomized by Friends of the Library groups, which are comprised of members who donate goods to the library, volunteer their time, do outreach, and coordinate events.
Overall, there is a degree of independence within neighborhood branches that allows for the study of how neighborhoods shape organizational resources. Furthermore, by focusing on neighborhood branches within one public library system, it is possible to hold institutional funding and pressures relatively constant and focus on the influence of neighborhoods and communities.
3All Carnegie library grants required that cities and towns commit annual operating funds equal to ten percent of the initial grant. In committing over a million dollars to the establishment of a public library in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carnegie wrote, “I am clearly of the opinion that it is only by the city maintaining its public libraries as it maintains its public schools that every citizen can be made to feel that he is a joint proprietor of them, and that the public library is for the public as a whole, and not for any portion thereof; and I am equally clear that unless a community is willing to maintain public libraries at the public cost very little good can be obtained from them” (New York Times 1890, 1).
27 Research questions
This dissertation research builds on the literature that examines how access to organizational resources varies across neighborhoods, but it is distinct from the existing literature along two key dimensions. First, I expand the concept of access beyond geographic proximity and public funding.
In this study, the measure of access incorporates 1) geographic proximity, 2) the availability of resources targeted to a population in need, 3) community awareness of the organization and the resources it provides, and 4) an environment that facilitates continued community access. Second, I am interested in not just how resources vary across neighborhoods in regards to demographic composition, but also why we see variations. What aspects of the local neighborhood—such as community needs, willing volunteers, and local organizations—help or hinder public libraries to serve immigrant populations?
With these considerations in mind, I broadly ask: how do neighborhoods shape organizations’ ability to target resources to populations in need? Or, in more precise terms: how do neighborhood demographics and local organizations structure the ability of Boston Public Library
(BPL) branches to provide access to institutional and community resources for immigrant neighborhoods? I answer these questions through a mixed-method study of immigrant services and programs across the neighborhood branches of the BPL that draws on structured interviews with branch librarians and library professionals, participant observation, organizational documents and archives, and library usage and program data. I find that organizational resources are not always aligned with neighborhood needs, and this is largely a result of a system with limited resources that must draw on community resources. Though reliance on community resources results in a spatial mismatch between needs and services at times, it also produces distinctive and valuable programs that meet the unique needs of immigrant communities and helps local organizational partners to reach immigrant populations.
28 Dissertation structure
In this chapter, I have introduced some of the key theories and questions that drive this research. Those are questions of how organizations provide access to opportunity and what role neighborhoods play in shaping that access. In doing so, I focus on the role that public libraries play in providing services to immigrant populations and how they garner community resources to do so.
Chapter two offers a more thorough engagement with the literature on immigrant integration and the role of organizations, especially public libraries. It also addresses the barriers immigrants face accessing the social safety net and public library services. Chapter three begins with an overview of
Boston’s immigrant population and a brief history of the BPL and how it has engaged immigrants since its founding. The second part of the chapter details the research design and methodology of this study. Chapter four focuses on how neighborhood branches of the BPL provide services and programs that reach immigrants and facilitate immigrant integration. Additionally, it examines how public library programs and services are distributed geographically in relation neighborhood demographic characteristics. Chapter five engages in a discussion of how neighborhood factors influence the distribution of programs and services across neighborhood branches. Specifically, it highlights how expressed community needs, level of volunteerism, cultural sharing practices, and organizational partnerships shape organizational resources. Finally, chapter six concludes with a discussion of the findings and how they contribute to theory, policy, and practice related to immigrants and access to organizational resources.
29 Chapter two | Literature review: Immigrants, access to opportunity, and public libraries
Introduction
Immigrants are more likely to live in poverty than the native-born population in the United
States, and this disparity is driven primarily by the higher poverty rates of non-naturalized immigrants, who account for over half of immigrants. In 2017, twenty-three percent of non- naturalized immigrants lived below the poverty line, compared to seventeen percent of the native- born population and eleven percent of naturalized immigrants (U.S. Census Bureau 2017).
Following a similar trend, the unemployment rate of non-naturalized immigrants was 4.5 percent, compared to 4.1 percent for the native-born population and 3.8 percent for naturalized immigrants
(U.S. Census Bureau 2017). Despite the fact that there is a greater degree of need among the non- naturalized immigrant population, those who are low-income are less likely to take advantage of public benefits than the low-income, native-born population due to eligibility restrictions and fear of being denied citizenship as a result of accessing benefits. Given the socioeconomic needs of immigrants, along with the other cultural and political barriers they face, how do immigrants get by and get ahead in the United States?
This chapter begins with an overview of immigrant integration and how the government and private organizations structure the integration process in the United States. It then looks at the immigrant social safety net, how immigrants use it, and the barriers they face accessing it.
Understanding how immigrants access welfare programs is informative insomuch as it identifies the extent to which immigrants’ economic needs are being met. Furthermore, understanding the barriers that immigrants face accessing public benefits can shed light on the barriers they are likely to face when accessing other services through government agencies and private organizations. Finally,
30 this chapter ends with a review of how public libraries, in particular, facilitate immigrant integration and what barriers prevent immigrants from taking full advantage of these services and programs.
Immigrant integration
Immigrant integration is a two-way process of inclusion that involves mutual adaptation by immigrants and host communities, and the process stands the best chance of success when both immigrants and host communities design it. Through this process, immigrants become more like their host communities, and host communities come to resemble their immigrant members. More than just acculturation, integration is about improving the overall well-being of immigrants over time and across generations. In the United States, the lack of a national immigrant integration policy forces integration to take place almost entirely at the local level (Bloemraad and de Graauw 2011;
Mollenkopf and Pastor 2016).
Integration encompasses socioeconomic measures of opportunity that apply to all populations, regardless of place of birth, along with measures that are specific to the needs of immigrant populations. Five key indicators of immigrant integration include: 1) language proficiency, 2) socioeconomic attainment, 3) political participation, which includes legal status and citizenship, 4) residential integration, and 5) social interaction with host communities (Jiménez
2011). These indicators of integration are by no means mutually exclusive. For example, English proficiency is an indicator in and of itself, but it also contributes to other measures of integration, such as socioeconomic attainment and social interaction. It is for these reasons that Tomás Jiménez
(2011, 11) describes English proficiency as “a virtual requirement for full participation in US society.”
English language proficiency aids all dimensions of integration. It helps immigrants access better jobs, participate in the political system, and make social connections. Immigrants from non-
31 English speaking countries who speak English earn ten-to-fourteen percent more than those who are not proficient, and unemployment rates are higher among non-English speaking immigrants
(Chiswick and Miller 2002; 2015; Soricone et al. 2011). Even as cities incorporate multilingual services, limited English proficiency prevents some immigrants from interacting with public officials and achieving political and socioeconomic integration (de Graauw 2008). English proficiency also helps immigrants to feel a greater sense of belonging and avoid social isolation (Jiménez 2011). Part of the benefit of English proficiency is psychological because it helps immigrants to feel more confident engaging with others, which facilitates integration along other dimensions (Koerber 2018).
Finally, there are transitive benefits of speaking English, too, because the proficiency of one individual increases the proficiency of other household members.
Among the five indicators, socioeconomic attainment is arguably the most important. As with the native-born population, socioeconomic attainment is achieved through education, well- paying jobs, and access to higher status occupations. It also takes into account measures of wealth, such as homeownership. This indicator of integration is generally measured across generations and in comparison to how the white native-born population fares. Thus, the second generation of an immigrant population may fare better than the first generation along socioeconomic measures, but they are not considered to have attained full socioeconomic integration unless they have achieved socioeconomic parity with the white, native-born population.
Political participation covers citizenship and legal status, voter registration, voting, holding office, and participation in civic life. Like English proficiency, gaining citizenship and legal status assists with other aspects of integration. As described earlier, immigrants who are naturalized face significantly fewer socioeconomic hardships than those who are non-naturalized, and both groups fare better than those who are undocumented. More so than other indicators of immigrant integration, political participation is shaped by policies at the national level. Federal policies make it
32 more or less difficult to become naturalized, either by making the procedures and eligibility requirements for naturalization more or less restrictive or by changing the benefits for which naturalized and non-naturalized immigrants qualify. For example, naturalization rates rose when public benefits were cut back for non-naturalized immigrants under welfare reform in the 1990s, and naturalization applications have risen again in recent years under the Trump administration’s anti- immigrant rhetoric and policies because immigrants now stand to gain more from citizenship
(Blizzard and Batalova 2019).
In general, residential integration occurs when immigrants’ living patterns become less segregated over time. Just as socioeconomic status influences the living patterns of native-born populations in the United States, it also shapes residential integration for immigrants. When immigrants first move to the United States, they often live in segregated, low-income ethnic enclaves. This is due to socioeconomic necessity and because these areas provide greater social supports. With socioeconomic attainment, immigrants are able to choose among a wider range of areas, and they tend to move to places that have lower concentrations of immigrants. Exceptions occur among some ethnic groups that choose to continue living in ethnic communities, even as their socioeconomic status rises, but most immigrants and their decedents move into less segregated areas over time (Logan, Zhang, and Alba 2002).
Finally, social integration includes intermarriage across ethnic groups and nationalities and perceptions of belonging. English language proficiency and citizenship both contribute to perceptions of belonging, but the measure is amorphous and constantly evolving based on how people view what it means to be “American.” For example, while three quarters of Americans believe that immigrants should be required to learn English as a condition of citizenship, a growing portion report that they are not bothered by the limited English proficiency of individuals they encounter (Page 2013; Pew Research Center 2018).
33 Social inclusion is also a part of social integration. For immigrants who work or are students, sites of employment and schools can facilitate social interactions. Many immigrants, however, do not necessarily work in the traditional sense or attend school, and they may find themselves socially isolated (Banulescu-Bogdan 2020). These vulnerable immigrant groups include stay-at-home spouses, parents of young children, older adults, and those who are unemployed. For these populations, volunteer opportunities and community-based programs can help to build social ties among immigrants and with native-born individuals (Banulescu-Bogdan 2020; Handy and
Greenspan 2009).
Immigrant integration and the public sector
In the United States, the federal government controls borders and immigration, but it plays a limited role in regards to immigrant integration. Instead, integration measures are largely devolved to the local level, and municipalities are left with the decision of what services to provide to immigrants and how. As John Mollenkopf and Manuel Pastor (2016, 2) write, “[W]hile the federal government has the formal responsibility for determining how many immigrants come into the country and for preventing those who lack permission from entering, it falls to local and regional jurisdictions to frame the living experience of immigrants.” Since 2000, there has been a surge in pro- and anti-immigrant laws passed at the state and local levels (Steil and Vasi 2014), and these contribute to geographic diversity in regards to the “warmth of welcome” municipalities extend to immigrants (Mollenkopf and Pastor 2016). Just as residential contexts influence socioeconomic outcomes for the general population (Sharkey and Faber 2014), so too does place determine access to opportunity for immigrants.
State and local policies contribute to the uneven “warmth of welcome” that places extend to immigrants both across and within places. One of the most notable examples is the willing
34 participation of seventy-eight city, county, and state law enforcement agencies with the United States
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) 287(g) program, which deputizes state and local law enforcement agencies to carry out federal immigration enforcement. This is in contrast to the approximately one hundred and forty sanctuary cities, counties, and states that have enacted policies refusing to fully honor ICE detainers (Delgado 2018). These sanctuary jurisdictions may have local and state policies that are welcoming to immigrants, but they also have become targets of federal
ICE raids under the Trump administration (Dickerson, Kanno-Youngs, and Correal 2020; Jordan
2017).
Another way that some cities have established more welcoming policies is through the establishment of immigrant affairs offices (de Graauw 2015; 2018). These types of offices welcome immigrants, strive to create opportunities for inclusion, build public awareness of the economic benefits that immigrants provide for cities, and facilitate interactions between immigrants and the native-born population. In recent years, these types of offices proliferated across cities, and not just cities that are politically liberal. As of 2016, forty-one cities had immigrant affairs offices, and in only fifty-nine percent of these cities were the majority of voters Democrats (de Graauw and
Bloemraad 2017). Thus, different local factors are at play beyond political orientation that influence how welcoming localities are of immigrants.
Even within the same places, state and federal laws differently influence how responsive bureaucrats are to the needs of immigrants. For example, in the case of educational agencies, federal law requires elementary schools to serve all children, regardless of immigration or legal status; meanwhile, public universities may operate under restrictive state laws that prohibit them from enrolling undocumented immigrants (Marrow 2009). Even in places governed by restrictive laws and elected officials who promote anti-immigrant policies, professional and organizational factors lead some public agencies to be more responsive to the needs of immigrants. Federal, state, and
35 local laws may restrict how much discretion street-level bureaucrats can exercise when serving undocumented immigrants, but that does not stop some bureaucrats from extending services to undocumented immigrants, even if it means bending or breaking the rules (Marrow 2009).
Professional norms, missions, and interests account for an important source of variation across agencies within the same places (Jones-Correa 2008; Marrow 2009; Williams 2013). The practices of bureaucrats in service agencies, such as schools and medical services, are more inclusionary than bureaucrats in regulatory agencies, such as law enforcement and the courts.
Moreover, professional norms exert an even stronger influence on service-oriented bureaucrats when they are faced with restrictive government policies that do not align with their beliefs (Marrow
2009). Michael Jones-Correa (2008) finds that public libraries, which are service bureaucracies, track changes in the local immigrant population, intentionally incorporate immigrants, and protect immigrant resources, even in the face of budget cuts. This holds true across two politically divergent states and is in stark contrast to the lack of adaptive practices and policies at the zoning agencies in those states. In fact, professional norms have been found to exert a greater influence on public librarians than local anti-immigrant political pressures (Williams 2013). Across some public agencies, professional norms counteract the effects of restrictive policies and political pressures, thereby diminishing the effect of place.
Immigrant integration and the private sector
As a result of the laissez faire approach to immigrant integration in the United States, the private sector plays just as, if not more, important of a role aiding in the local immigrant integration process as the public sector. Businesses provide employment for immigrants, immigrant organizations facilitate political incorporation and help immigrant groups to maintain their cultural identity, and nonprofit social service agencies constitute a significant component of the local
36 immigrant social safety net, especially for low-income immigrants (Hung 2007; Jiménez 2011; Roth and Allard 2016). Whether through employment or engagement with nonprofit organizations, private sector organizations at the local level largely structure immigrant integration.
With over twenty-eight million working immigrants, places of employment are key sites of integration (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2019). Even though they are employed, a significant percentage of working immigrants still face barriers to integration as a result of limited English proficiency, lack of citizenship, undocumented status, and limited educational attainment. Half of immigrants in the United States workforce do not have citizenship (Enchautegui 2015), and, while the percentage of undocumented immigrants in the workforce has declined in recent years, undocumented immigrants still account for over four percent of the workforce (Passel and Cohn
2019b). One in four employed immigrants speak English less than well, and close to half have a high school diploma or less education (Enchautegui 2015; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2019).
Even high-skilled immigrants face integration barriers because their credentials are not necessarily transferable to employment in the United States. Given the share of the immigrant population that is employed and the barriers they face, employers are positioned to play a key role in the integration of immigrants, and some do.
Beyond providing employment, some employers facilitate immigrant integration through
English-language and occupational training (Enchautegui 2015). These types of training help with immigrant integration, but they also benefit employers by increasing worker productivity and facilitating communication in the workplace. English language training can be especially effective for businesses when it is specific to an occupation or firm. Additionally, being able to access
English-language training on the job can be particularly valuable for immigrants who have limited time and resources.
37 Immigrant nonprofit organizations fall into four main categories: social service organizations, public interest organizations, cultural organizations, and religious organizations (Hung
2007). Since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, nonprofit social service provision for immigrants has grown in response to an increase in immigration, the introduction of the Community
Development Block Grant, and the privatization of the welfare state (de Graauw 2008). Immigrant organizations create value by providing support for the immigration and naturalization processes, assisting with the adaptation and incorporation of immigrants, bridging immigrant communities with local governments and funders, and helping immigrants to stay connected to their countries of origin (Cordero-Guzmán 2005). They provide services that aid with adaptation and incorporation, such as English language instruction, government services and benefits, education, employment, health care, housing, and legal services.
In addition, these organizations tend to serve low-income immigrants with limited English proficiency and educational attainment (de Graauw 2008), and they are often community-based.
Floris Vermeulen, Debra Minkoff, and Tom Van der Meer (2016, 26) explain why immigrant organizations are so closely linked to the neighborhoods in which they are located:
[T]he neighborhood seems to be the spatial context that constitutes the key resource environment in which immigrant organizations operate, collaborate, and compete. Most of their members or clients live in the neighborhood; their activities are often aimed at neighborhood goals; funding and other forms of support are requested from local authorities in the neighborhood or city district; housing is provided by neighborhood buildings; other local organizations are partners or competitors. In other words, the neighborhood as a geographical unit is considered a key facet of immigrant life (Logan et al., 2002).
As described, the neighborhood is often synonymous with the community when it comes to immigrant organizations. Moreover, the neighborhood serves as an important resource for immigrant organizations.
One of the most significant roles of nonprofit organizations is how they facilitate local political incorporation for immigrants at the individual and community levels. Non-naturalized
38 immigrants, who account for over half of immigrants, are excluded from voting and, therefore, not able to exert political pressure through the ballot box. Immigrant groups, more than citizens, must rely on nonprofit organizations and social movements to exert political pressure on decision makers.
In fact, without immigrant-run and immigrant-focused organizations, it can be difficult for city officials to learn about the needs of immigrant populations (Bloemraad and Gleeson 2012). Thus, organizations serve the dual role of enabling immigrant groups to reach city officials and providing city officials with information about immigrants’ needs. Additionally, the funding and survival of immigrant nonprofit organizations relies on the willingness of immigrants to participate in the political process and advocate for public funding and support, such as by testifying at public hearings (de Graauw 2008).
Even with the prominent role of nonprofit organizations and businesses in immigrant integration, the public sector continues to influence how the private sector facilitates immigration.
Governments provide support and resources to nonprofit organizations in the form of funding, technical assistance, and policies that incentivize immigrant programs; however, public support is predicated on cities viewing immigrant organizations as legitimate partners (de Graauw, Gleeson, and Bloemraad 2013). These resources, in turn, shape the breadth and density of organizations that serve immigrants (Bloemraad 2005). At the same time, a lack of formally registered nonprofit organizations that serve immigrants can lead to disparities in public funding for immigrant groups.
As Irene Bloemraad and Shannon Gleeson (2012, 111–12) write, “Put simply, formal organizations matter; thus, evidence of organizational inequality and under-representation carries disquieting implications for immigrants’ ability to achieve voice and influence in the places they live.” Overall, immigrant organizations tend to rely on public funding, and governments rely on immigrant organizations to reach immigrant populations. Without this relationship between governments and
39 nonprofit immigrant organizations, it can be difficult for immigrant groups to secure public support and for governments to learn about the needs of immigrants.
Finally, in addition to formal nonprofit organizations and for-profit businesses, voluntary associations, informal immigrant groups, and ethnic congregations have historically played an important role in immigrant communities. Voluntary associations include credit associations, mutual benefit societies, religious groups, hometown associations, and political and advocacy groups, among others (Moya 2005). In regards to religious institutions, over a third of immigrants in the United
States regularly attend meetings (Van Tubergen 2006). Along with spiritual instruction, religious institutions provide opportunities for immigrants to socialize, volunteer, and become civically engaged. For example, immigrant volunteerism in religious institutions is associated with volunteering in other organizations and civic participation, and religious institutions provide opportunities to connect with secular organizations (Mora 2013; Sinha, Greenspan, and Handy
2011).
The immigrant social safety net
As described above, there is a greater need among immigrants for social supports than there is among the native-born population, but immigrants face more barriers to accessing material goods, income supports, and services. As seen in Table 1, immigrant households are more likely than the native-born population to access food assistance programs, such the Supplemental Nutritional
Assistance Program (SNAP, or more commonly known as food stamps) and Medicaid, but they are less likely to receive subsidized housing and forms of cash assistance, such as Transitional Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Many of the immigrant households accessing these benefits do so on behalf of children who are citizens and qualify for benefits. Overall, a greater percentage of immigrants take advantage of food stamps, but this is because more immigrant-headed families live
40 in poverty than families in which all members are native-born. When comparing just immigrant and native-born families who qualify for food stamps, the utilization rate among immigrant-headed households (including those with native-born children) is actually lower than that of native-born households.
Table 1 Welfare utilization rates in the United States
Welfare program Immigrant-headed Native-born households households with children with children Cash assistance (SSI and TANF) 5.5% 6.3% Food assistance (WIC, SNAP, reduced- 45.3% 30.6% price school lunches) Housing assistance (public housing, rent 4.2% 5.3% subsidies) Medicaid 45.7% 33.8% Any welfare program 58.2% 41.8% Source: National Academies of Sciences (2017) Lower utilization rates among immigrants are partially attributable to changes brought about through welfare reform in the 1990s. Together, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act of 1996 and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of
1996 added significant restrictions on immigrants seeking welfare benefits. These reforms made it more difficult for immigrants to qualify for benefits and cash transfers, such as TANF, SNAP,
Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. For starters, these reforms limited most benefits to “qualified” immigrants, which covers those who have legal permanent resident status or other authorization for permanent status.4 In addition, the reforms imposed restrictions that limited the ability of qualified immigrants to access most benefits, such as a five-year waiting period and work requirements.
4 “Qualified” immigrants include: “lawful permanent residents, or LPRs (people with green cards); refugees, people granted asylum or withholding of deportation/removal, and conditional entrants; people granted parole by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for a period of at least one year; Cuban and Haitian entrants; certain abused immigrants, their children, and/or their parents; certain survivors of trafficking” (Broder, Moussavian, and Blazer 2015).
41 Eligibility restrictions alone, however, cannot fully account for the lower utilization rates of non-naturalized immigrants. Confusion about eligibility on the part of immigrants and agency staff, among other reasons, prevent eligible immigrants from accessing social services. For example, differences in eligibility criteria between state and federal laws and confusion about how immigration and welfare laws interact have discouraged eligible immigrants from applying for benefits and even caused agency staff to turn eligible immigrants away (Broder, Moussavian, and Blazer 2015).
In recent years, the federal government also has deterred immigrants who qualify for public benefits from accessing them by suggesting that, if they do, they risk being deemed a “public charge” and, thus, denied permanent residency. This is known as the Public Charge Rule, and it enables immigration officers to reject a Green Card application based on a determination that the applicant will become a public charge. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defines a public charge as someone who will be dependent on public cash assistance programs or require long-term government-sponsored care. This rule has been in existence since the Immigration Act of
1882, but the definition of a public charge has been open to interpretation and evolved over time.
In February 2020, DHS’s new Final Rule on Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility went into effect,5 thereby adding recipients of noncash benefits, such as SNAP and Medicaid, as public charges.
Before the rule change proposal was even published, but after rumors of it surfaced, agencies reported lower utilization rates among immigrants who qualified for public benefits.
Across the country, WIC, SNAP, and food banks saw decreases in enrollment, and households who had been receiving these benefits even began requesting to be unenrolled (Baumgaertner 2018). In fact, over twenty percent of adults in low-income immigrant families reported that they or a family
5 The rule went into effect on February 24, 2020 after the Supreme Court overruled federal judges in three states who prevented it from going into effect in 2019.
42 member did not participate in a noncash program in 2018 because they feared being subsequently turned down for a Green Card (Bernstein et al. 2019a).
Barriers to accessing organizational services
Low-income individuals, regardless of citizenship status, often access the social safety net through local public and private organizations. For non-naturalized immigrants, the growing threat of being detained in spaces outside the home is effectively restricting access to organizations and the resources they provide. Places of employment have long been targets of immigration raids by ICE, but places of worship, hospitals, and schools were viewed as being safe. This is because they have been covered under ICE’s list of “sensitive locations,” which are places that are generally protected from ICE arrests, interviews, searches, and surveillance.6 This is no longer the case, though, as reports grow of ICE officers detaining immigrants either outside of, or on their way to, these very places that used to be thought of as safe (Eltagouri 2017).
Moreover, there is increasing fear of all government agencies among immigrants, regardless of whether agencies have a history of cooperating with ICE. Government agencies that have historically not cooperated with ICE have started to do so, which makes even “safe” agencies potential risks. For example, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which oversees the naturalization process for immigrants, but not deportations, was found to be coordinating with ICE in 2018 (Flynn 2018; Medina 2018; Yeoman 2018). Regardless of whether these fears of deportation are justified, they have the chilling effect of discouraging immigrants from accessing public spaces, local organizations, and the resources they offer. Any discussion of access to organizations and resources for immigrants must take into account this growing climate of fear and the risk of detention, or at least questioning, in public spaces.
6 Sensitive locations include schools, hospitals, places of worship, funerals and weddings, and public demonstrations, such as parades, marches, and rallies.
43 The geographic distribution of nonprofit organizations also limits immigrants’ access to the social safety net. In the United States, there is a spatial mismatch between where low-income populations live and where social service organizations locate. The result of this spatial mismatch is a system in which where one lives, as opposed to one’s need, determines one’s access to services and resources (Allard 2008). Similar to nonprofit social service agencies, nonprofit immigrant organizations are not well positioned to meet immigrants where they are. For example, in New
York City, there is only a weak association between funding for immigration-related services and where immigrant populations live, and this relationship is not strengthened by socioeconomic disadvantage (Marwell and Gullickson 2013). In the Greater Boston Area, municipalities with a higher proportion of immigrants do not have access to more immigrant organizations or increased funding (Joassart-Marcelli 2013). Finally, Chicago and Los Angeles neighborhoods with high concentrations of Latinos actually have fewer social service organizations (Roth and Allard 2016).
This spatial mismatch suggests that nonprofit social service agencies and immigrant organizations located in low-income immigrant neighborhoods, which is where they are needed most, may experience greater demands and pressures, but have access to less resources, than those located in more socioeconomically advantaged neighborhoods.
Even when immigrants have access to organizations providing key services, there is a growing and justified fear among immigrants of going to public spaces and organizations to access those benefits. Immigrants who are either undocumented or have an undocumented family member are particularly likely to report that they try not to leave the house except when it is necessary, such as for work (Artiga and Ubri 2017). For example, immigrant families report avoiding medical care and keeping their children home from school (Holder 2019). The fear of being stopped by police or immigration officials is reshaping everyday life for both documented and undocumented immigrants. A report by the Urban Institute (Bernstein et al. 2019b) found that eight percent of
44 adults in immigrant families report avoiding public spaces, such as parks, libraries, and stores, and six percent avoid using public transportation. Thirty-three percent of adults in families with at least one member who is either non-naturalized or does not have permanent residency avoided a routine activity because they did not want to be asked about their citizenship status. Surprisingly, twelve percent of adults in families composed of all citizens or permanent residents also reported avoiding a routine activity. These fears are understandable as reports surface of undocumented immigrants being detained leaving hospitals, taking their children to school, and at courthouses (American Civil
Liberties Union 2018; Eltagouri 2017; Siddiqui 2018)
Public libraries and immigrant integration
Not traditionally treated as a part of the social safety net in the United States, public libraries offer important sources of support and information for immigrants that contribute to immigrant integration. Since their founding in the 1800s, public libraries have made it part of their mission to provide services for immigrants. In more recent decades, they have increased and adapted services and collections to meet the growing and changing needs of immigrants. Public libraries now reach some immigrant populations more than those who are native-born. For example, Susan Burke
(2008a) finds that immigrants from South Asia, Southeast Asia, South America, and East Asia are more likely to use their public library than native-born Americans (see Figure 1). Moreover, they reach immigrants across the socioeconomic spectrum. The services and resources that public libraries provide to immigrants range from materials and programs that serve all, regardless of place of birth, to those that are designed to meet the specific needs of immigrants.
