Immigrant Households as Overseas Subsidiaries

In a study of urban poverty it is essential to examine the situation of the low-income immigrants, an increasingly important facet of city life, and to ask whether the immigrant experience differs from that of the ‘mainstream’ urban poor. Poverty is reproduced by the very conditions of immigration. These are people who left their country with little money in search of a better life, and who must now adapt to the structural constraints of the new milieu. Those who find themselves in a negative migration category, as illegal or undocumented aliens, will be further hindered in their flight from poverty. The immigration status by itself is not the determining factor, however, since some immigrants in the negative group are able to overcome that burden and eventually do well in their newly-adopted country. It becomes an obstacle when other factors are added, such as, for example, the inability to acquire permanent resident status and to find a good job. In our attempt to understand the process by which poverty is reproduced in urban Martinique it is crucial to pay attention to that negative category of immigrants because of their relatively large numbers in the slums and squatter settlements of Fort-de-France.1