ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how an array of mainstream social institutions, including education, labor markets, and social welfare, have shaped the relative economic success of the first cohort of 'new immigrants' in United States (US), Canadian, and Australian cities following policy reforms of the 1960s. Compounding Institutional Forces create problems for immigrants because they tend to compound and magnify the adversities inherent in the process of migration and adjustment to a new environment. The chapter confirms that there is indeed a pattern whereby less-educated immigrants are clustered in the biggest US cities and those with highly educated economic elites. It describes that institutional individualism generates extreme inequalities for certain racial minority immigrant groups. Cultural underpinnings of inequality also help explain the relative importance of education and labor markets for immigrants. Inequalities related to educational skills have a powerful legitimacy because of a presumed positive relationship of education to economic productivity.