45 Figure 1 U.S. household member used a public library in the past month by region of origin
50.0%
40.0%
30.0%
20.0%
10.0%
0.0%
Source: Burke (2008a) In general, immigrants with higher education levels are more likely to use their public library than those with less education, but there are a few key exceptions to this within and across immigrant groups. As seen in Figure 2, immigrants in the United States who do not have a high school degree or its equivalent are the group least likely to use public libraries, but usage is notably higher among those without a high school degree who come from South America, Central America or Mexico, or Southeast Asia than among those who come from other regions or are native-born.
In addition, immigrants from Central America or Mexico and Southeast Asia are less likely to use their public library if they have a bachelor’s degree than if they only have some college, which is different from all other immigrant groups and the native-born population (Burke 2008a). What these data suggest is that public libraries reach immigrants differently across the socioeconomic spectrum, and the relationship between library use and socioeconomic status varies across immigrant groups.
46 Figure 2 U.S. household used a public library in the past month by region of origin and education level of respondent
50.0%
40.0%
30.0% < High school 20.0% High School/GED
10.0% Some college BA or greater 0.0%
Source: Burke (2008a) The literature on immigrants and public libraries falls into four general categories: 1) how libraries serve immigrant groups, 2) how immigrants, including those from different ethnic backgrounds, use libraries, 3) the main barriers libraries face trying to serve immigrants, and 4) the geographic distribution of library services in relation to minority populations. Instead of using these categories, which tend to focus on how libraries can better serve immigrant populations, I use
Jiménez’s (2011) integration framework to review the literature. Across the five indicators, libraries engage most in the integration process along three key dimensions: language proficiency, political participation, and social interaction. Libraries also help immigrants with socioeconomic attainment, however, the literature on this is limited, and the benefits may be more indirect. Lastly, I address barriers to access because, no matter how many services or programs libraries offer, they are only as good as their ability to reach and serve populations in need.
Language proficiency
With the passage of the Naturalization Act of 1906, immigrants to the United States had to pass literacy and English language tests to become citizens. Since their founding in the nineteenth
47 century, public libraries have focused on literacy for the general population and English language instruction for immigrants (Asher 2011), and they continue to do so through access to their collections and programs (Cuban 2007; Davis 2009; Shepherd, Petrillo, and Wilson 2018). Access to their general collections, English as a Second Language (ESL) collections, foreign language collections,7 and online language instruction resources provides immigrants with resources for self- directed efforts to improve literacy and English language proficiency. Some libraries also provide structured English language instruction through ESL classes, informal ESL conversation groups, and one-on-one tutoring in which participants can practice speaking, listening, reading, and writing
(Koerber 2018). In a 2007 survey, librarians identified ESL programs and special materials and collections as the most effective programs for immigrants along with computer use, computer classes, and story times (Bossaller 2016).
In ESL classes, learning takes place between teachers and students as well as through a mutual learning process among students. Luis Kong (2013, 41) writes, “Many library literacy programs are building learning communities through small group instruction in non-formal and informal settings that are primarily functional and practical, but also empowering and reciprocal because learners teach each other as much as a teacher teaches them.” ESL classes help participants to achieve “better communication in the workplace, improved conversational ability in public, greater confidence, lifelong learning, improvements in grammar, vocabulary, and spelling, banking and shopping without fear, more independence, and joy in socialization” (Pete 2016, 2). ESL conversation groups, which can stand on their own or supplement formal ESL classes, provide a less formal environment in which participants can feel more comfortable making mistakes while
7 Most libraries support languages other than English. For example, seventy-eight percent support Spanish, and twenty-nine percent support Asian languages (Davis 2009). Libraries have started to rename these foreign language collections “community languages” (Paulson 2004).
48 practicing their English than they might feel in contexts outside the library (Johnston 2016; Parrish
2014).
The socioeconomic benefits that accrue from libraries’ efforts to increase English language proficiency among immigrants are harder to measures. For example, one of the least reported library uses among immigrants is to access information for job searches (Burke 2008b). Scholars have found, however, that immigrants use the library more than the native-born population, and they are more likely to use libraries for borrowing books and materials, school assignments, and work assignments, which may help indirectly with socioeconomic achievement (Burke 2008a;
2008b).
While other organizations also offer ESL classes, what is unique about libraries is that they do so for free in settings that are relatively informal, perceived as safe, and non-stigmatizing
(Johnston 2016). For example, public schools may offer ESL classes as an alternative to “ordinary classes,” thereby making immigrants choose between the two, but libraries offer ESL classes in addition to other classes (Vårheim 2011). In contrast to immigrant organizations, libraries are more ubiquitous and offer programs at a range of times. These organizational characteristics help to explain why many immigrants attend library ESL classes after dropping out of other ESL programs
(Vårheim 2011). According to Sondra Cuban (2007, 7), “These learning opportunities [offered by libraries] are often unavailable in other institutions (such as community colleges), which charge fees, operate during limited weekday hours, require registration and proof of immigration status, and demand certain behavior and academic standards. Those institutions also require higher literacy skills (defined by federal compliance standards) as part of their entry requirements.”
By offering programs that are not means-tested, libraries are able to collect less patron information and provide access to a broader population. Anyone, regardless of immigration or legal status is allowed to access libraries, and many libraries even make it easy for immigrants who are
49 undocumented to receive library cards. For example, forty-two percent of libraries do not require photo identification, and, among those that do, seventy-eight percent accept non-governmental identification (Williams 2013). This enables immigrants to apply for library cards at most libraries regardless of their immigration or legal status.
Political participation
Similar to literacy and English language instruction, public libraries have designed collections and programs to help immigrants participate in American democracy since the early nineteen hundreds, and parallels can be found between that time and the current day (Asher 2011). In the
1910s, public libraries joined schools, churches, settlement houses, and other organizations in the
Americanization movement, which focused on English language instruction, citizenship education, and assimilation. As Frances Kelly (1915, 1) wrote at the time in a guide to librarians, “To-day in every field a knowledge of immigration and the methods of Americanization is almost essential; in library work it has become a neccesity [sic].” Public libraries worked with governments, and librarians took it upon themselves to learn more about the political needs of immigrants. For example, some librarians would observe citizenship classes and immigrants taking the citizenship exam to familiarize themselves with the naturalization process (Jones Jr. 1999).
Currently, libraries help immigrants to participate in civic life through literacy efforts, citizenship programs, and by providing “the raw materials of civic education” to all (Halpern 2018,
25). Even ESL conversation groups may serve as sources of civic information (Johnston 2016).
More formally, libraries provide information on the naturalization process, study materials for the naturalization test and interview, and references for where to get legal assistance (Koerber 2018). In
2013, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which is the federal agency that provides grants and support to public libraries, partnered with USCIS, the agency that oversees the naturalization
50 process for immigrants, to set up Information Corners and host USCIS information sessions in libraries across the country (Koerber 2018).
In addition to assisting with the naturalization process, libraries have taken a stance against anti-immigrant policies, offered supports for undocumented immigrants, and spread information on immigrant rights. For example, in the wake of the 2016 presidential election and the rise in anti- immigrant policies and rhetoric, public libraries started disseminating “Know Your Rights” information and holding “Know Your Rights” information sessions (Koerber 2018). This information was designed to help immigrants in the case that they or someone they knew were to be approached or detained by immigration officers. In response to the Trump administration’s immigration ban and family separation policies, the American Library Association (ALA), which is the main professional association of librarians and has close to sixty thousand members, issued press releases condemning these policies. The ALA wrote, “We are shocked and dismayed by recent executive orders and other actions by the new administration, which stand in stark contrast to the core values of the American Library Association (ALA). Our core values include access to information; confidentiality/privacy; democracy; equity, diversity and inclusion; intellectual freedom; and social responsibility” (American Library Association 2017). Even in politically conservative areas, the value of equal access informs the work of public librarians across the United States
(Williams 2013).
Public libraries also play an important role providing access to government services for low- income households and immigrants. Through English language instruction, libraries help immigrants to navigate public services and become better advocates for themselves and others, such as children enrolled in public schools (Vårheim 2011). As public services have moved online, governments have called upon public libraries to help underserved groups access and apply for public services using the Internet. Across the country, libraries have helped individuals and families
51 to learn about Medicare and coverage options for the Affordable Care Act (Bossaller 2016; 2017).
Almost half of all users of public computers at libraries, in fact, have used computers for health reasons (Horrigan 2015). One example of this is the staff of the Philadelphia Public Library, who view themselves “as de facto health and social service system navigators, assisting new immigrants in accessing insurance and health care; completing job applications; communicating with lawyers, landlords, and schools; and applying for citizenship” (Morgan et al. 2016). Public libraries offer technology, willing support staff, space, and resources to help low-income individuals and immigrants at least start to navigate the complex network of government services.
Social interaction
Individuals tend to view public libraries as safe and trusted spaces. In fact, as seen in Figure
3, they trust the information that they get from public libraries and librarians more than they do from other government institutions (Horrigan 2016; 2017). This perception of public libraries as safe and trusted can be particularly important for immigrant women who come from conservative cultures (Shepherd, Petrillo, and Wilson 2018). By providing spaces that support interactions across diverse populations, libraries help expose individuals to “otherness,” promote pluralism, and foster social inclusion (Aabø and Audunson 2012). Exposure to pluralism, though, may be stronger in large, urban public libraries with diverse users than it is in small or rural libraries.
52 Figure 3 Adults who trust information from different sources
Trust the source a lot Trust the source some Local public library or librarians Health care providers Family or friends Local news organizations Government sources National news organizations Financial institutions Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Source: Horrigan (2017) Public libraries also provide opportunities for social interactions through the programs they offer. For example, ESL classes may be primarily designed to teach English, but they have the secondary benefit of creating opportunities for immigrants to socialize with other participants, teachers, and library staff (Fisher, Durrance, and Hinton 2004). Some public libraries even explicitly state friendship as a goal of their ESL programs (Koerber 2018). This bridges immigrants from different populations, which increases levels of trust (Vårheim 2011). For ESL class participants, trust builds over time through contact with participants, teachers, and library staff and through the acquisition of knowledge and skills (Vårheim 2014).
Barriers to access
It is not uncommon to hear that “the library is the first place new immigrants come”
(Paulson 2004), however, public libraries still face various barriers reaching immigrant populations.
It can be difficult for public libraries to make immigrants aware of their services and to help immigrants feel safe accessing them, especially for undocumented immigrants. For starters, immigrants may not know about their local public library or the role that it plays (Davis 2009). As
Susan Burke (2008a, 34) explains, “Many immigrants are not used to the public library concept from their home countries and do not think of using the library, do not know where it is located, do not
53 perceive a need for library use, and do not know about programs and services at the library.” Lack of knowledge of the public library is the second largest barrier to reaching immigrant populations
(Koontz and Jue 2008). Public libraries also have a harder time reaching immigrant groups whose perceptions of them are based on the public libraries in their native countries, which may have served different roles from those in the United States (Burke 2008b). A potentially more difficult barrier that public libraries face is fear of government agencies (Burke 2008a). Some immigrants falsely view the public library as a government agency with the power to report undocumented immigrants (Harrington 2012). One way that public libraries address these various barriers is by doing outreach to immigrants through organizational partnerships, which provide the added benefit of also helping public libraries to determine immigrant needs (Hoyer 2011).
Public libraries are a source of support for those with limited English proficiency, yet, limited English proficiency deters some immigrants from accessing public libraries in the first place
(Burke 2008a). Immigrants who do not speak English can be more hesitant to use the public library and to ask for assistance when they do. One way that adult immigrants get around this barrier is with the help of their children, who can introduce them to the public library and help translate
(Shepherd, Petrillo, and Wilson 2018). For some, language barriers extend beyond English language proficiency. In particular, low literacy in immigrants’ native languages makes it more difficult for immigrants to learn English (Davis 2009).
Lastly, some public libraries face political barriers when trying to serve immigrant populations. Members of the public have criticized public libraries for spending tax dollars on immigrant services and pressured libraries to eliminate foreign language collections, ESL programs, and other services for immigrants (Cuban 2007; Harrington 2012; The Associated Press 2005). A conservative organization, the Center for Immigration Studies, criticized public libraries for helping immigrants with technology to stay in touch with family and friends in their native countries because
54 the organization claimed that it prevents public libraries from fully assimilating immigrants (Cuban
2007). In one extreme case, a public library in a Chicago suburb tried to hold an immigrant rights workshop, but the library had to cancel it after it received hate calls and threats of ICE arrests. ICE arrests have not taken place in public libraries to date, but libraries are not legally protected from them (Halpern 2018). Thus, while close to ninety percent of the American population believes that libraries should definitely, or at least maybe, create services for immigrants (Horrigan 2015), there remains a small minority of the population who believes that public libraries should not do so, and some are taking action to ensure this.
Conclusion
The United States is often referred to as a “country of immigrants,” yet the country does little to support the integration of immigrants at the federal level. The majority of immigrant integration initiatives occur at the local level through private employers, nonprofit organizations, and, in some locations, public agencies. The United States takes a laissez faire approach to immigrant integration, and the result is uneven supports across the country and even within cities.
Some cities have institutionalized welcoming policies whereas others have fortified themselves against newcomers. Within cities, some businesses, nonprofit organizations, and public agencies provide support to immigrants and their families as they learn English, engage with the political system, earn a living, and integrate socially. One such organization that has a long history of engaging immigrants is the public library.
Even with the range of organizations facilitating the immigrant integration process between immigrants and communities, immigrants still face barriers accessing organizations and the resources they provide. Just as the organizations that constitute the social safety net, more broadly, are spatially mismatched in regards to need, so are some of the organizations that serve immigrants.
55 Moreover, changes in national policies are creating barriers in two key ways. First, the federal government is further restricting what welfare benefits immigrants can access without jeopardizing their immigration status. Second, by targeting immigrants in public spaces, and even sensitive locations, ICE’s policies are fostering a fear of transportation, public spaces, and routine organizations.
As public spaces and government entities, public libraries face some of these same hurdles when it comes to reaching immigrants. They are also, however, well positioned to assist with various aspects of immigrant integration. Since their participation in the Americanization movement of the early twentieth century through their current day efforts to equip immigrants with knowledge about their rights when encountering police and immigration officers, public libraries have sought to reach and serve immigrants. Through English language learning, political incorporation, and activities that promote social inclusion, public libraries facilitate immigrant integration along a number of dimensions.
56 Chapter three | Context and methodology
Introduction
This research focuses on the question of how organizations provide access to resources for marginalized populations. Other scholars have asked whether low-income neighborhoods of color are more or less likely to have specific organizations, such as social service agencies, child care centers, and businesses. They have also asked whether organizations in low-income neighborhoods of color are more or less likely to receive public funding. Some have even parsed out how public organizations compare to private organizations of the same type when it comes to reaching marginalized neighborhoods. There is a general assumption that underlies much of this existing research, though, which is that closer physical proximity and greater funding equate to more resources and better access for low-income communities of color. I seek to build on this body of literature by redefining how resources and access are measured. For example, to what extent do the types of services offered by organizations vary across neighborhoods? What organizational characteristics beyond geographic proximity facilitate access? How, if at all, do neighborhoods shape organizational resources?
I approach this research through a single-case study focused on the Boston Public Library
(BPL), and its twenty-five neighborhood branches serve as embedded units. Case studies can be particularly effective approaches for studying urban social processes, such as neighborhood change, and causal mechanisms that account for differences across neighborhoods (Klinenberg 2002;
Marwell 2007; Sampson 1999; Small 2004). Case studies lend themselves to what, how, and why questions as well as analysis of change over time (Yin 2009). This research focuses on one case, the
BPL, and uses a descriptive and exploratory approach to study how neighborhoods shape organizational resources. In no way is it evaluative of the BPL. If anything, I hope that it
57 encourages urban planners and social scientists to take public libraries more seriously as sites of social inquiry and the critical pieces of social infrastructure that they are. After all, as Eric
Klinenberg (2018, 32) writes, “[S]ocial infrastructure provides the setting and context for social participation, and the library is among the most critical forms of social infrastructure that we have;” however, “[i]t’s also one of the most undervalued.”
In this dissertation, I broadly conceptualize organizations to include public and private entities, and I distinguish between organizations and institutions. I adopt Scott Allard and Mario
Small’s (2013, 9) definition of organizations as “formally recognized sets of people and practices whose activities are oriented toward an overarching purpose.” Organizations “typically operate in buildings, file tax forms, receive coding regulations, employ people, and sell or provide goods to patrons or clients” (Allard and Small 2013, 9). Organizations are entities with a physical location, staff, patrons or clients, and objectives. In organizational studies, institutions often refer to the rules and norms that shape the behavior of individuals and organizations; however, I use the term to refer to large organizations that have a public objective, such as government agencies, universities, and hospitals.
This chapter begins with an overview of Boston, Massachusetts, and the status of immigrants in the city. This is followed by a brief history of the BPL and how it has served immigrants through its system of neighborhood branches since its founding in the 1800s. Though this research focuses on public library services in the 2010s, an overview of the library’s history of working with the city’s immigrants grounds the current-day work and provides context for how the neighborhood branches function as arms of the BPL within Boston’s neighborhoods.
The second half of this chapter focuses on research design, specifically data collection and analysis. As a case study, this research relies on multiple sources of evidence—interviews, observation, texts and archives, and quantitative data. Each source of data provides a different
58 benefit. Archives, documents, and library usage data help to create a timeline of immigrant services and programs at the BPL. Interviews provide critical insight about how and why different programs and services were implemented. Finally, participant observation provides information on immigrant services and programs in the current day and access to less tangible aspects of neighborhood branches, such how immigrants use the spaces and who attends programs. In addition, as is customary in case study research, these various sources of evidence allow for the triangulation of data.
Context
Boston, Massachusetts
Boston, Massachusetts, is one of many major gateway cities for immigrant populations across the United States. Twenty-eight percent of its residents are foreign-born compared to just thirteen percent nationally. What makes it unique among immigrant gateways, however, is that it is one of a few metropolitan areas to have maintained a consistently high immigrant population over each decade of the last century.8 Boston is what Aubrey Singer (2004; 2015) designates as a major- continuous gateway for immigrants. In fact, were it not for immigrants, Boston’s population would have declined between 1980 and 2000 (see Figure 4).
8 New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco are also major-continuous immigrant gateways.
59 Figure 4 Immigration in Boston, 1970-2017
800,000
600,000
400,000
Total Population Population Total 200,000
0 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2017 Native-born Foreign-born
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Census and 2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates The main change that the city has experienced in regards to immigration is the countries from which immigrants have been emigrating. Whereas over sixty percent of immigrants living in
Boston in 1970 were born in Europe, that number has dropped to less than thirteen percent. Now, almost half of immigrants come from countries in the Americas, a quarter from Asia, and approximately an eighth from Africa (Lima 2017). The five most common countries from which immigrants emigrate are China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, El Salvador, and Vietnam (Lima
2017). In addition to a shift in the countries of origin, Boston is one of the few large metropolitan areas to experience an increase in undocumented immigrants, who now account for approximately twenty-three percent of its immigrant population and over four percent of its total population
(Passel and Cohn 2019a; Pew Research Center 2019). In Boston, no single immigrant population accounts for the majority of immigrants, and, among the five most common countries of origin, only two share a common language, Spanish. This diversity is reflected across neighborhoods in the city, and it shapes how government and community-based organizations reach out to and serve immigrant populations in Boston.
60 Figure 5 Socioeconomic characteristics of Boston’s population by immigration status, 2017
30.0% 25.0% Native-born 20.0% Naturalized foreign-born 15.0% 10.0% Non-naturalized foreign-born 5.0% 0.0% Unemployment rate Percent living below the poverty level
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates Socioeconomically, Boston’s immigrants are more likely to live in poverty, to be unemployed, and to earn less than the city’s native-born population. In regards to earnings, the disparity between immigrants and those who are native-born remains even after accounting for educational attainment. For example, the average foreign-born worker in Boston with a college degree earns forty-five thousand dollars per year, whereas the average native-born worker with a college degree earns sixty thousand dollars per year (Lima 2017). These elevated economic burdens, however, tend to be concentrated among Boston’s non-naturalized immigrant population (see
Figure 5), who account for approximately half of its foreign-born residents. Naturalized immigrants, in contrast, generally have less economic hardship than the native-born population. In 2017, twenty-nine percent of Boston’s non-naturalized immigrant population lived below the poverty level compared to approximately nineteen percent of the naturalized and native-born citizens in the city, and, as shown in Figure 6, this disparity is part of a growing trend in recent years.
61 Figure 6 Poverty rate of Boston’s population by immigration status, 2009-2017
40%
30% 30% 23% 19% Native born 20% Naturalized 18% Non-citizen 10%
0% 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2009-2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates One barrier to employment for immigrants is limited English proficiency (Soricone et al.
2011). Among Boston’s immigrant population, about half (50.2 percent) have limited English proficiency, defined as speaking English less than “very well,” and this is slightly higher than the national percentage (48.9 percent). Additionally, though the percent of immigrants with limited
English proficiency has declined nationally since 2010, it actually has increased for Boston’s immigrant population. In the greater Boston area, it is estimated that only five percent of those who need ESL services receive them, and the total number of people served by ESL programs declined between 2000 and 2010 (Soricone et al. 2011). The diversity of the city’s immigrant population is also reflected in the languages spoken by them. As seen in Figure 7, Spanish is the most commonly spoken language among immigrants, but Spanish-speaking immigrants account for just twenty-eight percent of the immigrant population.
62 Figure 7 Languages spoken by Boston’s immigrant population, 2017
Other 6% Only Asian and English Pacific 19% Island 19%
Other Spanish Indo- 28% European 28%
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates The growing diversity of Boston’s immigrant population has reshaped the city as a whole as well as the city’s individual neighborhoods. Figure 8 is a map produced by the Boston Planning and
Development Agency that shows the primary countries of origin by neighborhood with the font size being proportional to the languages most commonly spoken in each neighborhood. What is notable about this depiction is that some neighborhoods have greater diversity than others when it comes to countries of origin. First, some neighborhoods have no single immigrant population that is in the majority. For example, in the Roslindale neighborhood, the populations that come from Haiti and the Dominican Republic are roughly equivalent. Second, many neighborhoods are home to immigrant populations from across the world. In Dorchester, the largest immigrant populations come from Asia (Vietnam), Africa (Cape Verde), and the Caribbean (Haiti and the Dominican
Republic), none of which share a common language.
Overall, Boston serves as a useful site of inquiry for immigrant services for a few key reasons. First, Boston has been as an immigrant gateway for over a century, first for European immigrants and now for immigrants from around the world. Second, its immigrant population is diverse in regards to countries of origin and languages spoken, and this diversity is reflected both
63 within and across neighborhoods. Third, Boston is home to a greater proportion of undocumented immigrants than other cities, and the city’s non-naturalized immigrants face socioeconomic hardships that are greater than the average immigrant in the United States.
Figure 8 Map of Boston’s neighborhoods by country of origin for the foreign-born population
Source: Boston Planning and Development Agency (2017)
64 The Boston Public Library and immigrant services
When the BPL opened in 1852, it was the first free, publicly supported municipal library in the United States. Before it opened, Bostonians could access books through private libraries, such as the Boston Athenæum, but these libraries only served Boston’s wealthy and connected population, known as the Boston Brahmins. Given the library access that Boston’s wealthy and connected society enjoyed at the time, Susan Wilson (1987, B11) asks, “[W]hy did a group of
Brahmins and their brethren push to create the Boston Public Library in 1852?” She goes on to explain,
Part of their rationale, admits BPL director Arthur Curley, was reactive: Boston was being flooded by new waves of immigrants, many of them illiterate and, hence, a threat to society and culture. The altruistic flip side of such social snobbery, adds Curley, was the very real libertarianism for which Boston had long been known. From the upstart of the American Revolutionaries to the abolitionists, social reformers, suffragists and advocates of free education, Boston has always been a Hub for progressive thought and action.
The founders of the BPL deemed it of utmost importance that, just like the public education system, the library be open and free to all. The Trustees of the Library “regard[ed] it as a great matter to carry as many [books] as possible into the home of the young; into poor families; into cheap boarding houses; in short, wherever they w[ould] be most likely to affect life and raise personal character and condition” (Boston Public Library 1852, 20). To achieve this, the BPL established a lending system that allowed patrons of all backgrounds to take books home with them, a concept that was novel for the time.
The BPL also became the first public library to establish a branch system and extend its services to less accessible parts of the city when it opened the East Boston Branch in 1870. As declared in the BPL’s annual report at that time, “[T]he most marked step which has been taken during this year has been the practical effort to test the desirableness of Branch Libraries which has been made in the establishment of the East Boston Branch. Boston is now a large city, and it is felt
65 that those who inhabit its outlying sections have a right to consideration in the administration of an institution like this, which belongs to all” (Boston Public Library 1871, 16). Within the next thirty years, it added twenty-one additional branches “as a means to extend the library’s presence throughout the city” (Boston Public Library, n.d.). In the current day, other library systems have surpassed Boston in regards to the number of branches and visitors, but the BPL remains the second largest library in the country, by volumes held, and is only surpassed by the Library of
Congress (American Library Association 2006).
By the early twentieth century, the BPL had become a prominent actor in the
Americanization movement while also providing the means for immigrants to access materials and programs in their native languages. As former BPL Trustee William Kenney wrote at the time,
“[T]o the great work of helping the child of alien parents learn American history, American ideals and American traditions, the energy and thought of the Public Library is devoted” (Kenney 1914,
52). In that same year, the library held approximately fifty thousand books in foreign languages, and close to seventy percent of circulated books were checked out by immigrants and their children
(Kenney 1914). The library offered free lectures in Italian and German and provided newspapers in
French, German, Swedish, Russian, Spanish, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Armenian,
Bohemian, Dutch, Hungarian, Letisch, Tagal, Welsh, Chinese, and Japanese.
In the 1920s, the BPL understood that “the branches should be near the center of foreign population,” and the neighborhood branches continued their Americanization work by targeting outreach, programs, and services to immigrants in their neighborhoods (Boston Public Library 1923,
2). Neighborhood branches would identify how many immigrants lived in their service areas and from which countries they came. They circulated books on citizenship and the English language.
They partnered with other organizations, such as the Boston Chamber of Commerce and the
Women’s Municipal League, to provide services to immigrants. Additionally, they taught classes
66 such as “Oral English” and “American Citizenship” (Trustees of the Public Library of the City of
Boston 1921). In summarizing the needs of the neighborhood branches, the Trustees of the BPL wrote, “Many branches are located in districts with an extremely heterogeneous population. The reports emphasize the need of more books in the native tongues of the foreign-born. Many new of the newcomers are eager readers, and appreciate library privileges. Easy English books help the process of their Americanization. The librarians are conscious of their obligation in this direction”
(Boston Public Library 1923, 53). For both principled and less noble reasons, the BPL promoted self-education of immigrants, connected immigrants to public and community services, and sought to create informed citizens and voters.
