Latinization, Landscapes, and Soundscapes

Chapter 2 traces the long-term impact of Latino migration and the Latinization of communities. The chapter highlights the economic, cultural, and political influence of these newcomers by focusing on both the landscape and soundscape in the suburbs of Osceola County. The different ways that the demographic changes were talked about, understood, and sometimes contested are documented. Chapter 2 reveals how transformations to the landscape and soundscape and language ideologies impact racial identities, migrant incorporation, and the response to Latino migrants. These ideas or language ideologies reveal how linguistic practices are racialized along with other practices, physical characteristics, and signifiers of identity. Thus, this chapter begins to grapple with the complexity of race relations in the region by drawing attention to the circulation of racial anger, feelings of white exclusion, and the move to confine linguistic differences to the home.

Exploring Latinidad, Migration Processes, and Immigrant Experiences: Experiences Influencing Latino Health

Introduction Over the last few decades, Latino migration to the U.S.has re-shaped the ethnic composition of the country, and influencedthe meaning of “ethnic” and “racial” identity. The purpose of thisqualitative study was to explore the definition and meaning of beingLatino and how this may guide the development of interventions topromote their health. Methods Twenty-six Latino immigrants living in Kansas completeda socio-demographic survey and semi-structured interviews to assessand explore personal immigration experiences and perspectives onthe meaning of being Latino in the U.S. Results Participant reports were grouped into eight themes on Latinoidentity that were organized by geographic origin, family roots/ties,and acculturation. Immigration experiences were described as bothpositive and negative with most participants experiencing discriminationand loneliness, but also reports of improved quality of life.Further, most participants reported a strong sense of Latinidad; thatLatino immigrant communities in the U.S. are interdependent andsupportive of each other. Conclusions The experience of being a member of a minority groupmight contribute to the development of a cohesive sense of Latinoidentity as participants acculturate to the U.S. while preserving asense of attachment to their culture of origin. Future interventionsshould be sensitive to migration experiences as they might influencechanges in health behaviors.

Latino Immigrants in North Carolina

In the second edition of her insightful book on Latino migration to North Carolina, Hannah Gill of the University of North Carolina’s Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Center for Global Initiatives, recalls an anti-immigrant protest rally that occurred in April 2008 in Washington, the county seat of Beaufort County, North Carolina. More than one hundred people walked through the streets of Washington to attend a meeting of the Beaufort County commissioners, which had been called to discuss the cost of undocumented immigrants on county health and social services.

The Latino Migration Experience in North Carolina, Revised and Expanded Second Edition

Now thoroughly updated and revised—with a new chapter on the Dreamer movement and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA)—this book offers North Carolinians a better understanding of their Latino neighbors, illuminating rather than enflaming debates on immigration. In the midst of a tumultuous political environment, North Carolina continues to feature significant in-migration of Mexicans and Latin Americans from both outside and inside the United States. Drawing on the voices of migrants as well as North Carolinians from communities affected by migration, Hannah Gill explains how larger social forces are causing demographic shifts, how the state is facing the challenges and opportunities presented by these changes, and how migrants experience the economic and social realities of their lives. Gill makes connections between our hometowns and the globalization of people, money, technology, and culture by shedding light on the many diverse North Carolina residents who are such a vital part of the state’s population but are often unrecognized in many ways. This book is essential for everyone, including students and teachers, who wants to understand what is at stake for all parties and wants to work toward solutions.

Latino Destinations and Environmental Inequality: Estimated Cancer Risk from Air Toxics in Latino Traditional and New Destinations

Since the 1990s, Latino migration patterns have shifted from traditional destinations to new destinations away from the Mexico border. Scholars note disparities between destinations in housing, crime, and health care, yet no study has examined environmental inequalities. In this article we employ theories of spatial assimilation and environmental inequality to evaluate health risks across Latino destinations by asking the question, is there a difference in estimated cancer risk from air toxics among established, new, and nondestination locations? Using county-level data with spatial lag regression analyses, we find that early new destinations (i.e., counties with significant Latino growth from 1990 to 2000) and recent new destinations (i.e., counties with significant Latino growth from 1990 to 2010) have higher estimated cancer risk from air toxics than established destinations (i.e., counties at or greater than the national average of Latinos in 1990) and nondestinations. The effect remains significant when controlling for various economic indicators.

