Reconsidering organizational resources and neighborhood inequality: How public library branches in Boston broker community resources for immigrants

Organizations determine our ability to access services, material goods, information, and social supports, and this is especially true for those who are socioeconomically marginalized and socially isolated. For decades, scholars have sought to understand how organizations connect low-income households of color to resources by looking at where organizations are located, but rarely have they considered the substance and quality of those resources. Through a mixed-methods study of neighborhood library branches and immigrant programs throughout Boston, Massachusetts, this research challenges the assumption that organizations provide equally valuable resources by examining the role of resources that originate within communities, expanding on traditional measures of organizational access, and exploring how neighborhoods shape organizational resources. I found that while branches were distributed equitably across neighborhoods, immigrant programs were unevenly distributed across branches, and only some effectively targeted resources to immigrant neighborhoods in need. In particular, branches in low-income communities of color experienced difficulty securing community resources, such as volunteers and organizational partnerships, necessary to address citywide socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic inequalities.