Changes in immigration policy, followed by the Great Depression, led to a decline in immigration and library services for immigrants from the 1920s through the 1960s. With the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, the United States government established quotas for how many immigrants could enter the country from various nations, and this quota system would continue until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Though the BPL and some of its neighborhood branches continued to serve immigrants, the Americanization work of before declined. Moreover, the 1929 crash of the stock market and the Great Depression that ensued resulted in municipal budget cuts and the closure of multiple neighborhood branches in the late
1930s, most of which served immigrant populations in Boston’s Chinatown, Dorchester, Roxbury, and South Boston neighborhoods (Mehta 2010).
Following a subsequent period of growth in neighborhood branches brought about by a strong economy and political support (Boston City Planning Board 1955), the branches came to reflect their local neighborhoods more by the 1960s:
With a legacy of promoting a particular vision of acculturation, the branch system was confronted in the 1960s with demands for greater local control over the branch collections, as well as over the programs and other community functions provided by the branches. No longer were branch libraries expected to offer the values and
67 teachings of the dominant culture, through choices of books and other reading materials, nor were they to encourage cultural assimilation and conformity. Branches were to become a part of the neighborhood in which they were located, not satellites of an outside institution. (Fichter 2002, 113)
This growth of the BPL’s branch system resulted in, first, the creation of a storefront branch dedicated to Spanish speaking patrons and, later, the Multilingual Library, which served immigrants from around the world.
Librarians identified and sought to address the unmet needs of Boston’s growing immigrant and Puerto Rican9 populations through programming in the 1960s. Pearl Smart, a librarian at the
South End Branch, recognized a growing Puerto Rican population who did not speak English; yet, her neighborhood branch carried few Spanish language materials. In response to this need, she decided to start English language classes with the help of two local organizations, the Federation of
South End Settlements and the Cardinal’s Center for Puerto Ricans, as well as the Harvard Language
Institute. Smart chose to create these classes in her branch because she felt that the local Puerto
Rican population “[was] naturally shy and might be reluctant to go into an unfamiliar neighborhood and participate in a mixed group” (Smart 1960, 415). At the same time, the South End Branch developed programs designed “to promote better understanding of other peoples and cultures, with speakers from Nigeria, Indonesia and other far off countries” (The Boston Public Library Staff
Association 1961).
The Library Services and Construction Act of 1964 helped the BPL to purchase foreign language books and open its first neighborhood branch for non-English speakers. In 1968, the BPL created the Biblioteca Latina in the South End neighborhood to serve Boston’s approximately eight thousand new Spanish-speaking residents, most of whom came from Puerto Rico and Cuba. The
BPL annual report at the time described the new neighborhood branch for Spanish speakers:
9 Puerto Ricans became United States citizens in 1917 under the Jones-Shafroth Act, however, as was the case with immigrant groups, many did not speak English and were new to Boston and the mainland United States in the 1950s and 1960s.
68 The collection will include popular books, magazines, newspapers as well as Spanish language classics. Audio-visual materials, including films, recordings, slides, and tapes will be used to further understanding between those who use Spanish as their first language and those who use English. Bilingual story hours have been presented as well as film and lecture programs for children and adults. (Boston Public Library 1968, 5)
What is perhaps most notable about this description of the Biblioteca Latina is how closely it resembles the traditional neighborhood branch at the time (and in the current day), however, it served those who did not speak English.
The 1970s brought about a heightened awareness of the growing immigrant populations across Boston’s neighborhoods and the ways in which the BPL and its neighborhood branches could serve them through collections, programs, and services. In 1971, the Biblioteca Latina expanded its mission to serve immigrants who spoke languages other than Spanish and transitioned into the Multilingual Library:
The Multilingual Library supplements the services of the new South End Branch. It hopes to build bridges of understanding and to provide easily accessible, informal library service to the various linguistic groups living in the South End. Materials currently available—books, periodicals, newspapers, recordings—include the following languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Greek, Japanese, Arabic, Armenian and Italian. (Trustees of the Public Library 1971, 2–3)
In addition to the creation of the Multilingual Library, the Connolly Branch, in particular, responded to the changing demographics in its Jamaica Plain neighborhood. “The activities of the Jamaica
Plain/Connolly Branch reflected the transition of the neighborhood from a black/white community to a Spanish speaking/black/white community. Both Multilingual Library and Jamaica Plain Branch were strengthened not only in their book collections but also by recruiting staff with language backgrounds invaluable in working with the community and the materials” (Boston Public Library
1972, 9). Throughout the decades, the Connolly Branch would serve as a leader among the neighborhood branches for its outreach, collections, and programs designed to reach the local
69 Spanish-speaking community.10 Meanwhile, the Multilingual Library continued to serve an important role in the South End neighborhood, circulating almost twenty-five thousand materials per year at its peak, until it closed on January 1, 1980 due to budget cuts that threatened to bring down the entire branch system (McNamara 1980; Phipps 1981).
Though the BPL no longer provided a library branch dedicated to foreign language speakers, services for immigrants still extended throughout the network of neighborhood branches in the
1980s. Annual reports from the time describe the accomplishments and needs of neighborhood branches, including the role of immigrants in their communities. The Codman Square Branch in
Dorchester noted a need for its library services by patrons who did not speak or read English; the
Brighton Branch provided ESL classes, expanded its Russian collection, and worked in partnership with Boston University’s Collaborations for Literacy Project; and the Parker Hill Branch developed a
Celebration Navideñas program to specifically reach out to local Puerto Rican residents (Boston
Public Library 1984; 1987). According to the BPL’s 1987-1988 Annual Report,
Throughout the Library, wherever there are identifiable people speaking other tongues as their first languages, the Library has buttressed its resources for that group; Faneuil noted an increase in Vietnamese children; Codman Square keyed its activities toward Blacks, Hispanics, Haitians, and West Indians; Connolly, Dudley, and other branches responded to patron concerns over the effects of the Immigration Control Act with speakers and pamphlets; [and] Adams Street noted a stable population of Irish heritage. (Boston Public Library 1987, 10)
These reports reflected the city’s growing and diversifying immigrant population of the time.
Neighborhood branches managed to create immigrant services and programming during the
1980s, but it was also a perilous time for the neighborhood branch system. In 1981, rumors circulated that all neighborhood branches would be closed due to a drastic budget cut by the City.
Soon thereafter, the Trustees of the BPL reported that, though not all neighborhood branches
10 Later on, the Connolly Branch would be the first and only neighborhood branch to translate its webpage into Spanish, thanks to its bilingual staff. Its librarians became the purchasers of Spanish books for the whole BPL system. Additionally, it promoted programs and offerings in Spanish media.
70 would be closing, some would be. In response to this news, “[l]ibrary supporters from every branch library in the city of Boston, from every socio-economic, cultural, ethnic, racial, educational and religious background banded together and mobilized for their common cause: books and libraries”
(Gaines et al. 1998, 1). This group of passionate patrons formed the Save Our Library Committee and advocated for the library in the streets, in the state house, among Boston residents, and through local media. Though the Save Our Libraries Committee disbanded in 1984, it served as the precursor for the City-Wide Friends of the BPL, which formed in 1987. To this day, the City-Wide
Friends remains a community-based nonprofit organization run by volunteers who support and advocate for the BPL.
The City-Wide Friends would later found some of the BPL’s current immigrant programs.
In 1994, the City-Wide Friends first coordinated an ESL tutoring program, largely through the initiative of one member who had previously worked with English language learners. The City-Wide
Friends provided volunteers, the BPL offered its collection of literacy materials and library space, and early funding came from a regional law firm and grants from the employers of tutors. When the program was ramping up, an initial call for volunteers read, “The pay is nil, but the opportunities and psychic rewards are astronomical” (Friends’ Forum: Newsletter of the City-Wide Friends of the Boston
Public Library 1993, 3). Though the program started with just eighteen tutors, it grew to nearly two hundred within the first three years.
After the success of the tutoring program was apparent and the waitlist for spots grew, the
City-Wide Friends created informal ESL “Conversation Tables” in 1995 at the main branch to reach more English language learners than one-on-one tutoring could serve. Reporting on the early success of the conversation groups, the program coordinator wrote, “Thanks to a rotating band of volunteer tutors, these informal groups are drawing students whose native languages range from
Arabic to Vietnamese, and everything in between—including Eritrean” (Sheikh 1995b, 4).
71 “Conversation Tables” soon thereafter evolved into “Conversations with Friends,” which reached up to sixty participants per session. The City-Wide Friends reported,
We began some Saturday afternoon groups. And they grew. And they grew. And wonderful things happened. A table of students—from Colombia, Mexico, Somalia, Vietnam, and Japan—exchanged phone numbers, in English. Excursions were planned to museums, the aquarium, the zoo. Soon, a few students whose English was better than that of some newcomers began to act as tutors at the expanding groups. (Sheikh 1995a, 3)
In the spring of 1996, the City-Wide Friends extended support for one-on-one tutoring services to the neighborhood branches, and Conversations with Friends reached branches in Roslindale,
Brighton, and the South End the following year. The BPL incorporated the literacy program into its formal operations in 1997, and the jointly-run program continued to expand throughout the neighborhood branches (Sheikh 2000). With the transition completed, the City-Wide Friends announced, “After many years of expansion and increasing success, CWF’s ESOL [English for
Speakers of Other Languages] Program has been turned over to the library administration” (Friends’
Forum: Newsletter of the City-Wide Friends of the Boston Public Library 2001, 1).
Since 2000, almost half of the BPL’s neighborhood branches have been, or are in the process of being, renovated, and some even have been completely rebuilt. One of the driving forces behind these renovations has been the individual Friends of the Library groups formed by communities at each neighborhood branch.11 These groups bring supplemental programs to the neighborhood branches, provide funding for small upgrades, do community outreach, raise awareness about the important role of the neighborhood branches, and advocate for greater institutional support. In 2019, the BPL even added a branch in the Chinatown neighborhood.
Though the branch is temporary, it is part of a larger plan to bring a new, permanent branch back to
11 The oldest Friends group formed at the Jamaica Plain Branch in 1952, but most came about during or after the 1980s.
72 the immigrant neighborhood, which has struggled since the 1950s to once again have its own neighborhood branch (Mehta 2010).
In the current day, Boston’s twenty-five neighborhood branches (see Figure 9) reach tens of thousands of individuals and serve diverse populations both within and across neighborhoods. As seen in Tables 2 and 3, the average neighborhood branch serves close to eighty thousand visitors each year and is located in a neighborhood that is diverse in regards to race, nationality, and socioeconomic status. Around the average neighborhood branch, almost half of residents are of color, and one-quarter is foreign-born. Moreover, the foreign-born population has grown fifteen percent, on average, over the last five years, and one-in-eight residents speaks limited English.
Table 2 BPL neighborhood branch usage, FY2019
Median Minimum12 Maximum Visits 78,837 0 136,730 Circulation 78,736 0 206,020 Programs 369 47 891 Program attendance 5,222 357 16,604 Computer sessions 9,153 0 29,150 Wireless sessions 3,294 0 9,258 Source: The Boston Public Library Table 3 Neighborhood characteristics of BPL neighborhood branches, 2017
Median Minimum Maximum Population served 25,080 10,147 46,989 Foreign-born 26% 15% 50% Non-naturalized foreign-born 13% 7% 38% Naturalized foreign-born 13% 8% 22% Five-year change in foreign-born population 15% -16% 41% Speaks English less than “very well” 12% 1% 58% Below poverty level 20% 8% 41% White, non-Latino 53% 3% 78% Black, non-Latino 12% 3% 76% Asian, non-Latino 3% 1% 5% Latino 15% 5% 57% Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, 2012 and 2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates
12 The Dudley Branch was closed for all of fiscal year 2019, and the Parker Hill was closed for part of fiscal year 2019.
73 In its most recent strategic plan, Compass: Strategic Plan, the BPL identified eight guiding principles for excellence, a couple of which speak, in particular, to the library’s desire to meet users where they are and tailor services to Boston’s diverse and distinctive neighborhoods. The first principle states, “The BPL is a user-centered institution with services that anticipate and respond to neighborhood interests and the changing demographics of the City and Commonwealth” (Boston
Public Library 2012, 7, emphasis added). The second principle is “community gathering.” It details how “[t]he BPL exists to serve and sustain communities that foster discovery, reading, thinking, conversing, teaching, and learning, in accessible, sustainable, and welcoming facilities throughout the
City, as well as with an engaging online presence” (Boston Public Library 2012, 7). Together, these principles speak to how the BPL as an institution seeks to foster communities and meet the unique needs of its diverse neighborhoods, including the evolving needs of immigrants across the city.
Most recently, the BPL highlighted in its annual report services for immigrants and underserved populations as one of its ongoing goals:
As the library system continues to undergo major renovations across the neighborhoods, the focus in new and renovated branches will be on… assisting immigrants and underserved adults. These programs and services will provide critical, foundational skills for workforce development, citizenship, public health and personal success, while fostering community connection, civic engagement and 21st century learning. (Boston Public Library 2019, 37)
With these goals, it is apparent that the BPL has come to conceptualize its role in the lives of immigrants much more broadly than it did around the turn of the twentieth century. Whereas the library used to focus on English language instruction, the citizenship process, and the
Americanization of immigrants, it now acknowledges the need among immigrants for assistance with employment, health, and community connection. In many ways, immigrants face similar hurdles as native-born populations when it comes to socioeconomic attainment, political incorporation, and social connections. At the same time, public libraries across the country have
74 broadened their role in society, stepping up to meet the ever-changing needs of those who are marginalized.
Figure 9 Map of the BPL’s neighborhood branches and central branch
BPL branch — Census tract — Neighborhood boundary — City of Boston boundary --- Municipal boundary
75 Data collection and analysis
I began conducting informational interviews and collecting data on public libraries in 2017, but it was not until the summer of 2018 that I started to focus on immigrant programs and public libraries. By spending time in public libraries throughout Boston, visiting public libraries in other states and even countries, talking with library professionals, reading newspaper articles and BPL documents, and sorting through usage and program data from the BPL, I came to focus on immigrant programs. Beyond the theoretical reasons for looking at immigrant services and public libraries discussed in chapter one, there were some practical reasons for doing so, too.
First, as detailed earlier in this chapter, public libraries have a long history of serving immigrant populations at the neighborhood level. Second, because libraries historically have identified immigrants as a target population, I suspected, and later found to be the case, that librarians would feel comfortable speaking about the ways in which their neighborhood branches reach and serve immigrants. Third, I learned that the BPL collects data on ESL programs, which could serve as at least one source of data on how libraries reach immigrants. Fourth, across the country, news reports were proliferating about the various ways in which federal policies were targeting immigrants, especially those who are undocumented, and making it more difficult for them to access services and public spaces.
For these reasons, as well as the ones put forth in earlier chapters, I came to research immigrant programs and services in the BPL’s neighborhood branches. As is customary with case study research, I draw from multiple sources of data to develop a timeline, understand motivating factors, and draw comparisons across neighborhood branches. The following section details the four key sources of data upon which this research rests: participant observation, library usage and program data, texts and archives, and structured interviews.
76 Participant observation
I grew up going to public libraries in the Boston area for recreational and educational purposes, but I first started visiting public libraries in Boston and the surrounding area with the intention of observing how they were used and by whom in January 2017. Over the course of the next two and a half years, I regularly visited neighborhood branches throughout Boston and even outside the city. I spent time in every BPL neighborhood branch, most a couple of times, but some as many as ten times, not including visits to conduct interviews. Oftentimes, I would do school work while at the neighborhood branches and browse books in the collections. On these types of visits, I would sit in areas where I would be more likely to observe who came to the library, see and hear how they used the library, and learn about how they and the library staff interacted with each other. During each of these visits, I would take notes on my computer about the library’s environment that day, the people who came to the library, and how people were using the library and interacting with one another, including staff. Sometimes, I would speak informally with library staff or other patrons. I also would take photographs at the neighborhood branches, especially of the Immigrant Information Corners. These visits would range from less than an hour to over five hours. On average, I would stay about two hours.
At other times, I visited specific branches to attend and observe programs. These programs ranged from a Tropical Fiesta celebration to a Know Your Rights session to an ESL conversation group to a bilingual story hour (see Appendix B for a list of programs and events attended). I also intentionally visited branches during immigrant information hours held by USCIS. When the immigration officers holding the sessions were not busy with others, I would approach them, explain what I was doing, and ask if they would be willing to talk with me briefly. I always made sure, however, that I did not take up their time when others wanted to speak with them. Under these circumstances, the session leaders always were willing to speak with me, especially if it had
77 been a slow day for them, which it often was. These informal discussions were not interviews, but they helped me to learn more about how libraries connect with outside organizations and vice versa, how immigrants view and use libraries, and how libraries make small programmatic decisions about the best ways to serve immigrants.
Finally, I observed numerous organizational meetings and events. Meetings included those hosted by the BPL, the BPL Board of Trustees, and Friends of the Library groups. In addition,
Boston has been renovating some of its neighborhood branches over the past twenty years, and it even added a neighborhood branch in Chinatown. During the course of this study, one new branch opened, two renovated branches re-opened, and three branches closed for renovations. I was fortunate enough to visit those that closed before they did so and to attend the re-opening of the
Jamaica Plain and Parker Hill Branches and the opening of the temporary Chinatown Branch, as depicted in Figure 10.
Figure 10 Re-opening of the Jamaica Plain Branch and opening of the Chinatown Branch
When I attended events at which I would have been out of place with a computer or taking notes, I recorded notes as soon after the event as possible. These times spent at library programs,
78 events, and meetings served multiple purposes. They provided updates on the BPL’s current initiatives in its neighborhood branches and as an institution, and they gave me an understanding of the range of programs that occur at BPL neighborhood branches. On some occasions, I was surprised by the overwhelming popularity of programs, such as the citizenship workshop run by a local organization; at other times, I was saddened to learn that I was the only attendee at a program, as was the case at the Know Your Rights session. Additionally, attending programs was informative insomuch as it showed me how some programs that seemed to be targeted to immigrants were attended by few, whereas others that were broader in focus were more successful at reaching immigrants. Usually, attending programs helped to bring the data that I had previously collected to life, it gave me an appreciation for the diversity of users across and within the neighborhood branches, and it helped to confirm what I learned through other sources of data.
Library usage and program data
The quantitative and spatial components of this research draw on demographic data from the United States Census Bureau’s American Community Survey Five-Year Estimates and usage data from the BPL. First, I assigned every census tract in Boston to one neighborhood branch based on which branch was closest to the census tract’s centroid. I did not factor in the Chinatown Branch because it only opened in February 2018, and the demographic data only go through 2017. I did, however, interview staff from the Chinatown neighborhood branch. In addition, I did not factor in the Central Branch, even though it is the local branch for some Boston residents, because it is so different in size and nature from all other branches. Due to the uneven geographic dispersion of neighborhood branches across the city, the number of census tracts served by a branch ranged from two at the Lower Mills Branch in Dorchester to fifteen at the East Boston Branch. Using these
79 geographies, the population served by each branch ranges from 10,147 at the Faneuil Branch in
Brighton to 46,989 at the East Boston Branch (see Table 3).
Public libraries collect more usage and performance data than most organizations. This is partially due to their ideological belief in the power and democratization of information. It also has become customary, however, for governments and funders to expect public libraries to collect data.
Thus, libraries have to collect data to continually prove that they play an important role in society.
Even within the BPL, each neighborhood branch regularly collects its own data, which are reported to the central administration. Table 4 details the branch-level data that I was able to access from the
BPL.
Table 4 BPL neighborhood branch data accessed
BPL usage variable Frequency Date range Circulation Quarterly FY 2000 – FY 2019 Visitors Quarterly FY 2004 – FY 2019 Programs Quarterly FY 2003 – FY 2019 Program Attendance Quarterly FY 2005 – FY 2019 Computer Sessions Quarterly FY 2005 – FY 2019 Wireless Sessions Quarterly FY 2005 – FY 2019 Program Descriptions Daily 1/1/2009 – 3/31/2019 Source: The Boston Public Library
Whereas most of the data are usage counts, the program descriptions database contains detailed information on programs held at BPL branches, including the location, day, time of day, program name, program description, and intended audience, among other variables. The BPL uses these data to advertise programs at all of the branches on the events section of the BPL’s website.
With the program data from all neighborhood branches, I created a Microsoft Access database, from which I then was able to query programs that were likely to reach immigrants.13 Since there
13 The query included the following words and variations thereof: immigrant, immigration, foreign, undocumented, naturalization, citizen, citizenship, civic, USCIS, English, ESL, ESOL, Spanish, Hispanic, Latin, Chinese, Mandarin, Haitian, Creole, Vietnamese, Russian, French, Portuguese,
80 were over 72,000 records, I used queries to identify programs that might reach immigrants, focus on the immigrant experience, be held in a language other than English, or address specific cultures and ethnicities. I then compiled a profile for each neighborhood branch that illustrated the range of programs that may have targeted or reached immigrant populations since 2009, as well as branch- level usage data for the last ten years and demographic data for the last four decades.
Archives and texts
The BPL and the City of Boston have maintained records about the BPL since its founding in 1852. From 1852 through 1995, the BPL released annual reports that covered everything from the institution’s mission, its financial status, branch usage levels, and notable programs. Some years, these reports provided detailed descriptions of the neighborhoods that each branch served, and the most recently published report highlighted “Service to New Americans” and “Programs Ethnic and
Cultural.” After 1995, the BPL transitioned to annual documents detailing the institution’s accomplishments and goals. Complementing these reports are The Question Mark, a monthly bulletin by the BPL Staff Association, and the weekly City Record published by the City of Boston. The latter features a section titled “This week at the Boston Public Library” that highlights upcoming programs across the neighborhood branches, especially ESL conversation groups. Along with BPL program data and monthly calendars, these archival publications helped me to piece together the history of ESL programs across the neighborhood branches.
The City-wide Friends published a quarterly Friends’ Forum from 1988 through 2001, which includes the period of time when the nonprofit group started its volunteer-led ESL programs.
Additionally, through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, I was able to explore digital archives of the BPL’s website as it evolved from the mid-1990s through the current day. Doing so shed light
Italian, and Irish. It was designed to capture programs for at least the top ten nationalities in Boston, currently, as well as prominent historic immigrant groups in the city.
81 on the neighborhood branches, whom they served, and the programs they offered. At an institutional level, these digital archives provided information on immigrant programs and services over time.
In addition to these sources that allowed for comparison over time, BPL reports on neighborhood services and the branch system, strategic planning documents, renovation studies, and reports from Trustees of the BPL were all helpful. I also turned to Facebook pages of neighborhood branches and their Friends groups. Finally, I relied on local news reports about the
BPL, programs in the branches, community partners of the BPL, and City of Boston initiatives.
Together, these archives and texts helped me to understand which immigrant programs developed at the BPL and how the BPL as an institution has approached serving immigrant populations.
Interviews
Out of all data sources, I rely most on interviews; however, the other sources of data provided important context and were helpful for designing an interview protocol. The interviews that I conducted for this research fall into four main categories: 1) structured interviews with twenty- three BPL branch librarians and four branch library staff, 2) semi-structured interviews with nine current and former BPL employees and Friends group members, 3) semi-structured interviews with three individuals from organizational partners of the BPL, and 4) semi-structured interviews with six library administrators and experts outside of the BPL (see Appendix A for the schedule used for the structured interviews). The semi-structured interviews generally provided background information on immigrant programs and services and helped to guide the research design process. All interviews with branch librarians and branch library staff were conducted in person, and most other interviews were as well.
82 I conducted the structured interviews with branch librarians at the BPL neighborhood branches between June and August 2019. These interviews lasted between forty minutes and two hours, with the average interview lasting an hour and fifteen minutes. Before administering the interviews, I pretested the interview schedule with two library experts outside of the BPL and a branch librarian at the Cambridge Public Library. I then revised the interview guide based on the feedback from these pretests. The structured interviews with branch librarians were designed to learn about the following:
1) The local context, including background on the local immigrant population
2) What branch librarians perceived to be the needs of the immigrants in their communities
3) The immigrant services and programs offered at library branches
4) How the provision of immigrant services and programs at branches varied across
neighborhoods
5) How immigrant access to branches varied across neighborhoods
6) What factors (e.g., community interest, need, and resources) shaped library programs and
services for immigrants
7) Where resources for immigrant programs and services originated
8) To what degree the availability, or lack, of community resources (volunteers, community
organizations, foundations, community leaders) influenced the range, quantity, and quality of
immigrant services and programs
9) To what extent libraries connected immigrants to opportunity, and what kinds of
opportunity
10) What branch librarians perceived to be outcomes for immigrants who participated in library
programs
83 Before interviewing branch librarians, I reviewed the neighborhood branch profiles that I compiled, which included descriptions of programs that: 1) were conducted in languages other than
English, 2) that provided ESL instruction or support, 3) specifically identified immigrants as the target audience, such as citizenship classes, and 4) focused on specific ethnic and cultural heritages, such as heritage month celebrations. Since I was asking about programs from years before, I used this information to prompt branch librarians and library staff to talk about specific programs, when necessary, and to what extent these programs reached immigrant populations. Afterwards, I transcribed the interviews and coded them for themes that responded to my research questions as well as themes that emerged from the data and which were new to me.
To encourage a high participation rate among branch librarians, the President of the BPL put me in contact with the Neighborhood Services Director, who sent out an email on my behalf requesting that branch librarians take part in an interview with me. From the open neighborhood branches that were not under renovation, all but one branch librarian agreed to be interviewed, resulting in interviews with twenty-three branch librarians. In addition, some branch librarians invited generalists and children’s librarians to participate jointly or separately in interviews. Though
I did not initially intend to interview other library staff in the neighborhood branches, these staff members were incredibly knowledgeable and helpful given their frontline work with patrons and experience doing outreach in their neighborhoods.
84 Chapter four | Meeting immigrants where they are: Access to immigrant programs and services across neighborhood library branches
Introduction
Like public schools and other local organizations, public libraries have become a part of the immigrant social safety net. Their neighborhood branches extend into communities, meet immigrants where they are, and provide access to free resources. This has been true since the turn of the twentieth century, when public libraries joined settlement houses, public schools, and other local organizations in providing immigrant services, such as English language classes, citizenship classes, and foreign language materials. In recent decades, many public libraries have taken on broader, less traditional roles while continuing to engage immigrant communities, and they are now developing creative and unique programs that are shaped by and with their local communities.
Given the decentralized nature of immigrant integration and the reliance on local organizations, such as public libraries, the question arises as to how well immigrant resources align with immigrant needs. Are immigrant programs and services distributed across neighborhoods such that they meet immigrants where they are? To what extent does geographic access ensure that resources are reaching immigrant populations, especially those who may be marginalized because of their race, income, or other socioeconomic characteristics?
It is not a given that local organizations will strongly reflect the neighborhoods in which they are located. Some local organizations have stronger vertical ties to nonlocal organizations, such as state-level bureaucracies, whereas others have stronger horizontal ties to local organizations (Warren
1978). Public libraries, and especially their neighborhood branches, have both, but they come to reflect their local communities, in particular, through their collections, patrons, organizational partnerships, and physical environments. As Jonas Söderholm and Jan Nolin (2015, 257) describe
85 the public library, “It is a place built around a collection and a collection built around a place, an ongoing process most clearly embodied by the neighborhood branch library.” For example, some neighborhood branches intentionally collect books and other reference materials about the histories of their local communities. Meanwhile, librarians collect information on community resources and needs and form partnerships with local organizations through “community reference” (Lankes
2015). It is through this process that the community becomes part of the collection.