Latino Migration and the Ruins of Industrial America

To feel like you belong to a city and to feel intimately linked to its roots, it is not enough to just reside in a city. To accept a city as your own, you have to have lived, worked, suffered, and forged the history of that city....

Latino Urbanism and the Geography of Opportunity

As any ten-year-old in East L.A., or Philly’s El Norte knows, borders tend to follow working-class Latinos wherever they live and regardless of how long they have been in the United States. Mike Davis, Magical Urbanism As the twentieth century drew to a close, Lawrence barely resembled the city it had been at the end of World War II. While its landscape was still dominated by brick mills and triple-decker homes, its economy and population had been profoundly transformed by suburbanization, deindustrialization, and Latino immigration. As scholars develop a distinct historiography of postwar Latino urbanism, Lawrence may not prove to be typical—as no city could possibly be—but its history nonetheless provides a set of essential questions to address: What was the role of U.S. imperialism in the Latinization (and globalization) of U.S. cities in the late twentieth century? How did race and class segregation in the era of suburbanization and urban crisis impact Latino settlement patterns and experiences? How did Latinos fight against disinvestment and discrimination and strive to claim their right to the city? Where did Latinos fit in the larger stigmatization of the “inner city” and the broad turn to conservatism that this discourse helped enable? From the periphery of U.S. empire to the ghettos at its center, Latino migration in the crisis era was a protracted struggle against containment and marginalization. Imperial migrants fought to have in the United States what U.S. intervention had denied them at home, pushing back against barriers of race and class in a segregated metropolitan landscape....

LATINO MIGRATION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF U.S.A. CATHOLICISM: FRAMING THE QUESTION

Este ensaio estuda a relação entre a migração latino-americana em direção ao Norte e as mudanças que estão tendo lugar no catolicismo estadunidense. A parte principal do artigo concentra-se na profunda e histórica experiência religiosa que os latinos trazem à Igreja nos Estados Unidos, herança marcadamente diferente da anglo-americana. Ao pano de fundo colonial, entretanto, devem ser acrescentadas as profundas mudanças que aconteceram no catolicismo latino-americano no período posterior ao Concilio Vaticano II. Os latinos têm sido um canal para comunicar a visão dinâmica de Medellín e Aparecida à Igreja católica estadunidense mais focada na conservação que na missão. A seção final trata das contribuições específicas do catolicismo latino à vida da Igreja estadunidense contemporânea através dos métodos pastorais renovados, da opção pelos pobres e da teologia da libertação, assim como no âmbito da oração, do culto e da espiritualidade, a preocupação pela justiça social, a religiosidade popular e a pastoral juvenil – para mencionar apenas algumas poucas. A eleição do Papa Francisco, o primeiro papa latino-americano, destaca a influência emergente do catolicismo latino-americano na cena mundial e não apenas nos Estados Unidos.ABSTRACT: This essay explores the link between Latin American migration northward and changes taking place in U.S. Catholicism. A major part of the article focuses on the deep and historic religious background that Latinos bring to the Church in the United States, a heritage markedly different from that of Anglo America. To the colonial background, however, must be added the profound changes that have taken place in Latin American Catholicism in the period after the Second Vatican Council. Latinos have been a conduit for communicating the dynamic vision of Medellín and Aparecida to a U.S. Catholic Church focused more on maintenance than mission. A final section looks at specific contributions of Latino Catholicism to the U.S. Church’s contemporary life through renewed pastoral methods, the option for the poor, and Liberation Theology as well as in the area of prayer, worship and spirituality, concern for social justice, popular piety, and youth ministry—to name just a few. The election of Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope, highlights the emerging influence of Latin American Catholicism on the world stage and not only in the United States.