Local context and immigrant bureaucratic incorporation: insights from Amsterdam and New York City

This article explains how bureaucratic inertia and resistance to accommodating immigrants were overcome in Amsterdam and New York City. Scholarship on ‘immigrant bureaucratic incorporation’ is based largely on research conducted in U.S. suburban and rural areas and tends to highlight the importance of bureaucrats’ professional ethos – at times amplified by inclusive state and federal policies. Building on this work, our examination of Amsterdam school policies and New York City language access policies underscores instead the importance of local political and civic context in explaining why and how bureaucracies responded to the needs of immigrant communities in these established gateway cities. While Amsterdam and New York City bureaucrats initially resisted accommodating immigrants’ needs largely due to big-government inertia, their interactions, synergies, and conflicts with other local governmental and nongovernmental actors active on immigrant issues eventually resulted in more inclusive school and language access policies and practices.