This chapter begins with an overview of how the neighborhood branches of the BPL relate to their unique neighborhoods and the central library administration. The following section provides an illustration of the services and programs that neighborhood branches offer to immigrants as they concern four out of five14 key indicators of immigrant integration: English language proficiency, political participation, socioeconomic attainment, and social interaction
(Jiménez 2011). This includes an examination of the perceived benefits for immigrants of the various programs and services, according to branch librarians. Following this section is an examination of where key programs are located in relation to neighborhood need.
Finally, the last section of this chapter looks at how effective these programs are at reaching immigrant populations. After all, access to resources is only effective if target audiences actually know about those resources, feel comfortable accessing them, and do so. Despite the fact that scholars tend to focus on geographic proximity alone when looking at access to resources, there are many non-geographic barriers that marginalized populations, and especially immigrants, face when trying to access resources that are otherwise available. For example, language, work schedules, and lack of knowledge of available resources can prevent immigrants from taking advantage of services and programs from which they might benefit. At the same time, understaffing, the lack of bilingual
14 Residential integration is the one indicator not addressed. Neighborhood library branches help immigrants integrate into their neighborhoods by connecting them to local resources and social support networks, but this indicator refers more to the residential concentration of immigrants over time, something that is outside the scope of the public library.
86 staff, limited hours, and other organizational characteristics can create barriers to reaching immigrants. The findings from this research suggest that there are additional barriers that are unique to immigrants and shape access to organizational resources.
The neighborhood branches and their neighborhoods
The BPL consists of one main central library and twenty-five neighborhood branches spread across the city. Every residence in the city can access a neighborhood branch within two miles,15 and many who live in the denser areas of the city are within a mile of multiple neighborhood branches. Despite the proximity of some neighborhood branches to one another, they serve diverse communities and have unique identities. For example, the neighborhood of Jamaica Plain has two neighborhood branches located less than a mile from one another that serve distinct communities.
As described by branch librarians, one neighborhood branch is located in “a historic hub for the
Latinx community” and is thought of as “the Spanish library.” The other serves a more affluent community and has fewer resources for Latinx populations. These distinctions are evident in the staffing, collection materials, programs, signage, and patrons of the two branches.
During the Neighborhood Services Initiative planning process, the BPL illustrated a vision for its neighborhood branches:
All Boston Public Library branches will provide a robust set of services to their communities, one that encourages lifelong learning and supports the year-round educational, cultural, and recreational needs of their unique neighborhoods. Library programs and services will be delivered by a highly-trained, customer-focused staff that is fully integrated into the life of the community… Through strong relationships and collaborations with community stakeholders including schools, businesses and merchants, neighborhood groups, non-profits, and others the
15 Previous studies consider a two-mile radius to be a reasonable measure for branch library neighborhoods (Palmer 1981; Sin 2011). According to a report by the Boston City Planning Board (1955, 9), “Each branch library should serve an area within a radius of a mile to a mile and one half, and a minimum population of 25,000 to 50,000.” As seen in Table 3, the average neighborhood branch in the current day serves approximately twenty-five thousand Boston residents.
87 neighborhood branches will continue to occupy their spaces at the heart of Boston’s diverse neighborhoods. (Boston Public Library 2008, 5)
As this vision illustrates, the BPL’s central administration expects neighborhood branches to be
“integrated” in their communities, located in “spaces at the heart of” their “unique neighborhoods,” and engaged in community collaborations. Neighborhood branches are tasked with tailoring services and programs to their unique neighborhoods and partnering with community groups and local organizations, but they have discretion when it comes to how to achieve these objectives.
In addition to serving their neighborhoods, branch librarians and their staff are charged with determining the populations their neighborhood branches serve and meeting the unique needs of those populations. When asked if the central library provided information on the needs of neighborhood branches’ individual communities, branch librarians overwhelmingly responded that they did not. Rather, the central library expects that the branches know their own communities best.
As one branch librarian put it, “[W]e’re the experts on our communities.” Furthermore, in the absence of official service areas, neighborhood branch librarians and staff determine their own services areas. Asked to draw their branch’s approximate service areas, some branch librarians drew small, distinct boundaries along nearby neighborhood streets, and others responded that their service areas encompass neighboring cities and towns. Overall, when it comes to defining their communities, identifying community needs, and developing services and programs to meet those needs, branch librarians and staff are given significant discretion and responsibility. This, in turn, strengthens the connection between neighborhood branches and the neighborhoods in which they are located.
Branch librarians exercise discretion to identify and meet the needs of their neighborhoods, however, they still operate under a public bureaucratic institution that oversees staffing, budgets, marketing, building design, and other organizational elements. Across almost all neighborhood branches, branch librarians cited fixed staff, space, and funding as factors that limited their ability to
88 develop and host programs and do outreach in their communities. The BPL administration provides each neighborhood branch with two thousand dollars per year for programs, which is split evenly across adult and children’s programming. Many library programs,16 however, cost at least two or three hundred dollars per one-time session. Thus, a two thousand dollar programming budget covers approximately eight one-time programs per year. Despite limited funds, the average branch offered over three hundred and seventy-five programs in fiscal year 2019, more than one for every day that it was open. Furthermore, by having to report the number of programs and program attendance to the central administration, which then uses the data to measure neighborhood branch performance, branch librarians and staff are incentivized to regularly hold programs. Figure 11 shows that, on average, programs and program attendance in the neighborhood branches have been increasing over the last fifteen years.
Figure 11 BPL programs and attendance, FY 2004-2019
400 Median neighborhood 7,000 branch programs 6,000 300 5,000
4,000 200 Median neighborhood branch program 3,000 Programs attendance 2,000 100 Program attenance 1,000
0 0 FY FY FY FY FY FY FY FY FY FY FY FY FY FY FY FY 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Source: The Boston Public Library
16 A library program is either a one-time event or one session of a recurring event, and it generally lasts between one and two hours. Most do not require registration, and all are free. Some of them are geared towards a general audience, and others are intended for specific age groups, such as children, teens, or older adults.
89 Given their limited budgets, neighborhood branch librarians and staff have to be creative when it comes to developing “[i]ndividualized neighborhood-based programs to meet community needs” (Boston Public Library 2008, 13). Librarians in the neighborhood branches lead many programs, such as story hours. On occasion, the administration gives neighborhood branches the opportunity to take advantage of block programs17 (oftentimes for children) without having to use their program budgets. In addition, the administration sometimes connects neighborhood branches to public and private organizational partners offering programs. By and large, though, branch librarians and staff end up bringing in many immigrant programs from outside of the branches without the use of program funding. Rather than leading to isomorphism across branches, however, the institutional pressures that neighborhood branches face actually incentivize them to be more creative about programming and to turn to their local neighborhoods for resources.
This combination of discretion, forced resourcefulness, and a community-driven mission has created a system in which neighborhood branches draw heavily on public and community resources.
The limited staffing with which most neighborhood branches must cope, however, can make it difficult for them to go out into their communities to find programs as often as they would like.
Instead, programs tend to come to neighborhood branches, and they can either accept or turn them down. Organizations and individuals approach neighborhood branches either asking or offering to hold programs in the branches. Sometimes these are offered for a cost, but generally they do not cost the neighborhood branches anything. In this system, neighborhood branches do not necessarily have equal access to free community-led programs, though, especially those that are designed to reach immigrants. The result of this bureaucratic system in which branch librarians and
17 Block programs are programs that the BPL makes available for multiple branches. The central administration reaches out to the neighborhood branches and asks which branches want to hold a given program, such as a bilingual children’s sing-a-long. In general, only a limited number of neighborhood branches can take advantage of any given block program. The central BPL has to pay for these programs, but individual branches do not have to do so out of their individual program budgets.
90 staff have great discretion, but limited resources, is a network of neighborhood branches that are uniquely shaped by the neighborhoods in which they are located.
This system, which offers modest supports and relies on limited regulations, raises questions about access to, and the quality of, public and community resources for immigrants across neighborhood branches. What types of services and programs do neighborhood branches offer to immigrants? What are the perceived benefits of these programs for immigrant participants? To what extent are they geographically located such that immigrants have access to them? Finally, how effective are they at actually reaching immigrants? In other words, to what extent are immigrants accessing and taking advantage of these resources? The following section details the various programs offered by neighborhood branches and the perceived benefits of them.18
Immigrant programs and services
Language proficiency
The BPL has offered services that aim to increase English language proficiency among immigrants for over a century, and these services have grown over the last couple of decades, largely through the initiative of the nonprofit City-Wide Friends. As discussed in chapter three, the City-
Wide Friends began offering informal ESL conversation groups at the central library in the 1990s, and these groups spread to the neighborhood branches in the early 2000s through a network of volunteers. Since then, the ESL conversation groups have grown to reach anywhere from thirteen to seventeen neighborhood branches in a given year. In 2014, the BPL also introduced formal, structured ESL classes in two neighborhood branches. Along with these ESL programs, the central
18 Beyond measuring attendance, neighborhood branches generally do not collect feedback on, or evaluate, programs.
91 library and neighborhood branches provide access to ESL materials, the central library coordinates
ESL tutoring, and the BPL’s website provides access to online language learning tools.
The ESL classes, which are run primarily19 by paid employees from the BPL’s Literacy Center, provide structured, ongoing support for people learning English (see program description). The BPL only offers these classes at a couple of neighborhood branches at any given time and rotates them across branches determined to be in need. To date, the BPL has offered them in eight neighborhood branches. These classes are designed to serve participants according to their level of English proficiency, be it beginner, high-beginner, low-intermediate, or intermediate. By offering beginner level classes, the
ESL classes are uniquely able to reach people with elementary English skills who may not yet know enough English to feel comfortable practicing the language through other library programs. Formal English language instruction is the main benefit, but some librarians also recognized that ESL classes serve as a stepping stone for individuals who are trying to access better educational and employment opportunities.
Whereas ESL classes focus on improving English language proficiency for participants, ESL conversation groups tend to have more broadly perceived benefits (see program flyer). They create opportunities for participants Source: The Boston Public Library to practice English and meet others in a relaxed and supportive environment. In contrast to the
19 The one exception is a neighborhood branch that formed a partnership with a local nonprofit that hosts ESL classes in that branch.
92 ESL classes, participants can drop in without signing up or making a commitment, and they can attend multiple groups across branches. The groups are also much more widely available across the neighborhood branches, and some branches even offer up to five groups per week.
Volunteer leaders, many of whom are retired teachers, determine the structure and content of each session, ensuring that no two are alike. The range of topics includes, but is not limited to, current events, city services, United States history, holidays, food, colloquial phrases, and practices from participants’ home countries. For example, one volunteer would bring in various city workers, such as police officers, to help explain their roles and the city services available to community members. Another volunteer led a discussion about the #MeToo movement. At the conversation group I attended, the participants spent two hours discussing the meaning of American proverbs, practicing pronunciation, and working on basic sentence construction. Some groups have developed the practice of bringing in food. One librarian described the benefits of the groups:
“First, it’s just getting more adept at speaking the language. I think comfort level is a big thing. I think connection, both connection to the people they’re in the group with and the instructor and the staff, because they come in everyday and [say], ‘Hi. How are you?’ And so I think it’s a nice way to get grounded in the community.” Regardless of the content, the consensus among librarians is that these conversation groups offer a space in which to practice English, to become more confident speaking English, to build friendships, and to develop a sense of belonging. Additionally, the ESL conversation groups serve as a bridge to other library services, such as circulation materials, programs, and volunteer opportunities.
Political participation
Located at every neighborhood branch of the BPL is an Immigrant Information Corner
(IIC). As Figure 12 shows, they are not necessarily corners, but rather bookshelves and tables
93 stocked with a range of resources provided by UCSIS, the City of Boston, the BPL, and local nonprofit agencies. They tend to have official USCIS citizenship kits that can be checked out, information on free immigration clinics staffed by local nonprofit organizations, flyers with the times and locations of ESL classes and conversation groups, and brochures on the naturalization process. Some even display materials that inform immigrants about their rights and alert them to scams targeted at non-naturalized immigrant populations. Overall, the materials offered in these corners are designed to address the unique needs of immigrants and encourage integration through political participation.
Figure 12 Immigrant Information Corner at a neighborhood branch
These IICs are the product of a formal collaboration between USCIS and the City of Boston developed in 2015 with the understanding that city agencies are particularly important points of contact at which to reach immigrants because of the frequency with which immigrants access them.
The goals of the partnership have been to reach immigrants through a variety of channels, provide
94 informative and accurate materials to immigrants in Boston, educate immigrants about immigration scams, and encourage eligible immigrants to apply for citizenship. This partnership was built on a broad understanding that “immigrant integration is a two-way process that requires not only immigrants becoming fully participating members of our communities, but also requires communities to welcome and provide tools that help new immigrants succeed and contribute to building a thriving, healthy, and innovative Boston” (The Office of the Mayor of the City of Boston and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services 2015). The agreement between USCIS and the City of Boston stressed the rights and responsibilities that come with citizenship while also recognizing that local and federal governments have a responsibility to facilitate the citizenship process for non- naturalized immigrants.
The City of Boston distributed USCIS materials through a variety of channels, such as community centers, a mobile “City Hall To Go” truck, and Boston City TV, but both agencies agreed that “libraries are particularly important venues for immigrants to obtain information on the naturalization process” (The Office of the Mayor of the City of Boston and U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services 2015). At the launch of the IICs, Boston Mayor Martin Walsh said,
“Immigrants interact with the city’s library branches more than any other city agency, which offers us a great opportunity to engage our residents in their neighborhoods. The impact that immigrants have on our city will continue to grow in the years ahead and it is important that we plan for this growth and make sure it reaches everyone” (“Mayor Walsh Announces Office for Immigrant
Advancement and Launches Immigrant Information Corners at All Boston Public Library
Locations” 2016). The IICs were originally going to be distributed across only some of the neighborhood branches, but the City decided to set them up in all twenty-four branches that were part of the BPL at the time. As such, they are the only immigrant service that is offered across each and every BPL branch.
95 As part of the collaboration, some neighborhood branches also started to offer
USCIS information sessions and information hours. The former have been offered sporadically and taken the form of presentations about issues such as the naturalization process and how to identify and avoid immigration scams. The latter are offered monthly at the central branch and five neighborhood branches in immigrant neighborhoods. These drop-in information hours are advertised as opportunities to ask USCIS officers about the naturalization process, how to access forms, and where to find low-cost or free legal assistance (see program description). They provide the added benefit of allowing individuals who may find it difficult to access information and forms online to ask questions in person.
What these information hours cannot provide is information or guidance on individual citizenship applications. Sometimes, people come to these information hours with questions about their specific cases, such as why their applications are taking so long, but USCIS officers are strictly prohibited from providing individual guidance. They can and do, however, help provide information about what one can expect from the timeline for their specific type of application and how to get in touch with a USCIS officer about their specific case. As one immigration officer explained, by being in the neighborhood branches, USCIS helps to make government accessible to the public. Overall, the information hours create a local point of access to a federal government agency for immigrants and allow USCIS to establish a community presence.
96 Not all citizenship services in the branches are provided through government agencies. In fact, some of the more valuable services to be offered in recent years by neighborhood branches in Boston are twelve- week citizenship classes run by volunteers from the local nonprofit organization St. Mark
Community Education Program (SMCEP).
These classes have been offered free of charge20 at the central library and across six neighborhood branches (see program description). The main goal of this program is to help immigrants to pass the citizenship test, and about ninety percent of those who take the class and citizenship test pass on the first or second try. Additionally, there is a social benefit to preparing for this test in a neighborhood branch setting. As one branch librarian recounted, “[J]ust about every week there’s a person coming in, ‘Oh, I took the test, I passed!’ So they are really excited… [T]hey bring their whole family with them, actually, and some of them bring their wife, the kids, the grandmother.” In this sense, the neighborhood branches provide an extra layer of support both before and after individuals take the citizenship test.
Finally, a relatively recent phenomenon to occur across neighborhood branches is the Know
Your Rights information sessions. Whereas these types of programs have been used in the past to help individuals learn about their rights when interacting with police and other law enforcement officers, a new type of program emerged as a consequence of the 2016 presidential election. These new programs began to focus specifically on immigrants’ rights and what immigrants can do to protect themselves when they encounter immigration officials (see program description).
20 Participants have to buy a twenty-five dollar course book.
97 These programs were a direct response to the election of President Donald Trump and his immigration policies. One librarian explained her neighborhood branch’s response to the election:
“We switched the way that we do our citizenship programs from, ‘This is where you would go to get citizenship,’ to ‘This is how you deal with it whenever ICE comes to your door.’” It was not that immigrants asked for this service, but rather librarians and nonprofit organizations perceived that this type of program would be valuable for immigrants and immigrant allies. Another librarian explained,
[T]he hope is that we’re offering services literally to people who are coming in here who have certain needs. I haven’t had anyone specifically come up to me and ask me about ICE or for legal advice. But I figured we do have a lot of immigrants and immigrant families… [S]ometimes you have to offer programs in order to get the interest… [T]hey may not know what’s out there, and they don’t know what to ask for.
A branch librarian at another neighborhood branch described the motivation for the program: “I’m very aware of the precarious situation of immigrants in this country with our sad situation nationally with our president, and so I wanted to offer a Know Your Rights class.” These programs are designed specifically to help immigrant populations, and librarians brought them into their neighborhood branches to meet what they perceived to be growing civil and human rights threats facing non-naturalized immigrants.
Socioeconomic attainment
English language proficiency and citizenship both help with socioeconomic attainment, but the BPL also offers services that more directly help immigrants to secure employment and public
98 benefits. These services come in the form of structured classes and unstructured drop-in assistance.
Most neighborhood branches offer either computer classes or individual assistance with computers, and seven neighborhood branches have offered computer classes for Spanish speakers in recent years.
The bilingual computer classes tend to provide basic assistance with computers for older adults. This ranges from instruction using the keyboard and mouse to setting up and using email. At one neighborhood branch, the branch librarian spoke of how, after helping some older adults to set up email accounts, they came back to the library to tell the librarian how they were grateful to be able to send emails to their grandchildren. Not only do these classes provide basic information on using computers, but they also help immigrants and others to access information about benefits and public resources.
One branch librarian described the branch’s approach to these computer programs: “One would hope they learn basic mouse and [keyboard] learning and feeling comfortable searching up stuff on the Internet, how to express their computer problems… And we focus on things that are local services. So, we tend to definitely highlight City Hall stuff, how to look up your local voting area, things like that. So we put a lot of civic education into it, too.” Another branch librarian explained that participants were excited to learn how to look up medical information. For computer programs run by the nonprofit organization Tech Goes Home (see program description), participants were
99 even given the opportunity to purchase a Chromebook for fifty dollars at the end of a twelve-week program. These computer programs were not limited to immigrants in any way, but they were generally popular with immigrants in a number of neighborhood branches.
In addition to providing help with computers, numerous librarians reported that immigrants frequently ask for help with résumés, applying for jobs, filling out forms, printing, and copying.
Public libraries are uniquely positioned to meet some of these needs because, as one branch librarian put it, “[W]ho do you refer them to to fill out a form?” Immigrants and other individuals come into neighborhood branches asking for just that, and librarians find themselves helping patrons to fill out forms, oftentimes online, for job applications. Additionally, as information about, and access to, government services increasingly moves online, librarians also find themselves helping immigrants to navigate and access government services and benefits, such as health care, schools, and naturalization. In fact, the BPL identified the following core customer services through its
Neighborhood Services Initiative planning process: 1) “City services referrals that connect customers to the broad range of services and programs offered to residents by the City of Boston” and 2) “Community service referrals for a broad spectrum of services including: home-buying, employment skills, college financial aid, ESL and ABE [Adult Basic Education], child care, health, housing assistance, and others” (Boston Public Library 2008, 12). Sometimes this help comes in the form of a referral to another organization, especially if the librarians on duty are busy, but, other times, librarians sit down with patrons and work one-on-one on résumés, job applications, and such.
Observation of this one-on-one help showed how individualized it can be. On a Saturday around lunchtime, a young Spanish-speaking patron walked into a neighborhood branch in an immigrant neighborhood and asked for help applying for a job at a restaurant chain. Fulfilling this request required that the librarian on duty 1) set the patron up with a library card so that he could
100 access the public computer,21 2) find the restaurant’s job posting site on the Internet, 3) identify the specific job in which he was interested, and 4) set him up with an account on a third-party website through which he could fill out and submit the application. Throughout this interaction, the patron spoke mostly Spanish, and the librarian spoke mostly English, but they tried to speak one another’s language when they were able. The librarian would likely have continued to see the patron through the process of filling out the online job application, but the neighborhood branch was closing soon, and the language barrier grew with each step. Instead, the librarian referred the patron to another branch where the staff spoke Spanish.
This type of one-on-one help is more difficult to offer when language becomes a significant barrier, as was the case with this individual applying for a job. At approximately two thirds of neighborhood branches, librarians and staff do not speak the same languages commonly spoken by their local immigrant populations. This inability to speak the languages of local immigrants makes it more difficult for immigrants to receive the specific help they are seeking, and it may even deter some immigrants from coming into the neighborhood branch in the first place. One branch librarian explained how essential the branch’s Haitian-Creole-speaking librarian is: “[A] lot of people kind of rely on him because he speaks their language, so I think he hears more of what the immigrant community specifically is looking for than I do… [T]hey’ll call, they’ll make sure he’s here. They don’t want to come if he’s not here. And I get it if they don’t. They’re not sure of themselves in English.” Still, the above example illustrates how an English-speaking librarian and
Spanish-speaking immigrant cope with the language barrier and how librarians provide one-on-one, on-demand help with employment.
21 I later learned that librarians have the option to give patrons anonymous, temporary access to computers through guest accounts, which allows immigrants to access public computers and Internet even if they who do not want to share identifying information.
101 Job search assistance at public libraries is by no means limited to immigrant populations, but it is very popular among them, especially in low-income neighborhoods. Furthermore, immigrants tend to face unique challenges when applying for jobs. For some, there is a language barrier, which affects both their ability to apply for jobs and to secure employment. Immigrants are also more likely to receive informal work, which can be hard to include on a résumé. Even immigrants who are of higher socioeconomic status have difficulty transferring their skills or credentials from their home countries such that they are employable in the United States. One branch librarian explained how these highly educated immigrants attend ESL conversation groups in the hopes of accessing better employment:
[The conversation group leader] will come out and tell me, “Oh, and this one, he’s a doctor in his country, but here he can’t really get work, and that one was a scientist.” And, I mean, incredible résumés, but here, you know, they’re looking for a place to live, or they’re looking for a job. Yeah, really interesting people that want to learn the language so that they can then get further into what the community… can offer them. It’s a stepping stone.
Librarians are well aware of the frustrations that this population faces trying to access work for which they are overqualified and how the local neighborhood branch can assist.
In addition to providing employment-related assistance, branch librarians find themselves helping immigrants to navigate and access public services on a drop-in basis. This type of assistance is one that does not require much infrastructure, but it does call for time, patience, and a willingness to tackle unfamiliar problems. In a neighborhood branch located in a high-income neighborhood with relatively few immigrants, the branch librarian helped a Spanish-speaking father to enroll his child in high school. She described a process that was time consuming and difficult, yet ultimately effective:
[L]ast year I did intensive one-on-one help with a dad and his son from Venezuela… [H]e was trying to get his son into school here, into high school, so I helped them sit at the computer. It’s more like a one-on-one thing. [I] helped them apply… helped to try and work on the translation because they struggled with their English… then also tried to… refer them to other services that would be more helpful to them, you
102 know, that may be able to help them in Spanish… [I]t worked out. His son is in school here.
In this respect, neighborhood branches provide access to free, non-judgmental help with a broad range of services. None of the help they offer is means-tested or stigmatizing. Furthermore, librarians do so on a drop-in basis, which can really be a help for immigrants whose work schedules and family commitments prevent them from planning ahead.
Overall, there is a general willingness among librarians to at least try to help with whatever need a patron may have, including those related to work, school, and public services. One librarian described this general openness to a broad range of requests: “[W]e’re going to give everybody a good, positive, welcoming experience, put in as much effort as we can, even if the ultimate answer is no, but we want them to know we’ve tried. We’re going to give them options. We’re not going to be the rule by law enforcing people. We’re the people who are going to try to help solve that problem for you.” Oftentimes, librarians may not be formally trained to help with these requests that immigrants bring to the library, but they are willing and equipped to try to help, even if it means researching the services themselves or referring them to other organizations and neighborhood branches.
Social interaction
When asked what participants get out library programs, librarians overwhelmingly responded that they make social connections and, sometimes, even friendships. This is true for the ESL conversation groups, cultural celebrations, bilingual story hours, and a host of other programs that reach immigrants. It can be especially important for recent immigrants who may not know many people and who may be unfamiliar with their neighborhoods. It also is important for immigrants who do not have the opportunity to interact with others through work or school, such as older
103 adults and stay-at-home partners. Furthermore, it can provide bridges within immigrant communities, such as across generations.
ESL conversation groups provide a relaxed environment in which participants get to interact with one another and go through the process of getting to know a new place and new language together. In these informal groups, immigrants “share information vital to a newcomer to Boston: the most inexpensive English lessons, public transportation options, good books for beginning speakers, the location of parks, free concerts, and good clubs, and what to do on weekends. They trade recipes and recommendations, forge alliances, perhaps friendships” (Downs 1999, 1). In some groups, leaders and participants bring in food to share, and one group would go out dancing together. Even after individuals stop attending the conversation groups, the relationships continue for some. A couple of librarians spoke about participants who would come back to visit the neighborhood branch after returning to their native countries and a group leader who visited participants abroad.
In addition to fostering connections among participants, programs help immigrants to learn about their neighborhood branch’s offerings and get to know the staff. One branch librarian described the benefits: “[I]n addition to the practice of English, some of them have made friends.
Some of them have learned about other library services and then become active users in other areas.
I know that they often volunteer when we’re doing events now, even though it’s not necessarily their neighborhood.” The public library can be a foreign concept for some immigrants, depending on where they are from, and they may not be familiar with the resources that public libraries offer or that they do so for free. In these cases, the ESL conversation groups and other library programs help to serve as an introduction to the resources, staff, and norms of the neighborhood branches.
104 As with the ESL conversation groups, writing programs allow immigrants to meet one another and develop relationships through a process of sharing. For example, one neighborhood branch held a short story writing program that allowed participants to share stories about coming to the United States. A few branches have held poetry readings in which participants are encouraged to share poems, either written by them or others, in languages other than English.
Others have offered ongoing creative writing workshops through the nonprofit organization
GrubStreet (see program description). In a bilingual writing workshop called Bodega Signs and Wonders, English and Spanish speakers reminisced about their home countries, shared personal stories, and wrote poems that were then incorporated into the signage of local businesses.
The branch librarian described the benefits of this program:
They are making friends there. It’s become a bit of a community, and some folks are from here and some folks from there. They’re trading stories about growing up here or learning the area, if they’re new… This is also a communal experience where they’re just as much making friends as actually practicing writing because they talk about personal stuff often, presenting things that are, you know, their babies, if you will, for public, for critique, and to improve.
