Belonging in charlotte: multiscalar differences in local immigration politics and policies

Until the last quarter of the twentieth century, Charlotte, North Carolina, was a quintessential midsized Southern city. Charlotte and the surrounding Mecklenburg County had an economy that was centered on textile manufacturing and regionally oriented business services. Demographically, Charlotteans were overwhelmingly born in North Carolina or adjoining states. Mirroring other Southern cities, class and economic status were shaped by black-white constructs. As recently as 1990, the U.S. Census counted 97.4 percent of Charlotte residents as white or African-American, with Asians and Hispanics totaling 1.6 and 1.4 percent, respectively. Foreign-born city residents accounted for only 3.8 percent of the population (U.S. Census Bureau 1992). Long known for New South civic boosterism, Charlotte's urban fortunes and economic base dramatically changed with the relaxation of federal regulations governing interstate banking in the 1980s. Following the end of restrictions, North Carolina-based financial institutions aggressively purchased and merged their way to the top, and, in short order, were transformed into powerful national banks. By the turn of the last century, Charlotte had earned the title, "Wall Street South," and had claimed position as the second-largest banking center in the nation (Graves and Kozar 2010). As a part of this new financial sector prominence, the city's dominating corporate/governmental leadership began to craft a new civic identity, Charlotte: the "Global City" (Lassiter 2010). The strategy to move beyond the "New South" moniker was part marketing, but included public actions to foster international business growth and connectedness. For example, early in the 1990s, Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot launched the "international city" program. He appointed the Mayor's International Cabinet to ensure "a welcoming and accepting community for an increasingly diverse mix of cultural, religious, and ethnic groups" (Lassiter 2010). The cabinet, made up of civic leaders, put in place programs to add multilingual signs at the airport, citizenship training for new immigrants, and English as a second language class in the public schools. Following on, the Charlotte Convention and Visitors Guide, published in 2004-2005, promised that "multicultural Charlotte embraces and celebrates an ever-changing mosaic of cultures, faiths, and races" (Lassiter 2010). Working in collaboration with governmental initiatives, the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce established a new marketing group, Carolinas Regional Partnership (CRP). This public-private economic-development group leads local competition for global business investment and international tourism. While it initially targeted businesses in Europe and Japan, the CRP has increasingly forged corporate-investment linkages to Latin America, in conjunction with Charlotte's global finance infrastructure and extensive local airline connections to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. The 2011 relocation of Chiquita Brands International to Charlotte was one of the few economic development successes during the Great Recession. Chiquita executives cited the direct international airline connections to Latin America and growing bilingual labor force as key attributes for moving to Charlotte from Cincinnati. An additional element of Charlotte's globalizing status has been the city's emergence as a top migration destination for an increasingly diverse stream of domestic and international immigrants. In particular, Hispanic immigration is dominant. Between 1990 and 2000, 50 percent of international immigrants to the city were coming from Latin America. Domestically, new streams of Latinos moved from the traditional Hispanic states in the Southwest, as well as the Northeast urban centers. The pace and scale of immigrant growth in the city and surrounding metropolitan region are key factors in the Charlotte metro's designation by Audrey Singer (2004) as a "pre-emerging" immigrant gateway. …