Welcoming Cities/Unwelcoming States: Integration, Segregation and Suburban Sprawl in the U.S. South

This paper examines the spread of the new immigrant “ethnoburb” across Georgia. Gwinnett County is one of the most diverse counties due to immigration in the American South, and a top destination for immigrants, nationally. The emergence of immigrant-majority towns in suburban areas with low levels of resources for non-English speaking residents has created challenges at competing scales of local and state governance. Suburbs near Atlanta’s Buford Highway, where many immigrants live and work, experienced greater intensity of ICE enforcement due to policy shifts in the post-2016 Presidential Administration, as well as mixed forms of “welcome” from differently sized municipalities.