These types of programs serve as opportunities for immigrants to share experiences, knowledge, and creative writing with friends, family, and members of the local community, both immigrants and native-born populations alike.
105 The geographic distribution of immigrant services and programs
The previous section depicts how the BPL network of neighborhood branches as a whole offers access to a variety of valuable resources for immigrants. With the dense distribution of neighborhood branches across Boston’s neighborhoods, geographic proximity to a neighborhood branch is not an issue for most individuals. It is not a given, however, that one’s local neighborhood branch will provide access to any given immigrant program. While some immigrant services, such as the IICs, are offered across all neighborhood branches, no immigrant program is offered uniformly across neighborhood branches. Additionally, with the evolving collection of programs that serve immigrants, no single neighborhood branch is able to offer every immigrant program. Therefore, the question is whether programs are targeted to neighborhood branches in immigrant neighborhoods, especially those that are also marginalized in other ways, be it because of income, race, or other characteristics. Furthermore, do all branches in immigrant neighborhoods provide access to immigrant programs and services, or are some better served than others? To address these questions, this section focuses on the distribution of the seven programs listed in Table 5 that contribute to the four indicators of immigrant integration.
Table 5 BPL programs by immigrant integration indicator
Immigrant Program Program leader integration indicator English language ESL classes BPL Literacy Center staff (primarily) proficiency ESL conversation groups Volunteers (primarily) USCIS information hours USCIS immigration services officers Political participation Citizenship and Local organizations immigration programs Socioeconomic Foreign language/bilingual Local organizations attainment computer programs Foreign language/bilingual Local organizations, groups, and programs for adults volunteers Social interaction Foreign language/bilingual Neighborhood branch staff, local programs for children organizations, groups, and volunteers
106 Each neighborhood branch serves a unique community, but some neighborhood branches are located in areas with a disproportionately high or low need for free immigrant programs and services. For example, the East Boston Branch serves a neighborhood that is fifty percent foreign- born, whereas, just across Boston Harbor, the Charlestown Branch is located in a neighborhood that is just fifteen percent foreign-born. The average branch is located in a neighborhood somewhere in between with twenty-six percent of its population being foreign-born. Variation along other dimensions of neighborhood need, such as English language proficiency, naturalization, poverty, and race, also convey how some neighborhood branches serve areas that are more in need of free immigrant programs and services than others.
Table 6 identifies the average (median) neighborhood characteristics for the branches that have offered each of the seven immigrant programs over the last five years as well as the average neighborhood characteristics for all neighborhood branches across the city. It also identifies the range (minimum and maximum values) in neighborhood characteristics for neighborhood branches offering each of the seven programs. Ideally, the neighborhood branches that offer immigrant programs would, on average, be located in neighborhoods with relatively higher concentrations of immigrants. In other words, the average branch is located in a neighborhood that is approximately twenty-six percent foreign-born, and the branches that offer immigrant programs should be targeted to neighborhoods that are over twenty-six percent foreign-born.
107 Table 6 Neighborhood characteristics of branches offering immigrant programs
Neighborhood characteristics of branches Neighborhood branches offering Foreign- Non- Limited immigrant programs, 2015-2019 Poverty Of color born naturalized English All neighborhood branches (24), median 25.9% 12.5% 14.8% 20.5% 47.1% Minimum 15.4% 7.2% 8.5% 8.1% 23.9% Maximum 50.1% 38.3% 45.0% 40.9% 97.5% Branches offering ESL classes (8), 30.4% 14.8% 17.3% 25.4% 83.9% median Minimum 25.9% 10.5% 13.5% 11.3% 48.4% Maximum 50.1% 38.3% 45.0% 40.9% 97.5% Branches offering ESL conversation 25.8% 12.8% 15.1% 23.7% 45.8% groups (19), median Minimum 20.8% 7.7% 11.0% 8.1% 31.1% Maximum 50.1% 38.3% 45.0% 34.7% 97.5% Branches offering USCIS information 33.4% 16.0% 20.6% 24.6% 92.6% hours (5), median Minimum 31.6% 12.8% 15.7% 20.3% 67.3% Maximum 50.1% 38.3% 45.0% 34.7% 97.5% Branches offering NPO citizenship & 30.4% 13.9% 16.1% 21.9% 71.4% immigration programs (12), median Minimum 16.4% 8.2% 10.0% 10.3% 25.3% Maximum 50.1% 38.3% 45.0% 34.7% 97.5% Branches offering foreign language/ 32.9% 14.1% 19.8% 22.7% 76.0% bilingual computer programs (7), median Minimum 24.5% 8.5% 14.6% 10.3% 45.8% Maximum 50.1% 38.3% 45.0% 34.2% 92.6% Branches offering foreign language/ bilingual adult (non-computer) programs 32.2% 13.7% 19.0% 24.6% 75.5% (5), median Minimum 25.9% 10.5% 16.0% 11.3% 54.0% Maximum 50.1% 38.3% 45.0% 34.2% 96.8% Branches offering foreign language/ 25.6% 11.4% 14.8% 19.1% 49.9% bilingual children’s programs (14), median Minimum 15.4% 7.2% 9.7% 10.3% 25.3% Maximum 50.1% 38.3% 45.0% 34.7% 97.5% Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, 2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates and the Boston Public Library Table 6 shows that some programs are better than others at reaching immigrant neighborhoods in need. Across all seven programs, USCIS information hours are most likely to be located in neighborhoods with a high concentration of individuals who are immigrants, are non-
108 naturalized, have limited English proficiency, live below the poverty level, and are of color.
Moreover, all neighborhood branches hosting USCIS information hours are located in neighborhoods that are at least thirty percent foreign-born and two thirds of color, well above the overall neighborhood averages. In regards to naturalization rate, English language proficiency, and poverty level, all branches offering USCIS information hours are either at, or slightly above, the overall neighborhood averages.
After USCIS information hours, ESL classes and foreign language and bilingual programs for adults, both those that help individuals with computers as well as those that are not related to technology, are best at reaching immigrant populations in need. All branches that have hosted ESL classes in recent years are located in neighborhoods with populations that are at least a quarter foreign-born. With the exception of the one neighborhood branch that hosts an ESL class run by a nonprofit organization, all are located in neighborhoods with poverty rates that are greater than twenty percent. Finally, with one exception, all are located in neighborhoods that are predominantly of color and in which over fifteen percent of the population has limited English proficiency. One neighborhood branch, in particular, East Boston, has been able to host ESL classes every year since
2014, and it is located in a neighborhood that is home to Boston’s highest concentration of immigrants. On average, neighborhood branches offering these three types of programs serve areas with higher levels of need; however, some are located in neighborhoods with, for example, low poverty rates or small concentrations of non-naturalized immigrants.
The citizenship and immigration programs provided by nonprofit organizations are located across a more mixed group of neighborhood branches. Half are in neighborhoods with a high concentration of immigrants (over thirty percent). In five out of twelve neighborhoods that offer these programs, at least fifteen percent of the population is non-naturalized (compared to 12.5 percent for the average neighborhood). At the same time, some neighborhood branches that have
109 hosted these citizenship and immigration programs are in neighborhoods that are predominantly white and have high median incomes and comparatively small foreign-born populations. Compared to the USCIS information hours, which are all located in immigrant neighborhoods with greater needs, only some of these nonprofit citizenship and immigrant rights programs are targeted to branches in such neighborhoods.
Finally, ESL conversation groups along with foreign language and bilingual children’s programs are no more likely to be located in neighborhood branches in immigrant neighborhoods than they are to be located in neighborhoods with relatively few immigrants. They are, however, more widely available than every other type of immigrant program. For ESL conversation groups, seven out of nineteen are in neighborhoods with poverty rates below fifteen percent, and nine are in neighborhoods with median household incomes above seventy thousand dollars. Furthermore, these groups are less likely to have been offered in neighborhoods that are predominantly of color.
In fact, branches in neighborhoods of color have had a hard time securing volunteers, despite the demonstrated need of their neighborhoods.
Two neighborhood branches serving neighborhoods that have a high concentration of immigrants and people of color have been unable to attract an ESL volunteer in recent years, despite trying to find one. A branch librarian from one of these branches explained: “Well there’s definitely a need for the ESL conversation groups. We could never get a conversation leader here in the tradition because it has to go through Literacy Services at the Copley Library. They weren’t able to secure us a volunteer. They still haven’t really given us any volunteers.” A branch librarian at the other neighborhood branch described a similar situation, “It’s not because we don’t want to [host an
ESL conversation group]. We have certainly asked many times over the years [for a volunteer], and they keep on saying, ‘Yep, we will absolutely put you on our list of places where,’ but the volunteer who is running the conversation group gets to choose where they’re doing things, and we are not
110 necessarily the most conducive of spaces for it.” A couple of other branches located in majority- minority neighborhoods might have been in a similar predicament, too, had they not turned to their own staff to run ESL conversation groups. As seen with the ESL conversation groups, a consequence of having a program that relies almost entirely on volunteers is that a decentralized volunteer population determines the distribution of conversation groups. The Literacy Center tries to match volunteers to neighborhood branches with ESL needs, but volunteers make the ultimate decision. The result is a system in which some neighborhood branches have up to five groups per week, and others that need and have requested volunteers receive none.
Whereas Table 6 shows how well immigrant programs have been targeted to branches located in immigrant neighborhoods with greater needs, Table 7 looks at how well each individual neighborhood branch is served. It identifies which neighborhood branches have offered specific types of programs over the last five years.22 On average, the neighborhood branches that are located in neighborhoods with higher concentrations of immigrants have offered a broader range of immigrant programs, but this is not uniformly the case. Among the neighborhood branches in the top five immigrant neighborhoods, three (East Boston, Codman Square, and Fields Corner) provide access to at least five different types of immigrant programs. In fact, the neighborhood branch located in East Boston not only serves the highest concentration of immigrants in the city, but it also provides the broadest range of immigrant programs (all seven types). In contrast to these three branches, two neighborhood branches (Uphams Corner and Honan-Allston) that are located in immigrant neighborhoods only provide one type of immigrant program.23 Thus, immigrant programs tend to be located in immigrant neighborhoods, but they are not evenly distributed across
22 For bilingual and foreign language programs, only neighborhood branches that have offered recurring programs four or more times over the last five years are included. Citizenship and Know Your Rights programs are less common, and these are counted even if a neighborhood branch only offered the program once sometime during the last five years. 23 Though these neighborhood branches only provide one of the seven identified immigrant programs, they still provide other programs that reach immigrants.
111 them, and a couple of neighborhood branches appear to be under-resourced when it comes to immigrant programs.
Table 7 Concentration of immigrant programs within neighborhood branches
ours
h
roups ilingual ilingual ilingual g
b b b ypes evel l t
Neighborhood programs rograms
p Latino
rograms branch rograms - p p anguage/ anguage/ anguage/ born l l l overty overty nformation - i rogram itizenship & itizenship p rograms lasses onversation c FY2019 p p c c omputer omputer hildren’s dult dult mmigration Foreign Below non White, Total (rank) ESL ESL USCIS NPO i Foreign c Foreign a Foreign c Total East Boston 50% 21% 33% 6 7 Uphams Corner 39% 25% 23% 23 1 Fields Corner 38% 20% 23% 17 5 Honan-Allston 34% 27% 54% 5 1 Codman Square 33% 26% 7% 7 5 Egleston Square 32% 34% 18% 16 4 Mattapan 32% 25% 3% 9 5 Grove Hall 32% 35% 3% 1 5 Hyde Park 29% 11% 24% 2 6 Dudley 26% 31% 8% -- 2 Connolly 26% 25% 46% 8 6 Parker Hill 26% 41% 52% -- 1 Adams Street 26% 11% 58% 10 1 West End 26% 15% 65% 3 1 Brighton 25% 23% 54% 21 3 Roslindale 25% 10% 58% 14 4 South End 24% 24% 39% 11 2 Lower Mills 23% 11% 71% 20 2 West Roxbury 22% 8% 68% 19 1 Faneuil 22% 12% 69% 13 2 Jamaica Plain 21% 12% 64% 4 2 North End 20% 15% 76% 18 0 South Boston 16% 17% 75% 15 3 Charlestown 15% 18% 73% 12 1 Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, 2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates and the Boston Public Library It is difficult to attribute a cause as to why branches in some immigrant neighborhoods offer a narrow range of immigrant programs whereas some branches in neighborhoods with a lower
112 concentration of immigrants offer a greater range. As shown in Table 7, no obvious neighborhood characteristic, such as the concentration of immigrants, people of color, and those living below the poverty level, can explain across the board why neighborhood branches offer a broad range of programs. One might predict that neighborhood branches that offer more programs, in general, would also offer more immigrant programs. This does not seem to be the case either given that some neighborhood branches offering fewer programs than other branches (i.e., they have a lower rank) still manage to provide a broad range of immigrant programs. Instead, whether a neighborhood branch offers a specific type of immigrant program depends on a combination of neighborhood characteristics, the type of program being offered, who or what organization is offering the program, the discretion of the branch librarian and staff, the culture of the neighborhood branch, and the competing needs of other local populations, such as older adults.
How neighborhoods shape different types of programs is the subject of chapter five.
Beyond geographic access: How immigrants are accessing immigrant programs
With a couple of exceptions, immigrant programs tend to be located in branches that serve neighborhoods with greater needs, and neighborhood branches in immigrant neighborhoods tend to have at least a modest range of immigrant programs. This suggests that immigrants are relatively well served when it comes to geographic access to resources. The question still remains, though, as to whether neighborhood branches are successfully connecting immigrants to resources through these programs. In other words, are immigrants, especially those who experience marginalization along multiple dimensions, such as income and race, accessing the resources that are being provided across neighborhood branches?
Some programs are better than others at reaching immigrant populations. As Table 8 shows, it is not always the case that programs designed for immigrants are best at reaching immigrants.
113 Some programs, such as the ESL conversation groups and classes, are both designed for immigrants and relatively successful at reaching them. Other programs are designed for broader audiences, and, among these, some are more effective at reaching immigrants than others. Where concerns about access arise most is for programs that are designed specifically for immigrants, but which have very limited reach when it comes to actually bringing immigrant populations into the neighborhood branches. As it turns out, some of the programs that are best targeted to neighborhoods with demonstrated needs, such as those that facilitate political integration, are actually least able to reach their intended immigrant audiences.
Table 8 Immigrant access to programs
Programs that connect Programs that reach few immigrants with resources immigrants Programs designed ESL classes, ESL conversation USCIS information hours, Know for immigrants groups, foreign language/bilingual Your Rights sessions, citizenship computer classes, citizenship classes (in some locations) classes (in some locations) Programs designed Bilingual writing workshops, arts Bilingual story time for immigrants and and crafts programs, tax non-immigrants preparation, cultural celebrations
Bringing immigrants into neighborhood branches: Programs that connect immigrants with resources
Many neighborhood branches have been successful at connecting immigrants to resources.
As would be expected, the ESL conversation groups, ESL classes, and bilingual computer programs, which are all designed for immigrants, are very popular with immigrants. In fact, many branch librarians reported that immigrants ask for these very types of programs. While these programs are generally effective at reaching immigrants, some are better than others at reaching immigrants with greater socioeconomic needs. In addition to these more traditional immigrant programs, there is a range of practical and creative programs that are well attended by immigrants, even though they are not necessarily designed specifically for immigrants.
114 The foreign language computer classes and ESL classes are two programs that are successful at reaching immigrant populations along multiple dimensions. They tend to be located in immigrant neighborhoods with greater socioeconomic needs, and they are well attended by immigrants. For the computer classes, part of their success may be a function of their target audience, which tends to be older adults who also have flexible schedules. Both programs, however, address needs that immigrants frequently voice: English language instruction and help with computers and online forms.
Like the ESL classes, branch librarians at most neighborhood branches reported that the
ESL conversation groups have been very popular with immigrants. A couple of branches have stopped offering them in recent years because of low attendance, but these are the exceptions.
Where the conversation groups may fall short compared to the ESL classes and computer programs is in their ability to reach a broad range of immigrants, especially those who are most in need. Some librarians described participants of the conversation groups as individuals who may only temporarily be in the country, such as foreign exchange students or the partners of students and professionals, and these groups are more likely to be from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Many branch librarians have noticed that conversation group participants tend to be younger and from Asian countries, even though Asian immigrants represent less than a quarter of Boston’s immigrant population. These conversation groups still provide an important service, but they may be less effective at reaching local immigrants with socioeconomic disadvantage who could benefit economically from greater English language proficiency.
One reason they have a more limited reach is because the ESL conversation groups require basic proficiency in English. This means that, by design, they overlook those who are most in need of English language instruction. One librarian spoke of how a volunteer would become frustrated when people would attend who did not have a minimum level of comfort speaking English because
115 the conversation group relies on participants having a basic understanding of English. This lack of
English language skills ultimately contributed to the volunteer’s decision to stop leading the conversation groups.
Another reason for their more limited reach is that the majority of conversation groups are held on weekdays between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. Only a few branches offer conversation groups after 6:00 p.m. or on Saturdays, which would be more convenient for working immigrants. This is partially because neighborhood branches are only open one night per week, and their community rooms tend to be in high demand during those times. Even an evening class on a weekday, however, can still be difficult for immigrants to attend. As one branch librarian noted about participants, “[S]ome, you know, [tend] to be people who don’t work during the day. I mean our Monday class is at 6:30, but, for a lot of people, you know, they may not get off work until 7, or they have families. So, I think the folks we are seeing may not always be reflective of who our community is, but rather, you know, people who have the time at that time of day.” More than that is the fact that volunteers have a great deal of discretion when it comes to when and where they volunteer. Librarians frequently cited volunteer availability as one of the main factors for determining when the conversation groups were held.
Aside from the more typical immigrant programs, many librarians in immigrant neighborhoods referenced programs that were not necessarily targeted at immigrants, but which successfully drew in immigrant patrons. Some of these are programs held in English, and some are bilingual programs. They include play groups for toddlers and their parents, help with tax preparation, and programs that provide opportunities for creative expression. For example, a few neighborhood branches host sewing, quilting, and cooking programs, which are popular with immigrants, even though they are not targeted to immigrants. Others offer creative writing workshops and opportunities to share written work. The branch librarian who started a sewing
116 program described how it reaches immigrants and bridges cultures: “[I]t’s just a reflection of the neighborhood. You know, there are people from all over the world in there. And some of them don’t speak English very well… but, you know, sewing seems to be a language of its own…
Everybody knows somebody that sews.” In addition to offering a cultural bridge that is not dependent on English language proficiency, the branch librarian who hosts the sewing class surmised that this program was popular among immigrants because it was not specifically targeted to immigrants: “I think the fact that we don’t peg it as an immigrant program is well received because the patrons won’t feel like they’re singled out. They might not be comfortable with that.”
These programs illustrate one of the important ways that public libraries reach community members, irrespective of whether they are immigrants or not. Public libraries are places that provide practical help with things like children’s development and taxes as well as recreational outlets for creative expression. Just as native-born patrons enjoy using public libraries for recreational purposes unrelated to school or work, so too do immigrants.
Looking for immigrant participants: Programs that reach few immigrants
Looking at the programmatic offerings for children across neighborhood branches, one might think that the BPL provides a multitude of programs that welcome and serve immigrant children, but not all of these programs reach immigrant children, or even the children of immigrants.
Children can attend various programs that incorporate diverse cultures and languages and have titles such as ABC Spanish in Motion, Horas de Bebés: Spanish-Language Playgroup for Babies,
Vietnamese Bilingual Story Hour, Fun with French, and Chinese Stories. At one bilingual story hour, the children’s librarian read to three- and four-year-old children in English and Spanish, sang a song in both languages with the children, and guided them in an arts and craft project, which they later took home. Parents, grandparents, and nannies accompanied a racially diverse group of
117 children to this program, but only one child appeared to understand Spanish, and all of the children spoke English. Among the program participants, it was some of the nannies who seemed most likely to be foreign-born.
On some occasions, these programs may reach children who are immigrants or the children of immigrants, but, more often than not, these programs serve either English-speaking children or children who are being raised bilingual by native-born families. Even in immigrant neighborhoods, librarians found that these bilingual programs often reach non-immigrant children. A branch librarian described the participants at her neighborhood branch’s bilingual story hour:
It could be parents. It could be a lot of nannies now, yeah. I would say, in the last four or five years, probably a lot of nannies, yeah. That wouldn’t say that we’re not going to get any other groups… So, sometimes the children are, you know, Latino, but oftentimes the children are not Latino. They’re Anglo or African American, or, it would be a mix of people.
In some neighborhood branches located in higher income areas with few immigrants, it was common to hear branch librarians refer to nannies from Spanish-speaking countries who would bring native-born children to children’s programs at their branches. As one branch librarian observed, “The nannies, that’s predominantly the immigrant population we see here.”
Branch librarians in higher income neighborhoods recognize that parents want their children to be raised bilingual. This influences whom parents hire as nannies and what types of programs they prefer for their children to attend. For example, one branch librarian described the impetus for her neighborhood branch’s bilingual story hour: “[W]e do have quite a few kids that are children that are being nannied, that are being encouraged to speak, to be bilingual, trilingual, quadrilingual, you know. Like the parents we have may… speak a language. The nanny speaks a language. So there was always an encouragement to speak another language.” Another branch librarian referenced a similar reason for holding bilingual children’s programs: “I think folks these days are more aware of just how important it is to be able to speak multiple languages. I think I read an article from the
118 BBC saying that monolinguism is going to be the new illiteracy of our century.” These bilingual children’s programs serve predominantly non-immigrant children because they are fulfilling a need expressed by non-immigrant parents. Almost by accident, they still happen to reach an immigrant audience, just an unintended one: nannies.
Where a misalignment between an intended program audience and program participants is most apparent is with programs that facilitate political integration, especially those run by USCIS.
Sometimes, due to low attendance, it seems that the USCIS information hours are better at creating a community presence than they are at connecting immigrants to information. With the exception of the main Copley Branch, which holds information hours twice as often and fields approximately forty percent of monthly inquiries, immigrants only attend these sessions sporadically. As one librarian reflected, “[T]hat hasn’t been a successful program, unfortunately… [U]sually they don’t really have more than one person in the three hours that they’re here.” Sometimes neighborhood branches may get no visitors over a three-hour window. It is unclear if this is due to a lack of demand for citizenship information, fear among non-naturalized immigrants of accessing a federal government agency that oversees immigration, fear of doing so in a library setting, or something else.
The immigration officers who work in the neighborhood branches volunteer to do so as part of their jobs, and, upon being approached, they come across as warm and non-threatening. Yet, one immigration officer acknowledged that some people are genuinely afraid of immigration officers because they do not know if they have arresting powers (they do not). Another officer explained that she tries to make people feel more comfortable by not asking any personal information, by telling them that nothing they say will go into their personal files, and by explaining that they are not
ICE. Finally, one officer said she tries not to use “USCIS” and other bureaucratic terms when talking with immigrants because these terms may be intimidating. There is a general awareness
119 among the officers of the fear that the immigration process and government agencies elicit for some immigrants, and they attempt to alleviate these fears as they each see fit.
This tangible fear of immigration officers and USCIS has led some neighborhood branches to either question USCIS’s presence in their neighborhood branches or to opt out of having USCIS host information hours in the first place. One branch librarian explained, “[T]hat is not something that we have opted to offer… the reason being is that there is some concern about, you know,
USCIS, especially over the past several years, and their ties to Immigration [and] Customs
Enforcement. So we’re not comfortable, you know, inviting them in and having them here because we don’t want to drive our community members away.” At one point during the summer of 2018, news broke that USCIS coordinated with ICE to detain an undocumented immigrant at a meeting with an immigration officer at USCIS (Flynn 2018). Branch librarians became sufficiently concerned upon learning this that they considered withdrawing from the program altogether.
The neighborhood branches ultimately did not withdraw from the partnership with USCIS, but this incident led to a serious conversation between the BPL administration, the neighborhood branches, and USCIS clarifying the role of USCIS. One branch librarian described how, at this meeting, USCIS was clear to distinguish itself from ICE as the “good guys” and assured library staff that they were not trying to deport immigrants. Even if USCIS officers pose no threat to non- naturalized immigrants, though, fear of them may have the same effect of deterring immigrants from taking advantage of their services.
This difficulty reaching immigrant populations is not limited to programs led by federal immigration officers. Know Your Rights programs have fared even worse. Despite the fact that
Know Your Rights programs were designed to meet a potentially growing need among non- naturalized immigrant populations, librarians reported almost uniformly across the neighborhood branches that offered these that the programs were either not attended, or they were attended by
120 service professionals and allies of non-naturalized immigrants.24 They attributed this lack of participation to fear among immigrants of identifying themselves as non-naturalized or even undocumented. One librarian explained,
[W]hen I did have the PAIR [Know Your Rights] workshops,… I don’t think we got any immigrants at it. I think they were afraid to show up because it was after Trump was president. We had one guy who came whose girlfriend was not legal. So, you know, he was coming on her behalf, but she was nowhere in sight. And then we had some students from Simmons College who came, who kind of were just interested in the topic and I think other people who were friends with immigrants kind of thing. But… nobody came. I think they were scared.
The one exception was at a neighborhood branch that intentionally coordinated its Know Your
Rights program with a partner organization that ran ESL classes:
I’m very aware of the precarious situation of immigrants in this country with our sad situation nationally with our president, and so I wanted to offer a Know Your Rights class… But, what I had heard was that… they weren’t getting a very good turnout. And part of it was that I think people were scared to come to anything not knowing what it was. And so… the idea I had was to partner with the ESL classes nearby because there’s a situation where there’s a relationship and trust where, if your teacher says, ‘We can go do this,’ then it’s more likely to happen… I think we had back-to-back… Know Your Rights class[es] here in our larger room in Spanish first and then English… [I]t was a big partnership just to try to make that information available to people. And I think it worked great.
Across neighborhood branches, librarians surmised that immigrants were not attending these types of events because they were afraid to identify themselves as immigrants in an increasingly anti- immigrant climate, and some immigrants may not trust libraries enough to attend these types of programs. Furthermore, a librarian suggested that the phrasing, “know your rights,” may be confusing and uninformative. Thus, Know Your Rights programs are an example of a service that libraries provide for immigrants, but which have been of limited value in most cases given their inability to actually reach immigrant populations.
Finally, citizenship classes run by SMCEP have been very successful at some neighborhood branches, but they have also had difficulty attracting immigrant populations at others. The reason
24 This was confirmed by my own experience attending one of these programs. I was the only person to show up.
121 for lower attendance levels at some neighborhood branches could be anything from a lack of need to a fear of accessing immigration services in the library. A branch librarian in one of these neighborhood branches speculated, “Well, granted, people who are immigrants may be citizens, you know, and maybe it could be that they don’t need it. It could be that they don’t trust the library enough to sort of reveal that need. I don’t know what it was. They only had four people.” In regards to lack of need, it is true that citizenship classes are only valuable to a subset of the immigrant population. Those who are naturalized do not need them, and the classes generally do not serve those who have been in the country less than five years (three if married to a United States citizen), the period of time immigrants must wait to take the citizenship test after receiving a
Permanent Resident Card. Yet, the program was very popular at some neighborhood branches, which the SMCEP director attributed to strong connections with local organizations. It may be that there is a fear among immigrants of accessing immigration-related services, and local organizations are able to help alleviate this fear as a result of the trust and relationships they have built with immigrant communities over the years.
