Integration Beyond Numbers: Getting Along and Working Together in a Multiethnic Neighborhood

Abstract

Growing ethnic and racial diversity is transforming the United States and contributing to the emergence of multiethnic neighborhoods. Some view these neighborhoods as an alternative to racial segregation, holding the promise of improved race relations. Others argue that diversity reduces interpersonal trust and participation in collective life. How are people interacting and getting civically engaged in multiethnic neighborhoods?

My dissertation addresses this question based on a three-year ethnography of Rogers Park, Chicago, a neighborhood with white, black, Latino, and Asian residents. I conducted participant observation in public settings and community organizations—including a tenants’

association, Participatory Budgeting, a Catholic church, and a food distribution program—and 103 interviews.

The dissertation shows that there is peaceful coexistence among ethnoracial groups in public settings but there is unequal civic participation. In this progressive neighborhood, civic organizations encourage minority involvement, yet middle-class, middle-aged whites are the most involved in community meetings, participatory budgeting, and other activities. While norms of politeness guide social interactions and contribute to maintaining integration in public spaces, achieving integration in the civic sphere requires overcoming socioeconomic, citizenship, and institutional barriers to participation, such as distrust in the government.

My dissertation contributes to the literatures on race/ethnicity, urban and political sociology by showing the multidimensionality of integration and by explaining why there is peaceful coexistence in public settings and unequal representation in the civic sphere. Integration has spatial, social, civic, and symbolic dimensions. By examining integration in social and civic settings and adopting a multigroup perspective, I demonstrate that experiences of integration for different groups vary along different dimensions.