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.