Conclusion
The programs and services at neighborhood library branches in Boston demonstrate the range of resources that one type of local organization can provide for immigrants. These programs and services have the potential to facilitate immigrant integration along four key dimensions: English language proficiency, political participation, socioeconomic attainment, and social interaction. One might assume that, because all Boston residents have geographic access to neighborhood branches, all immigrants living in the city have access to immigrant programs and services provided through neighborhood branches. This would be in line with previous studies that equate geographic proximity with access (Allard 2008; Donnelly 2014; Joassart-Marcelli 2013). Even though there are
122 some shared characteristics that span all neighborhood branches, the resources available for immigrants in each branch vary greatly, and one cannot assume that access to a neighborhood branch equates to access to immigrant services and programs. In fact, the findings from this chapter show that immigrant programs are not necessarily located in neighborhoods with the greatest needs.
Furthermore, even when programs are targeted to neighborhood branches that serve high concentrations of immigrants, some branches with needs still remain under-resourced. These findings add another dimension, the variation of resources, to how scholars should think about access to organizational resources.
Geographic access to a neighborhood branch with immigrant resources is key, but it is not a sufficient measure of access in and of itself. After all, access to resources is most valuable if individuals actually take advantage of those resources. Some immigrants face general barriers to using public libraries, such as unfamiliarity with the public library as a concept or fear of government agencies (Burke 2008a; 2008b; Davis 2009; Koontz and Jue 2008). As one branch librarian explained, “I do know that some people… feel that the government is tracking them or knows too much, and I don’t think they realize that librarians try to, you know, protect them as much as we can.” In fact, a right to privacy and confidential use of library materials, regardless of national origin or any other characteristics, is part of the Library Bill of Rights.
This does not explain, however, why immigrants are avoiding some programs, but not others. For example, programs that provide valuable resources for immigrants and are located in immigrant neighborhoods, such as USCIS information hours, remain largely underutilized even though immigrants still patronize the branches that offer them. One could say that the option to access the programs is a resource in and of itself, but the fact that immigrants are not accessing them to the same extent that they are accessing other library services suggests that there are non- geographic barriers that should be addressed. Identifying access to organizational resources should
123 take into account geographic proximity, the range and quality of resources available, and the ability of local organizations to connect target audiences to those resources.
124 Chapter Five | The community is the collection: How neighborhoods shape the distribution of resources across neighborhood library branches
Introduction
Neighborhood library branches act like community-based organizations in many respects.
They strive to meet the needs of their local communities. They develop collections that reflect the interests and languages of those who live nearby. Their walls display art and murals that are either created by local artists or pay homage to local cultures and histories. Like traditional third places, they welcome everyone, facilitate social exchanges, and recognize as “regulars” those who come back frequently. At the same time, neighborhood branches exist within public bureaucracies, in this case, the BPL. They are subject to strict hiring practices, employees are unionized, budgets are relatively fixed, and there are rules about the types of flyers and signs they may use. Despite these competing forces—the community and the bureaucracy—neighborhood branches remain more community-based than they are bureaucratic.
Branch librarians and staff at neighborhood branches have a great deal of discretion to create programs and develop organizational partnerships. They are also trusted and encouraged to determine their service areas and the needs of their respective neighborhoods. This discretion benefits neighborhood branches insomuch as they are able to tailor programs to the specific needs of their neighborhoods. At the same time, this discretion arises out of necessitated resourcefulness.
As detailed in the previous chapter, the BPL gives each neighborhood branch an annual budget for community programming of two thousand dollars while also incentivizing branches to hold hundreds of programs per year. Neighborhood branches do so by routinely creating their own programs and bringing in outside partners to host programs. As a result of the discretion they maintain, the resourcefulness they have learned to practice, and their community-driven mission,
125 branch librarians and their staffs have learned to turn to their communities when it comes to developing services and programs.
Unlike organizations that adhere to rigid bureaucratic rules and procedures, neighborhood branches respond to their local communities, and the neighborhoods in which they are located shape the services and programs they offer. This occurs through four main mechanisms. First, community members ask for help, services, programs, and referrals on a daily basis. Second, community members ask to volunteer in neighborhood branches, thereby providing services that they deem to be in need while benefiting from the experience of volunteering. Third, community members approach neighborhood branches wanting to share their cultural practices with the whole community. They are not asking for services, nor are they offering to help others; rather, they are asking to share their experiences with others as equals. Fourth, organizations offer neighborhood branches programs in return for access to a valuable community resource: free space. Through each of these processes, neighborhoods shape the offerings of neighborhood branches and help to explain the diverse landscape of programs and services detailed in the previous chapter.
Expressed needs of the community
Public libraries are somewhat unique among organizations in that, while they have a repertoire of standard services, the services they end up providing to patrons are broad, unpredictable, and constantly evolving on a daily basis. Librarians are trained to answer reference questions, develop collections and programs, and do outreach, but they take it upon themselves to try to help individuals with almost any type of request, even if it is unrelated to their training. For example, as information about, and applications for, government benefits and services move online, public libraries are stepping in as brick and mortar locations at which to access in-person help with these online public services. Thus, as constantly evolving repositories for information, public
126 libraries adapt to provide the information and services asked of them by patrons, including immigrants.
With limited time and staff, librarians tend to rely on these requests for information and services when determining the needs of their communities. When asked how they learn about the needs of immigrants in their communities, most branch librarians described a process of learning through informal in-person interactions with people who come into the neighborhood branches. A few also spoke about learning from people out in the community, information passed along by local organizations, and news and social media sites, but, by and large, this process of determining community needs is shaped through in-person encounters and observation within the neighborhood branches. Furthermore, neighborhood branches rarely solicit formal community feedback and, when they do, it is related to either specific programs or larger initiatives, such as branch renovations. A librarian described the process of learning about community needs through interactions and observations in the neighborhood branch:
[W]e haven’t done any formal surveys or anything, but just by listening to what people need and forming relationships with people that come in frequently and learning… [S]ome of it you can just observe because you see, “Oh, there’s five people in here every day on or using our computers, and they seem to be, you know, all looking for jobs.” You can just sort of observe. And then some people actually ask you for the help or ask about ESL or ask about books, you know, that we have to learn English… like the Pimsleur CDs or stuff like that. So I guess it’s both just observing and also people directly asking you.
This responsive system allows for neighborhood branches to develop and adapt programs and services that meet the current and evolving needs of immigrants in their communities.
Even though there may be a shared need among immigrants for specific services, the on- demand system is still better able to fulfill those needs in various cases. One librarian explained how the neighborhood branch tried to offer drop-in hours for help with résumés, but these were largely unsuccessful because people could not necessarily plan ahead for when they needed a résumé. Some individuals even come in looking for help hours before the résumé is due. A librarian at another
127 neighborhood branch echoed the same observation: “[W]ith many different programs or many different activities, there’s often great interest in them, but, when I try to set up official times, they don’t show up. And there can be many reasons for that, whether it’s personally, professionally, or emotionally. They don’t feel like there’s a spotlight on them.” With needs and schedules that can change daily, at least a subset of library services are most effective at reaching immigrants if librarians provide them on-demand.
In regard to the types of services requested, some are individualized and can only be met through one-on-one help. These requests vary greatly and are limited only by what immigrants feel comfortable asking for help with. For example, in addition to the more common requests for help with government forms, computers, copying, and employment, librarians may help immigrants with housing, health care, and their children’s school. As the branch librarian at one neighborhood branch explained, “[P]eople come in … We actually do whatever we can, help them write a letter.
You know, we’ve had a lot of people that need to write something back to their kid’s school…
They’re applying to nursing school… They’ll email me a letter to make sure the English is okay.” In such cases, librarians serve a supportive role that might otherwise be filled by a friend or family member who speaks English, but not all immigrants have access to native English speakers.
When the service needed is beyond the scope of what the library can provide, this help takes the form of a referral to an outside organization. This may be a nonprofit organization with staff members who speak the patron’s language, or it could even be the one local business that has a fax machine. A branch librarian described this one-on-one referral process:
I had a woman who came in and spoke Arabic, and she did speak English, a fair amount of English, and we talked… [M]aybe she was a house cleaner… And she came in and she needed support. And so I called there to see if there was somebody who spoke Arabic who could connect her with some other programs. And we finally got somebody who was able to do a referral, but she actually needed a referral for financial reasons. You know, she felt like she was struggling to make enough money to pay rent and eat and get by. And she wanted to talk to somebody who
128 spoke Arabic, who might… just provide some support. So, we function sort of as a middleman almost in that sort of case.
In a case such as this one, an immigrant may experience multiple barriers—limited English proficiency and unfamiliarity with local organizations and types of available assistance—to accessing services, and librarians help to address one, if not more, of those barriers. Even just knowledge of which neighborhood branches, local organizations, and public agencies have staff members who speak a patron’s native language can bring immigrants one step closer to accessing necessary services.
Other times, librarians are able to develop programs in response to collectively requested services, such as ESL, computer learning, and citizenship. A librarian described how her branch adapted after learning about immigrant needs “through firsthand interactions” with patrons as well as through relationships with local organizations:
You know, we the librarians and the library assistants listen to what people are asking for and, you know, we’ll talk about that, and we’ll say like, “You know, I’m getting a lot of...” For example, when I was at [another neighborhood branch], and we noticed that a lot of people were coming in and asking about, you know, help with applying to become a citizen… we identified that that was an area of service that we should be looking into. Also, too, by working with organizations that are focused on providing services to the immigrant communities. You know, we talk to them about what they need from the library or what they’d like to see from the library.
For the most part, neighborhood branches learn about the needs of immigrants, and patrons in general, through these processes of interaction and observation within their neighborhood branches, and they either meet those needs on the spot or develop programs to do so. The outcome is immigrant services and programs that are often responsive to, and reflective of, the immigrants who come into the neighborhood branches and express their needs.
This responsive system allows neighborhood branches to tailor their services on a daily basis to whomever happens to come in with requests as well as to adapt their programs and services in the longer term to the collective neighborhood needs that they observe. It results in a diversity of
129 immigrant services and programs that are provided over time and across neighborhoods. For example, after the staff at one neighborhood branch learned that their Spanish-speaking patrons were looking for jobs, they kept on hand a list of employers willing to hire Spanish-speaking job applicants. In another neighborhood branch, the branch librarian started hosting a Mandarin conversation group for Cantonese speakers after patrons expressed their interest in such a program.
One neighborhood branch started an ESL conversation group and tailored it to a group of
“Spanish-speaking computer tech guys who were working at [a local] Bank.” According to the branch librarian, “[T]heir specific needs [were] they wanted to learn to speak with American slang or
American words in banking.” After some months, these men stopped attending the conversation group, and the group eventually dissolved. In many cases, these are services and programs that would not have come about had patrons not requested or demonstrated a need for them.
On one hand, this system is effective because it results in services that are tailored to the diverse and changing needs of branches’ neighborhoods. On the other hand, it only functions if immigrants know to come into their local neighborhood branch and feel comfortable asking for what they need. While every neighborhood branch has at least a small immigrant population that lives and works within its community, some receive significantly more requests from immigrants than others. As one branch librarian pointed out, immigrants may not feel comfortable asking for specific services: “I think that the fact that they might feel like an outsider, they really don’t ask that much for something specific.”
In addition to variation across immigrant groups and neighborhood branches, the willingness of immigrants to request services, or even identify as immigrants, can change over time.
Some branch librarians found this to be the case after the election of President Donald Trump and the implementation of anti-immigrant policies by his administration. Surprisingly, this worked in both directions, sometimes even within the same neighborhood branch. When asked about how the
130 election of Trump affected usage of the neighborhood branch by immigrants, a branch librarian responded:
In some areas it’s increased the population coming in because people are curious. They want to know. And a lot of people, they’ll hear something or see something, and they’ll come in, and they’ll be like, “Oh, somebody said this article was in the paper.” [I]n those ways, he’s actually sending more people to us. And then there are certain programs that people will come to, but they won’t open up. They won’t say anything.
The same branch librarian was not surprised when few immigrants attended an immigrant program the week after news reports surfaced of nationwide immigration raids in July 2019.
Lastly, the requests and needs of immigrants vary across neighborhood branches depending on how branch librarians and staff define their communities. Without official service areas, branch librarians and staff exercise discretion when it comes how they define their community of users and where they target outreach. This, in turn, shapes who comes through their doors and what needs immigrants express. Some branch librarians see their community as those who use the branch, whereas others see the community as those who use the branch as well as potential patrons. One branch librarian explains the former approach to outreach: “We just watch the people that come in and what they want… We don’t go out and survey anyone. We have enough people coming through the door that we just work with what we have right in front of us.” Another branch librarian echoed this approach: “[G]enerally, we’re busy serving the people that just walk through the door.” With limited time and staff, the branch librarians at some neighborhood branches find that they either do not need, or are unable, to do outreach to potential immigrant patrons.
In contrast, at other neighborhood branches, branch librarians and library staff go out into their communities and beyond to proactively reach out to immigrants who might benefit from library services. A branch librarian described the rationale for doing so: “When it comes to advertising in this sense, it’s less useful to stay in my neighborhood and just go to where potential immigrant populations might see our flyers or advertisements.” According to a librarian at another
131 neighborhood branch, “Sometimes you reach out to a population you don’t really have yet because you know they’re out there, but you’re trying to make something that when they walk in the library you can say, ‘Yes, of course I have something in Korean.’” Neither approach is wrong, but the resulting requests that are made of a neighborhood branch will vary based on whether patrons are regulars or whether they have been drawn in as a result of outreach initiatives. In turn, this variation may become apparent in the nature of requests made of the neighborhood branch and the services the branch provides in response to those requests.
Level of volunteerism
Organizations broker various resources, including services, material goods, and information, that help individuals to get by and get ahead, and, oftentimes, these resources are brokered through organizational partnerships. Another resource that is sometimes overlooked, however, comes directly from communities: volunteers. In community-based organizations and public agencies, volunteers help to supplement services. Sometimes, volunteers help organizations to address unmet community needs; other times, they allow socioeconomically advantaged communities to bolster and hoard public resources. In the case of the former, volunteers help to alleviate inequality; in the latter, they exacerbate it.
In public libraries, individuals volunteer to lead ESL conversation groups that benefit immigrants whom they have never met before. Volunteers also organize and run Friends of the
Library groups at most neighborhood branches, and these groups sometimes fund and host programs that benefit immigrants and celebrate diverse cultures. In both cases, volunteerism in neighborhood branches can help to build bridges across diverse groups and address inequality within neighborhoods. At the same time, these types of volunteerism can exacerbate inequality across
132 neighborhoods. Additionally, the ESL conversation groups run the risk of unintentionally reinforcing paternalistic relationships between native-born community members and immigrants.
If it were not for volunteers, there likely would be few or no ESL conversation groups in the
BPL neighborhood branches. It was volunteers who developed the current ESL program in the
1990s, and they keep these groups active across approximately two thirds of the neighborhood branches currently.25 As one librarian said, “If you don’t have a good volunteer, you don’t have a conversation group.” Volunteers have to go through an initial training and pass a Criminal Offender
Record Information check. In addition, they are expected to host a group once per week and commit to volunteering for a minimum period of time. Aside from these expectations, they are given the discretion to select where and when they lead ESL conversation groups as well as what to cover in those groups.
Perhaps because of the homogeneity among volunteers, this volunteer system results in an uneven distribution of ESL services across neighborhood branches. Many volunteers are former teachers, and some even have certificates to teach ESL. Most of them are older, white, female retirees. Finding and keeping volunteers can be difficult in some neighborhood branches. The branch librarian from one of the neighborhood branches with a long-running group explained how much volunteers shape the program:
[B]ecause it’s a volunteer position, the person who moderates the group is not a librarian and not connected to the library in that way normally… [T]he quality of the program and… how many times a week and all of that is constantly changing because we have volunteers who come and leave. And, for instance, one of our volunteers was a woman who had been an ESL teacher, and so she had an incredible group. And, because she knew everything, you know, she was fabulous. But she had to leave for family medical reasons. And then we had sort of a revolving door of volunteers who would say they wanted to do it and then, you know, they’d last three months, and it would be somebody else.
25 A BPL employee from the Literacy Center also fills in temporarily to lead conversation groups when they are in-between volunteers, and librarians from a couple of neighborhood branches have run conversation groups at times.
133 Most notably, however, the volunteers are not representative of the average Bostonian, who is younger and of color. After all, only eleven percent of Boston’s population is over the age of sixty- five, less than half of Bostonians are white, and only seven percent of those who are employed are in teaching professions (Boston Planning & Development Agency, Research Division 2019).
This type of volunteerism not only provides a service to the neighborhood branches and local immigrants, but it also benefits volunteers. Unlike sorting books in a basement, stuffing envelopes, or cleaning trash on a public lot, this type of work can be very gratifying because it allows volunteers to interact directly with those they are helping. As a population that tends to be older retirees, leading ESL conversation groups allows volunteers to meet other people, learn about foreign cultures, and, for those who were teachers, put their professional skills to use in retirement.
For example, the branch librarian in a downtown neighborhood described the neighborhood branch’s current volunteer: “[S]he’s an empty nester and her children grew up. She was living in the suburbs, and then she moved back into the city. I guess she had done this as a volunteer. She taught other classes… [T]his is her local neighborhood library, so she wanted to do it here.”
When asked what volunteers get out of the ESL conversation groups, many branch librarians responded that they find it a fun and “rewarding” opportunity. Most spoke about how volunteers want to either “give back” or “help others.” One branch librarian described the perceived volunteer benefits as: “[W]hat they get back is they get the opportunity to do community service, or, you know, they get to serve their community members. They get to know their neighbors a little bit better. They get a chance to introduce folks to American English and provide, you know, some explanations on some of… the cultural reasons maybe behind the stuff we say or just the American culture.” Another speculated:
I think they got more… Well, I shouldn’t say they got more than the students, but I think they really enjoyed meeting people from other cultures. Like I said, this one woman, she and her husband ended up going to Chile to visit one of the students. I
134 mean, it was just a lot of, you know, friendships, and I think they got a lot of satisfaction from trying to help people.
At some level, this type of volunteer work harkens back to the noblesse oblige Americanization work of the early twentieth century when libraries and settlement houses provided instruction for immigrants to learn English and acculturate. It also, however, helps to build bridges between diverse groups of immigrants and native-born individuals within neighborhoods.
Just as volunteers tend to skew older, whiter, and, likely, more educated, so too do the neighborhoods in which they volunteer. As seen in the previous chapter, the neighborhoods in which ESL conversation groups tend to be located are whiter than the average Boston neighborhood. It is not necessarily the case, though, that these neighborhoods are producing more volunteers. In fact, librarians spoke of volunteers coming from various areas, even neighboring cities and towns. Still, it is reflective of the locational preferences of volunteers, who approach neighborhood branches and the Literacy Center at the central BPL branch and ask about teaching
ESL. These individuals often know how they want to help and where, as opposed to offering to help where and in the capacity that is most needed by the BPL.
Branch librarians spoke of individuals who approached the branch, asked to volunteer, and, in some locations, went on to lead ESL conversation groups for years. One branch librarian described the ease with which the neighborhood branch attracted volunteers: “[W]e would get people who volunteered all the time. I never had to look for a volunteer. People just come out… usually retired people who were looking for something to do, or usually retired teachers, too. So, they had some background in it.” Giving individuals the discretion to choose where and in what capacity they volunteer likely results in a higher level of volunteerism, but it comes at the expense of matching volunteers to neighborhood branches most in need of volunteer help.
Neighborhood branches in areas that are predominantly low-income and of color have had trouble attracting volunteers. They have had to either forgo having an ESL conversation group
135 altogether, or they have had to resort to using staff members as leaders. Some branches in more socioeconomically advantaged neighborhoods have been the recipients of up to five volunteers at a given time; meanwhile, other branches are still waiting for one willing volunteer. When the Literacy
Center was located in a neighborhood branch in a low-income, predominantly black neighborhood, staff had trouble getting potential volunteers to even come to that branch for short-term training.
Whether it is fear of low-income neighborhoods of color or greater familiarity with whiter neighborhoods and their neighborhood branches, neighborhood characteristics shape where individuals volunteer and how services are distributed across neighborhoods.
These limitations that arise from reliance on volunteers mirror some of those found more broadly in the voluntary sector, such as philanthropic particularism and philanthropic paternalism
(Salamon 1987). Philanthropic particularism occurs when nonprofit organizations focus their efforts on a subset of the population. This can have its benefits for a specific group in need of services, but it also results in some groups receiving inadequate resources, as has been the case historically with populations of color. With the ESL conversation groups, volunteers cannot select who attends their groups, but, by volunteering in neighborhoods that are whiter and more socioeconomically advantaged, they end up reaching immigrants who are not necessarily representative of the citywide immigrant population. In particular, Asian immigrants are disproportionately represented among
ESL conversation group attendees. Furthermore, this type of system allows for duplication of services, which is seen at neighborhood branches with multiple ESL conversation group volunteers.
Philanthropic paternalism occurs when those with resources—time, knowledge, and financial security—are bestowed with the power to decide what are the greatest needs of the community. This can be seen with how individuals approach neighborhood branches asking to volunteer teaching ESL. One branch librarian explained, “[O]ccasionally, we have people who come up and say, ‘You know, I’m interested in teaching ESOL.’” Other branch librarians described
136 similar scenarios of individuals volunteering to teach ESL, as opposed to asking to volunteer more broadly. As Lester Salamon (1987, 41) warns, “Not only is this situation undemocratic, but also it can create a self-defeating sense of dependency on the part of the poor since it gives them no say over the resources that are spent on their behalf. Aid is provided as a matter of charity, not of right.” Comfort speaking conversational English may help a range of immigrants in the long-run, but, in some neighborhoods, help with computers, government benefits, and employment is more pressing, and branch librarians did not speak of people coming in asking to provide these services for free.26 Moreover, the neighborhoods in which immigrants most needed these other types of services were also those that tended to have a harder time attracting volunteers at all.
Cultural sharing practices
The public library “is a place built around a collection and a collection built around a place”
(Söderholm and Nolin 2015, 257). Sometimes this means housing collections in the foreign languages that are spoken by community members, but it also entails building collections, displaying art, and hosting programs that reflect the cultures and histories of those in the local community.
The process of developing these community collections is organic and dependent not just on library staff, but also on community members and groups. Additionally, neighborhood branches and their community collections are open and free to all. In this sense, they are a good example of Ray
Oldenburg’s (1997, 16) third places—the “great variety of public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.” Like other third places, the public library “welcomes everyone who abides by its basic rules of appropriate behavior. It recognizes as ‘regulars’ people who come, say, more than a couple of times a month. It provides opportunities for meeting and conversation. It is a place where you
26 One librarian spoke about a community member who led computer classes for free in Cantonese after being asked to do so by a branch librarian.
137 can discover what is happening in the neighborhood” (Putnam, Feldstein, and Cohen 2003, 50).
Increasingly, public libraries have come to serve as modern day community centers that attempt to meet community needs, broadly defined (Anderson 1994). Where public libraries differ most notably from traditional community centers and other third places is in their mandate to provide access to all free of charge. One does not have to pay a membership fee, buy a coffee, or prove income eligibility to spend time in a public library or attend a program.
These two characteristics—how neighborhood branches curate resources from their local communities and how public libraries serve as free third places—position neighborhood branches as natural cultural conveners. Sometimes, this is intentional on the part of branch librarians and library staff, such as when they bring in cultural programming for various heritage months. Most neighborhood branches, for example, celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. A branch librarian described the neighborhood branch’s Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations and how they related to the local neighborhood:
[T]he Hispanic Heritage that we did for so many years, what we would try to do is highlight a different country. We’d have dancers. We’d have bands. We’d have food. It was just a huge amount of work, but, I mean, it was great because we wanted to highlight, you know, the rich culture that Hispanic communities have. And just sort of, you know, because that area of [the branch’s neighborhood], I mean, we had people from Cuba, we had people from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic. I mean it was just a rich area.
Some neighborhood branches also celebrate other cultures, such as through Asian-Pacific, Haitian,
Italian, and Irish Heritage Months, in neighborhoods that either are or were historically associated with specific immigrant populations. In a neighborhood that was historically Italian, the branch librarian explained why her neighborhood branch continues to celebrate Italian Heritage Month:
“Well, because, you know, the neighborhood is known as the Italian neighborhood. Even though the actual numbers of Italian people who live here are dwindling, it’s still is a hub of Italian restaurants. You will still hear Italian spoken. And so I’ve just tr[ied] to sort of, you know, add on
138 to that heritage, continue that kind of… focus.” Librarians in historically ethnic neighborhoods take it upon themselves to recognize the local heritage through cultural celebrations, even if the local immigrant population itself has declined.
Whereas librarians sometimes plan cultural celebrations, these types of programs also result from the initiative of individuals and community groups from the neighborhood. Immigrants and immigrant groups approach neighborhood branches looking to share their cultural practices with their fellow community members, and sometimes these programs even become recurring annual celebrations. One example of a cultural program that a local immigrant group initiated and organized in a neighborhood branch is Arabic Day:
I think we called it Arabic Day Program, but it was actually a bunch of our patrons— some wonderful women who use the library with their children—and our program and outreach librarian, and they had a conversation. They were like, “Wouldn’t it be great to have something?’” And, they did… It was for the whole community, and they cooked, and they came in traditional dress… They had brought henna, and we provided, you know, food and drinks, and I think we printed out coloring pages or other things… So we had a lot of people who were not Arabic speaking who came, and then we also had a lot of our Arabic community. And they were like, “Oh, it’s so nice to have something for us.” And I was like, “Well, it’s your compatriots who did it. Thank you so much.”… [T]hat really came out of a desire for, you know, our community, our patrons, and they totally stepped up.
At another neighborhood branch, the branch librarian described how the neighborhood’s Chinese
Culture Society organizes an annual Chinese New Year Celebration at the branch:
[I]t’s really been fun because they do cooking for it as well. I mean, it’s everything. It’s dancing. It’s martial arts. It’s this sword fighting thing. There’s flute music playing… and they have crafts for kids, and they have food, and everybody’s welcome. It’s really an incredible program. And they come in, they set it up, they do the whole thing, and then they do the cleanup, which, that’s very unusual, let me tell you. So, yeah, so it’s all done for us, and we are providing a venue essentially, but they’re doing all the work. The community itself is doing all the work.
Branch librarians at other neighborhood branches told similar stories of patrons who came to their branches and asked to host holiday celebrations from their native countries (e.g., Día de los
139 Muertos, Posada Navideña, Tet) as well as bilingual poetry readings, story times, and conversation groups (e.g., in Spanish, Haitian Creole, Vietnamese, and Russian). Generally, these individuals and groups organize and fund these events. The neighborhood branches primarily contribute space, advertising, and, sometimes, food and refreshments.
