A Micro-Sociology of an Emerging Global City: Miami

This essay seeks to contribute to the contemporary literature on urbanization by focusing on the internal diversity existing in one emerging global city—Miami. We present first overall economic characteristics of this metropolitan area before discussing characteristics of three pairs of municipalities within it. These localities were deliberately selected to highlight contrasts and disparities in the history and present situation of specific places that tend to be ignored or bypassed in general descriptions of a given metropolitan area. A focus on these disparities provides a necessary tool to fully understand the dynamics of urbanization under contemporary capitalism.

Population Review

Volume 63, Number 1, 2024

Type: Article, pp. 78-97

A Micro-Sociology of an Emerging Global City: Miami *

Authors: Alejandro Portes & Ryan Bagwell

Authors affiliations: Alejandro Portes is Professor of Law and Distinguished Scholar of Arts and Sciences, University of Miami; Howard Harrison and Gabrielle S. Beck Professor of Sociology (Emeritus), Princeton University; and 2019 Laureate of the Princess of Asturias Prize in Social Sciences. Ryan Bagwell is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at University of Miami, specializing in race, ethnicity, and immigration.

* Previously published in the Occasional Papers Series of the Cuban Research Institute of the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs; Feb 2024, Florida International University: https://cri.fiu.edu/news/2024/.

Corresponding author/address: Alejandro Portes [email protected]

Abstract

This essay seeks to contribute to the contemporary literature on urbanization by focusing on the internal diversity existing in one emerging global city—Miami. We present first overall economic characteristics of this metropolitan area before discussing characteristics of three pairs of municipalities within it. These localities were deliberately selected to highlight contrasts and disparities in the history and present situation of specific places that tend to be ignored or bypassed in general descriptions of a given metropolitan area. A focus on these disparities provides a necessary tool to fully understand the dynamics of urbanization under contemporary capitalism.

Keywords

Urbanization, globalization, spatial disparities

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