UB receives $500,000 Mellon grant to analyze immigration’s effects on local democratic norms

The faculty of UB’s Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) program have received a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation in support of a research project to examine how inclusive immigration practices in a Rust Belt City, like Buffalo, affect democracy and democratic norms.

The innovative project sets out to test whether new immigrants and refugees create the opportunity for democratic revival and aims to identify promising innovations that could be further developed and shared with other communities.

The findings that come from the project can provide policymakers, civic leaders and others who are thinking deeply about immigration with empirical and qualitative information for how new arrivals shape and potentially strengthen essential components of democracy at the local level.

The time is right for just such a project, according to principal investigator Alexandra Oprea, assistant professor of philosophy, College of Arts and Sciences, who says immigration has rarely been more salient politically in the United States than it is now.

“Our project’s goal is urgent, given the high levels of political polarization that have eroded national-level democratic norms and made it even more difficult for people to grapple with long-standing problems like poverty, racial segregation and xenophobia,” says Oprea, an expert in democratic theory. “But at the local level, if a community can accommodate and embrace people who come from very far away with different norms, then we have a strong indicator of health that makes other positive changes possible.”

Although a great deal of research has looked at immigration and democracy at the national and state levels, Oprea says the current project focuses on the local level, aiming to show that cities are one of the primary sites for shaping democratic identities.

Buffalo, like other Northeastern industrial cities, began experiencing a decline in the 1950s and 1960s that lasted for decades. But in Buffalo’s case, immigration, along with the city’s willingness to welcome new arrivals, could be among the factors driving the revival. More than 10% of Buffalo’s population was born outside of the U.S., according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and nearly half of these immigrants have arrived in the U.S. after 2010.

“Buffalo can serve as an important test case for other cities,” says Oprea. “It’s precisely Buffalo’s willingness to embrace immigration that we hypothesize is creating the new opportunities we’re seeing in places that were previously in decline.”

The PPE research team will look at three different types of communal spaces — the bazaar, the museum and the civic organization — to conduct focus groups with community members, showcases with local organizations and interviews with community leaders. This will allow them to gather first-person perspectives on immigration and democracy not available from studying traditional centers of democratic power such as political parties’ national conventions, the polling places on election day, the halls of Congress and the courtroom where oral arguments take place in front of the justices of the Supreme Court.

“We will focus on the West Side Bazaar, the Buffalo Museum of Science and local civic organizations working with immigrants and refugees,” says Oprea. “In each case, our goal will be first and foremost to listen, observe and understand.”

The grant will allow the team to hire a full-time civic engagement coordinator to help plan and oversee the project activities and recruit volunteers, and a postdoctoral fellow to help with bringing the project’s findings to a wider audience.

Oprea says the bazaar is an often-overlooked space for democratic contact that draws people into low-stakes encounters with others through human universals like sharing food, swaying to music and contemplating art, and builds the foundation for further democratic cooperation. The museum is distinctive as a democratic space in prioritizing the participation of families with young children who come to learn through guided exploration and free play. Finally, civic organizations often represent one of the first points of contact for new arrivals. These early encounters with civic organizations can have a great impact on how newcomers see themselves and their community.

“As we hear these stories and learn about local problems that require group input to solve, we can begin to see templates for collective action, which by definition is an example of the Tocquevillian-sense of local democracy,” Oprea says.

In addition to Oprea, project team members include UB colleagues Justin Bruner, associate professor of philosophy; David Gray, associate teaching professor of philosophy; Ryan Muldoon, professor of philosophy; Jacob Neiheisel, associate professor of political science; and Alexander Schaefer, assistant professor of philosophy.