These types of cultural sharing practices allow immigrant groups to connect with others of the same background. They also serve as an important form of immigrant outreach for neighborhood branches. First, immigrants hosting the programs tend to let other immigrants in their community know about the program. Many, in fact, bring their family and friends. A branch librarian explained how a Russian poet did his own successful outreach: “I remember the Russian fellow who did the poetry reading. I was like, ‘Wow, you know, this is in two or three weeks. I don’t have time to do major publicity for you.’ And he’s like, ‘You don’t need to do any publicity…’
He said, ‘My friends will come.’… But he was right. And they got plenty of people.” Some immigrants who might otherwise feel uncomfortable visiting the library feel more comfortable doing so because they know the person hosting the event, or they see that there will be others there who share their background and speak their language. While talking about how immigrants bring programs to the neighborhood branch, one branch librarian recognized how these types of immigrant-run, community programs encourage immigrant participation: “[R]ather than look for the people… I mean look for the immigrants to come, if we hire someone who is an immigrant, and try to, you know, encourage immigrant families.”
Finally, these types of programs serve as bridges between local immigrants and native-born populations. When asked who attends these types of programs, most librarians explained that all in the community, many of whom are white and native-born, attend. For example, “[t]he whole library community” and “[a]nybody who walked in the door…” attended a Vietnamese Tet program. The branch librarian described participants as “some Asian, some Vietnamese people, some teenagers
140 that were probably from lots of different countries cause they were here with their tutors that night.”
At another neighborhood branch, the branch librarian said of those attending: “[A] lot of them are these families with the working parents, and, you know, they just socialize. There seems to be a lot of that in this community, and they want their kids to read and to experience different cultures.”
These types of events are scheduled during regular library hours, which allows the neighborhood branch to continue to serve as a library where people check out books, relax, work on homework, use computers, and meet with tutors. These multiple simultaneous uses of the neighborhood branches encourage chance encounters among individuals from diverse backgrounds.
Overall, these types of celebrations span a broad range of neighborhoods in regards to racial composition, income, and geographic location. Most, however, tend to be located in neighborhood branches that are located outside of Boston’s downtown and which are popular, as reflected in the fact they have more annual visitors. Compared to downtown Boston, neighborhoods outside of the city’s center provide more affordable housing options that are large enough to accommodate families. They also have more owner-occupied homes and less resident turnover, which may translate into more active communities of users for neighborhood library branches. This helps to explain how some neighborhood branches have managed to establish recurring celebrations to which local communities look forward every year.
Organizational partnerships
One of the main roles that public libraries play is to provide access to information, but not just information that can be found in books. They curate information from their local communities through “community reference,” a process by which neighborhood branches become embedded in their neighborhoods. Community reference involves library staff going out into the neighborhood, attending neighborhood meetings, listening, and forming ongoing relationships with other local
141 organizations. As David Lankes (2015, 146) writes, “When doing community reference, we are also doing collection development. We are curating the organization as a potential resource in the community. We listen and ask questions to both understand their needs, and understand their value as a resource in the community collection.” In fact, BPL branch librarians are expected to
“[maintain] working relationships with Friends of the Library, educational institutions, churches, social and community groups, and businesses in the community served” as a part of their job description (see Appendix C for a sample branch librarian job description). Neighborhood branch librarians and staff build relationships with local organizations and learn about their resources and needs.
The composition of organizations around neighborhood branches shapes how neighborhood branches form organizational partnerships, develop programs, and provide services to immigrant communities. Paul Edwards (2012, 78), a branch librarian at the BPL, writes about the value of such an approach: “Whenever possible, create opportunities to speak to people about their needs and how your library can work with them to further their organization’s mission. Remember, the organizations operating in your neighborhood more than likely reflect the needs of that specific neighborhood.” For immigrants, as well as others, who come into a neighborhood branch and ask for assistance with services related to housing, employment, social services, and health care, it is important for librarians to be able to direct individuals to appropriate, nearby organizations. For immigrant patrons, this can mean directing individuals to organizations that have staff who speak their language and provide specific needed services. Librarians do what they can to help everyone who comes through their doors, but their time and experience have limits, and some of the help they provide is through referrals.
Another reason that neighborhood branches do outreach to local organizations is to let other organizations know about the services branches provide. For example, librarians reach out to
142 public schools and ESL schools. They attend fairs and farmers markets. Some belong to local literacy and adult education coalitions, which connect them to organizations that serve immigrants.
Reaching immigrants can be difficult for public libraries because immigrants may not know what a public library is, they may be unfamiliar with the services that public libraries provide in the United
States, and they may be hesitant or fearful to go into a government agency. Other organizations, especially those that target immigrant populations, have better access to immigrants, and immigrants may trust them more than they do neighborhood branches. Therefore, these organizations can help build connections between neighborhood branches and immigrant populations. As a branch librarian explained, “[I]t would take a while… for them [immigrants] to come in, though, cause I’ve heard… if they go to an official building, you know, they might not come out again. You know, so it takes you a while. So, I’ve been visiting different agencies where they, the population, might be.”
Relationships with local organizations allow branch librarians and staff to reach immigrants where they are.
When certain populations are not coming to a neighborhood branch, the librarians sometimes take it upon themselves to find and reach out to those groups in the neighborhood through local organizations. One branch librarian explained the challenge of finding the best places to reach immigrants: “[W]e often think, ‘Well, what services [do] the immigrants use that are different, that are not unique?’ Like many people will go to the health clinics, and that’s why we did health clinics and churches and tried the mosque.” The same branch librarian described the diverse network of organizations to which the neighborhood branch reaches out: “[T]here is a Dominican center in [the neighborhood] that we advertise with. There’s a Somali one south of here. Actually, the churches are one of our best friends… especially those that do outreach in their community to help immigrants. [The Catholic church] right behind us is a big one. But also the Baptist one in the center of [the neighborhood].” Other branch librarians spoke also about reaching out to a broad
143 range of organizations, including schools, language institutes, health centers, youth organizations, civic groups, senior centers, and religious institutions.
This type of work is often invisible to the everyday library user because it takes place out in the neighborhoods. Branch librarians described how they would go to organizations and inform those organizations and participants about the services they offer both in the neighborhood branches as well as off-site at outside organizations. A branch librarian spoke of outreach to a local social service organization for Haitians: “I went over to the service center and then met with the different classes and, you know, explained to them what we had to offer. We would be glad to come in and help them out, anything they would need, or… we could come back and visit or help with a class, set up a class, you know, anything like that.” Once these connections are developed, organizations bring their participants into the neighborhood branches for tours during which librarians introduce individuals to the neighborhood branch’s offerings and sign individuals up for library cards. This is often the case for organizations that provide adult education and ESL instruction.
In addition to community reference work when librarians curate information about local organizations, neighborhood branches develop partnerships with local organizations around programming. Oftentimes, local organizations approach neighborhood branches looking to partner with them. These local organizations, as well as public agencies, then host programs that reach immigrants in neighborhood branches. These range from an ESL class for business owners to a diaper bank that distributes free diapers to predominantly Spanish-speaking immigrants. They are not necessarily services or programs that neighborhood branches would develop on their own, but they meet the local needs of immigrants.
Holding these programs in neighborhood branches also meets the needs of local organizations. Over and over, branch librarians explained that these partnerships came about
144 because local organizations were looking for space in the neighborhood. Branch librarians said about the development of these types of partnerships: “what they would want from us is the space,”
“a lot of groups use our space,” and “we’re just the venue… they run the whole thing.” One librarian described it aptly as “community use of library space.” Despite how it seems, it is not simply local organizations using neighborhood branches. The relationship is much more reciprocal.
It benefits the organizations, the neighborhood branches, and local immigrants. One branch librarian described how these partnerships help with outreach: “[T]here are other people who come to the library that rent our space, and they use us, well not use us, that sounds terrible. But, you know, they come to use our space so that they can reach out to the community also. So it’s like an
‘in-reach,’ then an outreach from other people who come here… various community groups use our space.” Another described a similar situation: “[S]ometimes that’s how you reach people is you give them a space to be there that’s in the library, and then you try to give them a tour of the library so they can see what are the things we have to offer.” Providing space to local organizations and groups helps neighborhood branches to do outreach to those who might not regularly use the library.
In addition to helping neighborhood branches with outreach, these partnerships bring programs into the neighborhood branches that would otherwise be unfeasible given the branches’ funding and librarians’ skill sets and language capabilities. At one neighborhood branch, it is through these organizational partnerships that they have been able to bring in bilingual programming:
We haven’t offered a lot lectures just in Spanish… or any other language, Arabic, we’d love some programs in Arabic. So it’s really what opportunities come up and what we find out there to do things, but we do a lot of partnerships… We partner with a lot of groups, a lot of groups use our space, so they’re presenting programs in other languages. But, it’s a small piece. We would love to have more access to programming in other languages.
145 Other neighborhood branches have been able to bring in programs like Vietnamese Bilingual Story
Hour, Chinese Play Group, citizenship classes, and a quilting group through outside organizations and groups.
In the case of the citizenship classes and quilting group, these programs came to their local neighborhood branches when they lost space at other local nonprofit organizations. At another neighborhood branch, the librarian saw an opportunity to bring in a desired children’s program by offering space to a local organization: “I was sitting in the meeting, and the [children’s organization] has all these toys, and they were talking about how they much they pay—two hundred dollars per month for the storage… And then, in the meeting, I spoke up. I said, ‘We have a basement space.
You can just store it here, and you can do programs for us.’ So, it worked out. Yeah, yes, it’s mutual.” For these types of programs, the neighborhood branches and patrons benefit from the programs, and the organizations benefit from the free, local space.
Neighborhood branches tend to develop these partnerships with organizations and groups that are located within or near the neighborhood of the branch. When identifying partner organizations, librarians would often describe the street on which the organization was located, a local landmark that it was close to, or how one might walk there from the neighborhood branch. In contrast, a couple of librarians cited a lack of nearby organizations as a reason for why the neighborhood branch partnered with few immigrant organizations. The branch librarian at one of these neighborhood branches explained, “Well, they have an immigration service at City Hall. That may be the only one. Yeah, that’s the only one I can think of because there were many service organizations in the [neighborhood], but many of them have gone.” Even when librarians do outreach outside of their branch’s immediate neighborhood, it tends to be nearby.
Just as branch librarians and library staff are more likely to reach out to nearby organizations, organizations are more likely to reach out to a neighborhood branch that is close to them. When
146 organizations and groups turn to neighborhood branches looking for space, they reach out to neighborhood branches that allow them to continue providing services in their established service areas. The main exception to this is when a larger organization, such as the Massachusetts
Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, coordinates immigrant programs with multiple neighborhood branches across the city.
This tendency to develop partnerships with nearby organizations helps explain how neighborhoods shape the programs and resources that neighborhood branches are able to provide to immigrants. Organizations, especially those that serve immigrant populations, are not evenly distributed across the city, which means that neighborhood branches in organizationally dense neighborhoods have more options for organizational partnerships than others. A good example of how proximity matters can be seen with partnerships between ESL schools and neighborhood branches. One neighborhood branch, for example, is adjacent to a community center where ESL classes meet. As the branch librarian explained,
We’re lucky because many of [the ESL classes] meet at [the next door community center]… [T]he teachers know they can contact us and arrange for a tour. And then, once they come in,… we tell them everything they can use, like our free museum passes, our programs for adults and children, you know, materials for kids doing homework, adults studying for college classes… [S]o they always leave with a library card and information about what we hope they’ll take advantage of, what we have to offer. Yeah, and so that’s a partnership.
Similar to this example, other neighborhood branches described organizations that provided ESL services and were located “across from us” and “down the street.” One exception is a workforce development organization located in downtown Boston that has developed a long-term partnership with a neighborhood branch far from the city’s center, but even this partnership formed partially due to the branch’s location. The branch librarian described how the partnership developed:
They were teaching over at the [neighborhood] municipal building. So, about ten, twelve years ago they were looking to expand. So we had the room during the day. We had the space that wasn’t in use during the day. And then, so we always had one
147 little class, I’d say [for] about fifteen years… And then what happened is when the building closed for renovations they were over here. So then they basically never left.
For all of these examples, having an organization, or one of its programs, nearby facilitates the formation of organizational partnerships for neighborhood branches.
Neighborhood branches are also more likely to partner with organizations that serve a specific immigrant group if they are located in neighborhoods with a concentration of immigrants from one country. For example, the neighborhood branch that is located in an area of Boston with a higher concentration of Cape Verdean immigrants was actively building relationships with organizations that are run by and serve the local Cape Verdean population. It started with a resource fair run by a local organization, and a contact made there led to relationships with a few
Cape Verdean organizations. The librarian detailed one of those relationships and its potential benefits: “[O]ur connection to [the] Cape Verdean Association of Boston is very new. They have invited us to become a part of their monthly community servers meeting, and we’re hoping by going to that meeting we make those inroads.” Reaching immigrant populations can be difficult for neighborhood branches, especially if they do not employ anyone from the local immigrant population. As this librarian explained, however, relationships with local immigrant organizations can help to bridge neighborhood branches to local immigrant populations as well as other immigrant organizations. Similar to this example, neighborhood branches in areas with high concentrations of
Vietnamese, Chinese, and Latin American immigrants also have developed partnerships with organizations that are closely connected to these respective immigrant communities.
Finally, neighborhoods shape the institutional partnerships to which neighborhood branches have access, and these can be particularly important when it comes to funding for immigrant programs. Sometimes described as being dominated by “eds and meds,” Boston has a high concentration of health care and academic institutions, some of which partner with neighborhood branches. Like small, local organizations, these larger institutions also tend to partner with
148 neighborhood branches that are geographically proximate, and sometimes these partnerships benefit local immigrants. For example, Harvard University’s campus extends into Boston’s Allston neighborhood, and the university developed the Harvard Allston Partnership Fund in 2008 to benefit organizations and residents in the neighborhood. Through its nonprofit Friends of the
Library group and another local organization, the local neighborhood branch has been able to access funding from the fund and bring in arts classes that serve immigrant groups as well as a Chinese story hour. Other neighborhood branches have extended their services to local hospitals and universities, which employ and serve immigrants.
Conclusion
It is well established that neighborhoods matter. Where one lives, as opposed to what one’s needs are, largely determines the resources and opportunities to which one has access. This is due, in part, to the increasingly central role of organizations in society, especially for those who are marginalized. The organizations embedded in neighborhoods not only shape neighborhood character; they also account for why some neighborhoods are richer in resources than others.
Studies to date of organizational resources, however, have focused on access to institutional resources, oftentimes in the form of public funding (Allard 2008; Garrow 2014; Marwell and
Gullickson 2013). Alternatively, some have focused on how institutional actors shape organizational resources through rules, regulations, and incentives (Small 2009). The influence of institutions on organizational resources is well established, but the question remains as to how organizational resources vary in the absence of strong institutional pressures. Moreover, what role do neighborhoods play in shaping organizational resources when institutional pressures are less dominant?
149 In the case of neighborhood library branches, limited institutional resources and pressures led branches to turn to their communities to determine needs, to find volunteers, and to solicit programs from individuals, community groups, and local organizations. The result is services and programs that are uniquely tailored to diverse neighborhoods. At the same time, the limited institutional funding and pressures allow immigrant services and programs to vary greatly across neighborhood branches when it comes to quality and quantity. This explains why some neighborhood branches have an abundance of ESL programs, cultural offerings, and organizational partnerships whereas others struggle to have a few.
150 Chapter Six | Conclusion
Introduction
Immigrants are more likely to live in poverty than the native-born population in the United
States; yet, their access to the social safety net is contracting. Changes to federal welfare programs have continued to limit the benefits available for immigrants. Meanwhile, immigrants are choosing to access fewer benefits for which they qualify because they are afraid that doing so will cause their applications for citizenship to be rejected. Furthermore, the fear of being detained by immigration officers is causing both non-naturalized and naturalized immigrants to avoid public spaces and routine organizations, even though they have to access most resources through local organizations.
How, then, can local organizations ensure that immigrants continue to access critical resources?
This research has used immigrant services in public libraries as a lens through which to explore larger questions about organizations, neighborhoods, and access to resources for marginalized populations. How do local organizations provide access to resources for immigrants?
To what extent do organizational resources align with neighborhood needs? How, if at all, do neighborhoods—through their structures, institutions, resources, and people—shape the availability of organizational resources? To answer these questions, I consider measures of access that go beyond geographic proximity, and I look at both institutional and community resources.
Community resources are those that emerge from individuals, groups, and local organizations. They are hard to quantify and classify, but I argue that they bring a distinct value to neighborhood library branches and their communities.
151 This chapter begins with a brief overview of the research findings, after which follows a discussion of the implications for theory, policy, and urban planning practice. Specifically, the identified theoretical and practical implications focus on how neighborhoods and communities shape organizational resources and how organizations can increase access to resources for immigrants. I hope that the lessons learned from neighborhood library branches help to increase access to resources for immigrants across a range of local organizations.
Summary of findings
Public libraries provide services and programs that facilitate immigrant integration in regards to English language proficiency, political incorporation, social interaction, and, to a lesser extent, socioeconomic attainment. They provide instruction and support for immigrants who want to learn
English, become naturalized, apply for jobs, and meet fellow community members. They also provide a range of programs and services that reach immigrants, but which are not easily classified, such as opportunities to write poetry in Spanish, learn to cook, find support for family members with autism or dementia, and celebrate holidays from around the world. Meanwhile, they adapt to meet immigrants where they are by providing on-demand services, curating their foreign language collections, doing neighborhood outreach, and constantly trying to learn about what their communities need most. In doing so, they engage in a process of mutual adaptation that is integral to immigrant integration.
Among services and programs provided by neighborhood branches, some are better than others at reaching neighborhoods with greater needs, defined as having a high concentration of those who are foreign born and non-naturalized, have limited English proficiency, live in poverty, and are of color. For example, naturalization services provided by USCIS are more likely to be located in high-need neighborhoods than any other immigrant program. At the other end of the
152 spectrum, volunteer-led ESL conversation groups and bilingual children’s programs are just as likely to be located in neighborhoods with relatively few immigrants as they are to be located in immigrant neighborhoods. The presence of immigrant programs alone, however, does not necessarily ensure that resources reach immigrant populations, as is seen with USCIS and Know Your Rights programs. In the midst of growing anti-immigrant policies at the national level, USCIS officers and librarians have suspected that immigrants are afraid to access such programs. This poses a problem because, no matter how well located organizational resources are, they are only effective if they actually reach their intended populations.
Neither the local concentration of immigrants nor institutional forces can fully account for why some neighborhood branches have many immigrant resources while others have relatively few.
Neighborhoods and the availability of community resources also shape services and programs in the neighborhood branches. This research identifies four main mechanisms through which neighborhoods shape organizational resources: 1) the expressed needs of community members, 2) level of volunteerism, 3) cultural sharing practices, and 4) organizational partnerships. These four mechanisms are the subject of the following section on the theoretical implications of this research.
Implications for theory
Organizations provide access to critical resources that help marginalized populations to get by and get ahead. How one addresses the question of whether organizational resources align with neighborhood needs varies according to how one defines need, access, and resources.
Neighborhood need may refer to the percentage of local residents who are low-income or live below the poverty level, or it may refer to those who are of color or foreign-born. Geographic proximity to organizations often serves as a proxy for access to organizations with the understanding that people are more likely to go to organizations that are located nearby. Finally, scholars tend to use
153 institutional funding levels as a measure for organizational resources. When organizational resources are conceptualized more holistically, they incorporate organizational partnerships and the brokerage of information, services, and material goods. Whether one conceptualizes resources as funding or as information, services, and material goods brokered through organizational partnerships, institutions are the driving force behind the distribution of resources. A focus on institutional resources and pressures, however, overlooks the more nuanced ways in which communities shape organizational resources. Additionally, using geographic proximity as a proxy for access cannot answer the question of whether resources actually reach those who need them most. In this section, I discuss how this research informs theory along two dimensions: 1) how neighborhoods shape organizational resources, and 2) the potential and limitations of community resources.
Neighborhoods shape organizational resources
This research has identified four mechanisms through which neighborhoods shape organizational resources: 1) expressed community needs, 2) level of volunteerism, 3) cultural sharing practices, and 4) organizational partnerships. Librarians provide flexible, on-demand help to individuals, including immigrants, on a daily basis. This system allows neighborhood branches to offer some degree of help in response to a range of requests, such as those relating to job applications, children’s homework, health care, taxes, citizenship, and housing. It is an efficient way of providing services in that the help only reaches those who need it, when they need it.
Furthermore, it allows neighborhood branches to provide distinct sets of services that meet the unique needs of their neighborhoods. At the same time, it is inefficient because it is time intensive and requires librarians to share the same information on separate occasions with multiple people.
Over time, however, librarians are able to use this system to determine the general needs of the neighborhood and develop programs that serve a broader audience in the long run.
154 Volunteers are a free resource upon which neighborhood branches can rely, however, some branches have a hard time securing any volunteers. Volunteers created and staffed an entire program, the ESL conversation groups, which would otherwise have been impossible for the BPL to offer. The volunteer-led conversation groups bring immigrants into neighborhood branches, provide English language instruction, and introduce immigrants to other library services. On occasion, immigrants first attend programs and later become volunteers. Volunteers provide a service in the neighborhood branches, and they also benefit from this work because volunteering provides opportunities to meet new people. For older adults who are retired, it provides an opportunity to contribute and make use of one’s professional skills. Furthermore, volunteering can also build professional skills, as is the case with ESL volunteers who are training to work professionally with English language learners outside of the BPL.
At the most basic level, volunteer opportunities can encourage organizational participation, which some scholars view as a desired goal in and of itself because of its individual and societal benefits. As Robert Putnam (2000, 331) writes, “[I]f you belong to no groups but decide to join one, you cut your risk of dying over the next year in half. If you smoke and belong to no groups, it’s a toss-up statistically whether you should stop smoking or start joining.” The main drawback of a system that relies on volunteers is that resources are not distributed according to neighborhood needs; instead, they are distributed where volunteers prefer to work. Though volunteers may help to address inequalities within neighborhoods, the volunteer system can actually exacerbate inequalities across neighborhoods.
Similar to how individuals come forward and request to volunteer in neighborhood branches, so too do they come forward asking to share their cultural practices with their fellow community members. Like the Arabic Culture Day described at the beginning of this dissertation, these events arise organically from communities, and they hold a unique value that is hard to
155 replicate without community initiative. Neighborhood branches offer many cultural activities, such as those designed for various heritage month celebrations, but the community-initiated cultural events are distinctive. For starters, they arise from the initiative of those who come from the neighborhood, and these groups host them in the neighborhood branches for free. In addition, because community members initiate these, they also tend to do outreach and bring in participants.
This can be a particularly effective way to introduce immigrants, who may not know about the library or be hesitant to attend a program at it, to their neighborhood branch. Furthermore, these cultural events help to build bridges between immigrants from diverse backgrounds and those who are native-born.
Finally, neighborhood branches are natural organizational partners for local organizations because most branches have free space designed for flexible programming. At the same time, neighborhood branches have limited funding to spend on programs. These two features allow neighborhood branches to offer free space in return for free programs, and this benefits the branches, the partner organizations, and program participants. Local organizations turn to neighborhood branches to offer a range of programs that reach immigrants, from a diaper bank to play groups to ESL classes. Neighborhood branches allow local organizations to offer more programs than they otherwise could without access to free library space. Similar to individuals and groups who bring cultural programs to neighborhood branches, local organizations also do outreach and introduce immigrants and others to their local neighborhood branch. These partnerships tend to form locally, though, which means that neighborhood branches with greater access to local organizations are more likely to bring in programs through organizational partnerships.
Overall, community members come forward asking to share their expertise, experiences, time, and resources through neighborhood branches, and what they bring to neighborhood branches often has intangible benefits. For example, the value created by an event at which immigrants cook
156 and share food with one another is difficult to measure, but these programs help to create a welcoming space for those who bring in the food as well as those who partake of the food. These are not resources in the traditional sense of the word, but they benefit those who participate. They also help to bridge participants to other library services and programs that may provide greater socioeconomic benefits. Moreover, just as community members, groups, and local organizations bring these programs to neighborhood branches, they also help with neighborhood outreach. These types of resources are not funded or led by institutional actors, nor do they necessarily cost neighborhood branches anything, but to overlook them and the communities that provide them is to potentially ignore a meaningful resource.
Communities create immigrant resources
Scholars have debated whether marginalized neighborhoods have access to fewer organizational resources, and the research suggests that low-income communities have greater access to organizational resources, but communities of color have less. The story is more mixed when it comes to immigrant neighborhoods, especially those that are of color. Due to the small scope of this research—twenty-five public library branches in one city—it cannot weigh in definitively on the question of whether marginalized neighborhoods have fewer organizational resources than their more advantaged counterparts. Where this research does contribute, though, is by highlighting how resources are distributed differently depending on the type of resource and from where it originates.
Moreover, I put forth a case for why resources that originate in communities, as opposed to just those that come from public and private institutions, should be considered when discussing organizational resources.
Community resources are those that originate within communities and neighborhoods, sometimes without even being solicited. They cannot be easily categorized, nor can the value they
157 create be quantified. Organizations cannot necessarily plan ahead and rely on community resources because they emerge organically through relationships with other organizations, groups, and volunteers. They may result in a program that lasts only a couple of hours or an ongoing partnership that lasts years. Despite the inability to measure, quantify, and plan for these resources, they bring life to neighborhood library branches.
In the case of immigrant programs offered in neighborhood branches, community resources supplement, and sometimes surpass, institutional resources. Institutional resources are more likely to be located in neighborhoods with greater needs, but community resources create a different type of value. This can be seen in the citizenship programs offered by USCIS officers and SMCEP volunteers. USCIS, a large government institution, offers programs about the naturalization process at a handful of neighborhood branches and provides reference materials through all neighborhood branches. One of the program’s creators explained that USCIS and the BPL specifically selected branches located in neighborhoods with a high concentration of immigrants. In contrast, SMCEP, a small local nonprofit organization, determines where to hold citizenship classes on a case-by-case basis through discussions with branch librarians. To date, it has offered citizenship classes in neighborhood branches that serve large immigrant populations as well as at least one branch located in a neighborhood with relatively few immigrants.
Despite the fact that USCIS targets its resources to neighborhoods most in need, there are factors that make these resources less valuable than SMCEP’s resources. As a federal agency with bureaucratic rules, strict oversight, and security concerns, USCIS’s officers are limited in their ability to access and provide information in the neighborhood branches. In fact, they are prohibited from providing any personalized information to participants. This is not to say that they do not provide helpful information to those who come to them—they help to demystify a federal agency and
158 provide a point of contact within communities that did not exist five years ago—but, the resources they offer are circumscribed.
For those trying to become United States citizens, SMCEP offers more sustained and personalized assistance through its volunteer-run citizenship classes. These twelve-week classes provide not just information, but also support that helps individuals pass the citizenship exam. In addition, the organization approaches citizenship with goals that differ significantly from USCIS.
According to its mission, USCIS “administers the nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values” (U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services, n.d.). In comparison, SMCEP states as its mission: “[W]e believe that immigrants bring new and diverse gifts, talents, and skills that are necessary to the vitality and strength of our communities. We also hold that compassion, commitment to inclusion, and mutual respect are fundamental to our neighborhoods’ growth and well-being” (St. Mark Community
Education Program, n.d.). The two mission statements highlight the distinct values, objectives, and approaches of USCIS and SMCEP. Notably, SMCEP addresses the importance of communities, neighborhoods, compassion, and well-being, whereas USCIS’s objective is to efficiently and fairly administer the federal immigration process.
The classes run by SMCEP also counteract potential declines in support provided by USCIS for those going through the naturalization process. For example, since the 2016 election of
President Donald Trump, USCIS has made it harder for immigrants to qualify for citizenship, and there are rumors that the agency will make the citizenship test questions more difficult (Hauslohner
2019). As a result of some of these national developments, SMCEP was able to grow its volunteer base and expand its citizenship classes to more locations. Volunteers specifically said that the national shifts in immigration policy motivated them to get involved (Wintersmith 2018).
159 The main drawback of community resources is that, because they originate with communities, they are less likely to be targeted to neighborhoods with the greatest needs. One reason for this is their reliance on volunteers. ESL conversation groups, for example, are less likely to be located in immigrant neighborhoods of color. Some neighborhood branches that are in low- income neighborhoods of color have not been able to find any ESL volunteers, whereas other branches have had up to five at any given time. It is not for lack of trying on the part of neighborhood branch staff or central library administrators that some branches with a need for this type of program do not receive it. Rather, it comes down to the availability of volunteers and their willingness to work in specific neighborhoods. Unlike a paid employee, if a volunteer does not want to work in a certain location, the volunteer can decide not to participate at all. It is difficult to say with certainty why more volunteers choose to spend their time in neighborhoods that have a lower proportion of residents who are low-income and of color, however, a couple of library employees have suggested that volunteers were afraid to visit libraries in low-income neighborhoods of color.
Another reason why community resources are distributed unevenly across neighborhoods is because they rely on partnerships with local organizations that arise through either local outreach efforts by librarians or personal relationships. For various reasons, interorganizational relationships tend to be “emplaced” within neighborhoods (Levine 2013). Librarians are more likely to do outreach in their branch’s neighborhood. At the same time, organizations bringing community resources to neighborhood branches may look to partner with the neighborhood branch located in their existing service area. The SMCEP citizenship classes, for example, began at the neighborhood branch nearest SMCEP’s location, and it expanded from there based on the joint decisions of
SMCEP’s director and individual branch librarians.
Thus, this research offers support for theories that suggest that institutions shape the distribution of resources; however, institutions are rarely the only source of support for
160 organizations. As public agencies and nonprofit organizations face funding cuts from government and nonprofits sources, they have to turn to their local communities for organizational partnerships, volunteers, donations, fees, rental income, and other forms of support. Larger institutional grants and contracts may overshadow sources of community support, but neighborhoods still shape organizational resources in key ways. Community resources can shape how welcoming an organization is to new immigrants, what resources it offers, and how broad and effective its outreach is.
Implications for policy and practice
The relationships uncovered between neighborhood branches and neighborhoods need not be unique to either Boston or public libraries. They can help to shape policies that affect other organizations, such as community centers, social service agencies, health care organizations, religious institutions, and public agencies. Additionally, part of this research is about understanding access to organizational resources and the barriers that immigrants face. In this respect, some of the barriers that immigrants face accessing public libraries also apply to other organizations and agencies. In this section, I offer two recommendations that arise from this research for urban planning policy and practice: 1) increase access to organizational resources for immigrants, and 2) rebuild trust in government institutions. Rebuilding trust in government institutions will help to increase access to organizational resources, but I intentionally distinguish between the two. The measures recommended for increasing access are relevant regardless of the national immigration climate, whereas rebuilding trust in government institutions is specific to current immigration politics and policies.
161 Increase organizational access for immigrants
Some neighborhood branches have an abundance of programs led by branch staff, volunteers, community groups, and organizational partners that aid in the immigrant integration process and connect immigrants to resources. Even those that have relatively few immigrant programs, however, offer on-demand assistance for immigrants, such as help with schools, job applications, computers, and government benefits. All neighborhood branches are open and accessible to any immigrants who come through their doors, but there are practices that some neighborhood branches use to make their services more welcoming and accommodating of immigrants, especially those who are not fluent in English.
First and foremost, being able to communicate with individuals who do not speak English allows neighborhood branches to reach out to and welcome immigrants in the branch. This is best achieved by having staff within the branch who speak the languages spoken by local immigrant populations. Across neighborhood branches, about a third employ staff members who speak the foreign languages most commonly spoken in their neighborhoods, but the majority do not. When asked what they thought were the main challenges reaching immigrant populations, many branch librarians referred to the language barrier. One branch librarian replied, “Yeah, language barrier. I mean, although I speak some Creole and French, that’s not the only language that’s coming to the library. As I said, Spanish. I mean, I took Spanish in high school, but I don’t remember anything of it, but I can sort of, you know, maneuver around. But I think the language barriers is one of the challenges.” Moreover, branch librarians in neighborhood branches with bilingual staff reinforced how helpful it is to be able to communicate with patrons who do not speak English. As one branch librarian said,
[W]ith Spanish, I understand a lot of it, and we’ve been very fortunate in the… years that I’ve been here that we have at least one staff member who’s very fluent in Spanish. We had one employee at one point who was fluent in four languages. So
162 it’s a question of communication and gaining trust. And sometimes you bring in people you wouldn’t normally have if they know [a program’s] in their language and they can feel comfortable about it, especially when it’s a difficult topic like immigration.
As this librarian points out, the ability to communicate with immigrants and build trust can be especially important for topics that are either sensitive or have technical aspects.
Having employees who speak the languages of the immigrants in their neighborhood is important not just for immigrants who happen to walk through the door; it also helps to extend the reach of the library into the neighborhood and encourages immigrants who might not otherwise know about, or think to patronize, the library to come in. As a branch librarian explained,
“[B]ecause I spoke Spanish, I noticed that, as I started helping people, people would come in and be like, ‘Oh my friend, you know, my friend told me you speak Spanish and you can help me’… And so that helped bring in people because they knew like, ‘Oh, okay. You know, she may not be fluent, but she can help.’” At another neighborhood branch, the branch librarian spoke about how having a librarian who speaks Haitian Creole has been essential to reaching the local Haitian population.
Some patrons will call ahead and only come in if the librarian is there.
Hiring bilingual librarians can be difficult, especially given the historic lack of diversity in the library profession and the union rules for hiring and promotion.27 The best way to make neighborhood branches, as well as other organizations, accessible to immigrants who do not speak
English is by hiring bilingual and multilingual individuals, however, there are other measures that can be taken to improve access. One branch librarian volunteered the following recommendations:
“[S]ometimes, it’s small steps like equipping staff with, you know, the ability to go take a class, and,
27 It is for this reason that the bilingual staff in neighborhood branches tend to be library assistants, as opposed to librarians. As one branch librarian explained, “I would say the staff at the Boston Public Library that are a bilingual are predominantly the library assistants… and that, I think, is reflective… of librarianship as a profession. You know, it’s very much a white middle class, cisgendered profession… And that’s something that we’re aware of. It’s something that I know librarians are really wanting to change.”
163 if they want to learn another language, to encourage them to. Or, if they have those existing skills but aren’t fluent, to let them develop them.” Another way to increase access is by keeping a list of individuals at other organizations or government agencies who speak various languages and can be on call. The BPL used to maintain such a list, and librarians and staff could refer to it and call other neighborhood branches when they needed a translator. Some branch librarians still rely on this list, but others did not make any references to it. Technology, too, has helped library staff to negotiate language barriers. Many spoke about being able to use Google Translate, for example, to communicate with patrons who did not speak English.
There are other ways that neighborhood branches can increase access to linguistic minorities without having to hire new staff. Having signs and flyers in languages other than English is helpful, and it requires less of an investment than hiring new staff (see Figure 13). Still, this is difficult to achieve without bilingual staff or access to external translators. Even in a city such as Boston, which is twenty-eight percent foreign born and home to one of the country’s first immigrant affairs offices, it can be difficult for neighborhood branches to have flyers and documents translated. Until recently, only one neighborhood branch offered information on the BPL website in another language, and this was possible because Spanish-speaking staff at the neighborhood branch took the initiative to do so. Thanks to technological advances, visitors now can translate the entire website into eleven different languages with minimal effort.
164 Figure 13 Flyers in English and Spanish and English and Russian at neighborhood branches
Though technology is making translation easier for organizations and their employees,
Google Translate and other technical solutions should not serve as a substitute for hiring bilingual staff for a few reasons. First, organizations are better able to come across as welcoming and can build trust with immigrants if they employ individuals who speak the languages of those in the neighborhood. Some branch librarians even highlighted the value that comes from hiring not just bilingual staff, but staff who themselves share the same ethnic backgrounds as individuals in their neighborhoods. Second, some immigrants may not feel comfortable using technology or may not be literate in their native language. Third, as well intentioned as it is to have program flyers translated into languages other than English, if the program itself is only conducted in English, it will be less accessible to non-English speakers who attend. Outreach that is accessible to immigrant populations is a first step, but there also has to be support for those populations when they come into the neighborhood branches.
165 Rebuild trust in government institutions
At the re-opening of the Jamaica Plain Branch, David Leonard, the President of the BPL and an immigrant from Ireland, spoke about the public library as one of the few trusted institutions.
Mayor Martin Walsh spoke about how public libraries are important safe spaces for immigrants in the current political climate, and a BPL trustee spoke about public libraries as places that inspire intergenerational and intercultural exchanges. Public libraries have the potential to serve as safe, trusted spaces, as well as points of access to government, but it is becoming both more important and more difficult to accomplish.
Trust in government institutions is waning among immigrants with each report of, and rumor about, immigration raids, changes to the public charge rule, and cooperation between USCIS and ICE. Undocumented immigrants face increasing risks accessing public spaces and traveling to and from “sensitive locations.” Even naturalized immigrants have started to avoid public spaces and organizations for fear of being stopped. As a result, it is becoming harder for organizations to connect immigrants with resources. Community members, groups, and organizations, however, have the ability to help build bridges between immigrant populations and organizational resources.
Individuals and organizations that work with immigrants, in particular, can do outreach to immigrants, inform them about library resources, and help them to accurately assess the risks of accessing programs in neighborhood branches. Neighborhood branches have been able to reach more immigrants by working with community organizations and individuals. For example, the one
Know Your Rights program that successfully reached a large immigrant population did so by coordinating the program with a local ESL school.
Neighborhood branches and their partner organizations have to do more than just alleviate fears, though. They also have to find ways to discretely distribute information, whether it is about immigrant rights, legal help, or government resources. For example, neighborhood branches had
166 better luck putting out Know Your Rights information cards that individuals could discretely take than they did offering Know Your Rights programs. At one neighborhood branch, the branch librarian spoke about many youths who requested to access the computers with a guest pass, instead of their own library card, because their parents did not want them getting a library card.
Accommodations like this help immigrants to access the same services as native-born patrons while also being able to maintain their anonymity. It is unlikely that this anonymity provides extra protection since respect for privacy is one of the tenets of librarianship, but anonymity does provide extra comfort for many immigrants.
Neighborhood branches also should develop plans for what to do if ICE officers enter their branch and try to detain a patron. No librarian was aware of ICE officers entering a neighborhood branch, nor have there been any national reports of ICE officers detaining immigrants in public libraries. Still, like almost all organizations and public spaces, public libraries are not “sensitive locations” in which immigrants are protected from ICE officers. As one branch librarian put it when talking about the potential for ICE to enter the neighborhood branches, “[I]t is not a matter of if this is going to happen. It is a matter of when.” When asked if they had a plan or protocol for what to do if ICE enters their neighborhood branch, almost all branch librarians responded that they would contact their supervisor. Neighborhood branches and all local organizations should consider putting in place concrete plans that can go into effect immediately. For example, a lawyer running one of the Know Your Rights programs explained that ICE officers can detain someone in the public part of the library, but not the private staff area. Neighborhood branches and other organizations may want to consider plans that involve first sheltering immigrants in the private part of the building and then contacting supervisors.
167 Conclusion: Learning from public libraries
Through this research on immigrant services in the neighborhood branches of the BPL, I have tried to show how local organizations broker resources from a variety of nontraditional community sources. The range of services and programs neighborhood branches make available to immigrant populations is likely surprising for those who do not follow library trends, but librarians are well aware of the vast and growing resources that public libraries offer. At the same time, this research has illustrated the generosity, creativity, and warmth of immigrants and native-born community members. Neighborhood library branches shed light on the desire to share, celebrate, help, and engage that is prevalent within and across neighborhoods. Individuals, groups, and organizations have so much to offer to one another, but they are held back by limited space and social and political barriers. Though this research is primarily about what unites neighborhoods and the power of communities to generate resources, it also highlights how a system of volunteers and local organizational partnerships can exacerbate inequalities across neighborhoods.
Going forward, there are some questions that remain unanswered and which warrant further research. First, what neighborhood branch characteristics that are not covered in this research, such as physical accessibility, affect access? Some branches are accessible for those who use wheelchairs or push strollers, whereas others are not. Some buildings need significant repairs, and others have been newly built or renovated. Additionally, the largest neighborhood branches are three-to-four times the size of the smallest branches. Second, how does the physical location within the neighborhood affect how likely neighborhood branches are to attract immigrants? Does the availability of parking matter? Is proximity to train stations more important for immigrants? Third, how, if at all, does organizational density at the neighborhood level influence organizational partnerships? How much of a role do relationships play in maintaining organizational connections?
168 These are all questions that came up during my research and deserve attention, but which I was unable to address within the scope of this study.
Lastly, though this research focuses on public library branches, much of it can apply to research and policies that address other types of local organizations. For example, both public and private community centers share many similarities with public libraries in that they provide a range of programs at the neighborhood level. Public schools and other government agencies will face similar barriers reaching immigrants as public libraries, and the consequences of not addressing them will be graver. If immigrants cannot communicate with their children’s teachers, as is suggested by some of the stories from branch librarians, their children may receive lower quality instruction.
Furthermore, as immigrants become more fearful of government institutions, this will influence school attendance. Parks are not organizations, but they should be welcoming to immigrants in some of the same ways that public libraries have learned to be welcoming. In summer months, parks host public programs, and some of the lessons from public libraries can be applied to them as they broker and publicize those programs.
Finally, employees at a range of local organizations serve to benefit from studying the practices of public librarians. Many librarians have developed creative and proactive community outreach strategies. They understand the importance of maintaining relationships with local organizations and groups. They are eager to find out what their neighborhoods need and adapt programs and services based on those needs. Finally, they place value on being welcoming and meeting people where they are. These are all qualities that are transferable to other professions and which help to strengthen communities and neighborhoods.
169 Appendix A | Interview schedule
The purpose of this research is to learn about how public library branches serve immigrant populations and draw on community supports to do so. Participation in this interview is voluntary. If you agree to be recorded, I will ask your permission before using any quotes. You may decline to answer any or all questions. You may decline further participation, at any time, without adverse consequences.
Background 1. In what year did you start working at the Boston Public Library (BPL)? 2. In what year did you start working at this branch? 3. In what year did you become the Branch Librarian here? 4. Have you worked at any other BPL locations? If so, which?
Community needs 5. How would you describe the community that your branch serves? 6. I know you do not have official service areas, but would you be willing to draw what you consider to be the approximate service area of your branch? 7. In regards to members of the local immigrant community, do they ask for specific library services? If so, what do they ask for? 8. Would you say that the need for adult literacy services in your community is greater among English Language Learners (ELLs) or native English speakers, or are their needs comparable?
Serving immigrant populations 9. Can you briefly list the services that your branch offers to immigrants? 10. With what organizations, if any, do you coordinate immigrant programs, services, and outreach? 11. Is your branch part of a local council or consortium for literacy or for immigrants? a. If yes, which one? b. If yes, how did your branch become involved with this council/consortium? 12. Questions regarding ESL conversation groups a. If the branch offers ESL conversation groups: i. I see that your branch offers ESL conversation groups. Could you tell me a little about why your branch offers these groups? ii. Can you tell me a little about who leads these groups? 1. If lead by volunteers, how do you find volunteers to lead these groups? iii. Do you have a sense of who attends these groups?
170 iv. How was the time and day of the conversation group(s) determined? v. Do you collect feedback from participants or track outcomes? 1. If yes, what do you collect/track? 2. If yes, what have you learned through this feedback? 3. If yes, has this feedback led to any changes in the conversation groups? vi. What is your impression of what participants get out of these conversation groups? vii. What is your impression of what volunteers get out of these conversation groups? viii. Does your branch receive funding for the conversation groups? If so, from what source? b. If the branch does not offer ESL conversation groups, but used to do so: i. I saw that your branch used to offer conversation groups. Were you here when they were offered? 1. If yes: a. Why did your branch offer ESL conversation groups in the past? b. Do you know how these conversation groups first came about? c. Can you tell me a little about who led these groups? d. Do you have a sense of who attended these groups? e. How were they funded? f. Why did the groups end? ii. Have patrons asked for opportunities to practice speaking English since? iii. Are there any plans to bring these groups back? c. If the branch has never offered ESL conversation groups: i. It seems as though your branch has not offered ESL conversation groups in the past. Is this correct? ii. Have patrons asked for opportunities to practice speaking English? iii. Has your branch ever considered offering ESL conversation groups? 1. If yes: a. What happened? b. What would your branch need in order to offer these groups? c. Are there any plans to institute these groups in the future? 2. If no: a. Is this because there has been a lack of interest or need, or is it due to a lack of volunteers and resources?
171 13. Questions regarding ESL classes a. If the branch has offered ESL classes sometime over the last year: i. I see that your branch offers/recently offered ESL classes. Could you tell me a little about why your branch offers/offered these groups? ii. Can you tell me a little about who leads these classes? iii. Do you have a sense of who attends these classes? iv. How was the time and day of the class determined? v. Do you collect feedback from participants or track outcomes? 1. If yes, what do you collect or track? 2. If yes, what have you learned through this feedback? 3. If yes, has this feedback led to any changes in the ESL classes? vi. What is your impression of what participants get out of these programs? vii. How are these classes funded? viii. Are there any plans to hold ESL classes at your branch again? b. If the branch does not offer ESL classes, but used to do so: i. I saw that your branch used to offer ESL classes. Were you here when they were offered? 1. If yes: a. Why did your branch offer ESL classes in the past? b. Do you know how the ESL classes first came about? c. Can you tell me a little about who led these classes? d. Do you have a sense of who attended these classes? e. How were they funded? f. Do you know why they were not offered again? ii. Have patrons asked for ESL classes since? iii. Are there any plans to bring these classes back? c. If the branch has never offered ESL classes: i. It seems as though your branch has not offered ESL classes in the past. Is this correct? ii. Have patrons asked for ESL classes? iii. Has your branch has ever been given the option to host ESL classes? iv. Has your branch ever considered offering ESL classes? 1. If yes: a. What happened?
172 b. What would your branch need in order to offer ESL classes? c. Are there any plans to institute these classes in the future? 2. If no: a. Is this because there has been a lack of interest or need, or is it due to a lack of volunteers and resources? 14. Questions regarding US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) information sessions a. If the branch offers USCIS information sessions: i. I see that your branch offers US Citizenship and Immigration Services information sessions. Why does your branch offer these sessions? ii. How was the time and day of the information session determined? iii. Do you collect feedback from participants? 1. If yes, what do you collect/track? 2. If yes, what have you learned through this feedback? 3. If yes, has this feedback led to any changes in the information sessions? iv. What is your impression of what participants get out of these sessions? b. If the branch does not offer USCIS information sessions: i. It seems as though your branch has not offered USCIS information sessions in the past. Is this correct? ii. Was your branch given the option to host these sessions? 1. If yes, what factored into the decision not to host them? iii. Are there any plans to institute these sessions in the future? iv. Have patrons asked for naturalization or citizenship programs? 15. Does your branch offer other bilingual or foreign language programs, such as story hours, book groups, or computer classes? a. If yes: i. How would you describe these programs? ii. Why does your branch offer these types of programs? iii. How did these programs come about? iv. Can you tell me a little about who leads these programs? v. Do you have a sense of who attends these programs? vi. How do you determine what time and day to hold these programs? vii. Do you collect feedback from participants? 1. If yes, what do you collect/track? 2. If yes, what have you learned through this feedback?
173 3. If yes, has this feedback led to any changes in the programs? viii. What is your impression of what participants get out of these programs? ix. How are these programs funded? b. If no: i. Has your branch offered bilingual or foreign language programs in the past? 1. If yes: a. Why did your branch offer these types of programs? b. How did they come about? c. Can you tell me a little about who led these programs? d. Do you have a sense of who attended these programs? e. How were they funded? f. Why did they end? 2. If no: a. Has your branch ever considered offering them? i. If yes, what happened? ii. If yes, what would your branch need in order to do so? iii. If no, is this because there has been a lack of interest or need, or is it due to a lack of volunteers and resources? b. Have patrons asked for programming in languages other than English? c. Are there any plans to institute bilingual or foreign language programs in the future? 16. Does your branch offer any other programs that are targeted to immigrants, such as cultural celebrations or immigrant rights information sessions? a. If yes: i. How would you describe these programs? ii. Why does your branch offer these types of programs? iii. How did they come about? iv. Can you tell me a little about who leads these programs? v. Do you have a sense of who attends these programs? vi. How are they funded?
Sources of support from outside the branch 17. Which local organizations and agencies do you most commonly refer immigrants to for services? 18. What role has your branch’s Friends of the Library group played in providing services, programs, outreach, or resources for immigrants?
174 19. In what ways does the central BPL help your branch to meet the needs of immigrants in your community? 20. Are there any sources of funding not already mentioned that help to support immigrant services and programs at your branch? 21. Are there any non-monetary resources not already mentioned —e.g., community members, local organizations, foundations, etc.—that have been helpful for creating services and programs for immigrant populations at your branch?
Outreach 22. How does your branch learn about the needs of immigrants in your community? 23. How does your branch let immigrants know about the programs and services available through the branch? 24. Does your branch advertise library programs or services in languages other than English outside of the library, such as at other organizations or on a website? a. If yes, which languages? b. If yes, where? 25. Do you have any data about how immigrant patrons typically learn about your branch and its services? a. If yes, what have you found?
Creating a welcoming and accessible environment 26. What practices has your branch found to be the most effective at making immigrant populations feel welcome in your branch? 27. Does your branch use signs, flyers, or brochures in languages other than English? If so, which languages? 28. What languages do you and your staff speak? a. If staff speak languages other than English: i. How has your branch been able to hire bilingual staff? 29. What do you and your staff members do if you do not speak the language or dialect of someone who comes into your branch? 30. Have you or your staff received training to work with immigrant populations? a. If yes, what kind of training? b. If yes, through what organization? c. If yes, why did your staff receive this training? 31. What are the main challenges of reaching immigrant populations? 32. Have officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ever approached or reached out to your branch?
175 a. If yes, what happened when they did? 33. Do you have a plan or protocol for what to do if ICE comes to your branch? 34. How, if at all, did the election of Donald Trump affect usage of your branch by immigrants? 35. How, if at all, did the election of Donald Trump influence how your branch serves immigrants?
Looking forward 36. What do you think your branch of the BPL could do to increase usage among immigrants? 37. Does your branch have any plans to offer new services or programs for immigrants in the future?
Lastly 38. Is there anyone, or any organization, with whom you think it would be helpful for me to speak? 39. Are there any written materials or data, either from the BPL or local organizations, that you think would be helpful? 40. Would you be open to my reaching out again if I have any further questions?
176 Appendix B | List of programs and events attended
Event Date Nonviolence intervention workshop February 23, 2017 Re-opening of the Jamaica Plain Branch May 20, 2017 Renovation community meeting of the Roslindale Branch October 16, 2017 Spanish/English Language Exchange/Intercambio de Idiomas en Inglés y October 28, 2018 Español Back Porch Collective January 20, 2018 Annual Friends of the South End Branch Library meeting January 30, 2018 Opening of the Chinatown Branch February 3, 2018 BPL Trustees meeting March 8, 2018 Tropical Fiesta March 10, 2018 BPL Trustees annual meeting May 8, 2018 Re-opening of the Parker Hill Branch July 28, 2018 USCIS information hour January 10, 2019 USCIS information hour January 12, 2019 USCIS information hour January 17, 2019 Know Your Rights March 14, 2019 ESL conversation group March 19, 2019 BPL Trustees meeting March 21, 2019 Bilingual story hour April 2, 2019 Friends of the Connolly Branch meeting April 8, 2019 Panel: The challenges of immigration April 18, 2019 BPL Trustees annual meeting May 14, 2019 City-Wide Friends of the BPL annual meeting May 21, 2019 Citizenship workshop July 15, 2019 Dominican Art with Marvin July 17, 2019
177 Appendix C | Sample branch librarian job description
The following branch librarian position was posted on http://www.bpl.org/general/jobposting/branchlib.htm in 2006. This page was accessed on December 6, 2019 through the Wayback Machine, https://web.archive.org/web/2006*/http://www.bpl.org/general/jobposting/branchlib.htm.
Career Opportunities Boston Public Library 700 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116 617 / 859 – 2356 Closing Date: Open until filled Position Title: Branch Librarian I (P3) Basic Function: Under direction of the Director of Public Services and the Director of Operations, to assume responsibility for the administration and programs of a branch library. Reports to: Director of Public Services and Director of Operations Supervises: The staff of a branch library. Typical Duties and Responsibilities: 1. Executes the policies and practices of the Library as they pertain to the Branch Library. 2. Assumes primary responsibility in one service area or more, depending on current staffing and community needs, when necessary. 3. Provides reference and readers’ advisory services, and programs which may involve all age groups. 4. Stimulates library use for all age groups within a defined neighborhood, through the development of programs, collections and community outreach. 5. Supervises the development and maintenance of the branch library's collections within the framework of Library policies. 6. Supervises, trains and develops each staff member to realize his/her full potential and use that developed potential to provide the best library service. 7. Works collegially with other Branch Librarians, department heads and staff throughout the library. 8. Demonstrates familiarity with and ability to apply collective bargaining agreements, as needed, to carry out the responsibilities as supervisor of branch staff. 9. Maintains the appropriate liaisons with regard to the Branch building. 10. Maintains working relationships with Friends of the Library, educational institutions, churches, social and community groups, and businesses in the community served. 11. Assumes responsibility for administering funds within the Branch. 12. Makes oral presentations and written reports on activities within the Branch. 13. Actively participates in system-wide committees, training and other professional activities. 14. Represents the Library on citywide and statewide committees, if called upon to do so. 15. Performs other related and/or comparable duties as required.
178 Minimum Qualifications A bachelor’s degree from a recognized college or university and a master’s degree in library science from an accredited library school. In exceptional instances, specialized education, training and/or experience may be substituted for part or all of the educational requirements. Four years of pertinent professional library experience and/or any equivalent combination of education, training and/or experience sufficient to indicate ability to do the work. Administrative insight and broad professional outlook; demonstrated progressive, professional development; broad knowledge of library policies, practices and procedures and willingness and ability to execute them effectively; extensive knowledge of book and non-book materials; comprehensive knowledge of bibliographical tools and sources; demonstrated knowledge of appropriate technology; broad knowledge of library collections; proven skills in oral and written communications; superior ability and willingness to assume responsibility; initiative in generating new ideas; proven ability to plan and supervise the work of others; continuing interest in and ability to improve existing work techniques and procedures; demonstrated ability to work successfully with staff and public alike; commitment to library leadership within the neighborhood served; willingness and proven ability to work with patrons of all age groups; professional demeanor; tact, dependability, good judgment and courtesy. Requirements: Must be a Resident of the City of Boston upon first day of hire
179 References
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