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New Destination Dreaming

Stanford University Press

Contents

List of Illustrations.................................................................................................................................................ixAcknowledgments.......................................................................................................................................................xiIntroduction: Immigrant Incorporation in Rural New Destinations.......................................................................................................11. "I'm a Person Who Likes Tranquility a Lot": Southern Region and Rural Space in the Hispanic Newcomer Experience....................................................232. "The Americans Give You the Opportunity to Work and Grow": Stability and Short-Distance Mobility in the New Rural Southern Economy.................................533. "It's Not Like If You Work in a Big Place and You Can Move up the Ladder": Insecurity and Stagnation in the Old Rural Southern Economy.............................834. "The Blacks Don't Like Us, and It's Worse Than with the Whites": Class Structure, Black Population Size, and the Threat of Social Leapfrogging.....................1135. "The White Americans Have Always Been Very Friendly": Discrimination, Racial Expectations, and Moral Hierarchies in the Black-White Binary.........................1426. "We're Here to Serve Our Residents": Service-Inspired Responsiveness to Hispanic Newcomers in Education and Health.................................................1797. "If I Didn't Trust You Before, I Don't Even Want to See You Now": Regulatory Ambivalence in Law Enforcement and the Courts.........................................209Conclusion: Promises and Pitfalls in the Rural American South.........................................................................................................231Appendix: Terminology and Methodology.................................................................................................................................269Notes.................................................................................................................................................................281References............................................................................................................................................................315Index.................................................................................................................................................................363

Chapter One

Southern Region and Rural Space in the Hispanic Newcomer Experience

BY 2003, Vera had lived in the United States for 16 years. When she was a young child in the early 1970s, she spent four years living with her father in Dallas, and then in the border city of El Centro, California. After he was jailed for dealing drugs, Vera went back to their small village in Querétaro, Mexico, where she remained for the next 15 years. At 23 she returned on her own to the United States in 1991—this time to eastern North Carolina with a temporary H-2B visa in hand to work in crab processing, an industry that is spread over the state's coastal tidewater region (Griffith 1993, 1995b, 2006; Hall 1995). Over the next decade, Vera moved from one crowded crabhouse to another, to the orange groves in Florida, to a cucumber nursery and a dirt packing plant in two other southeastern states, and to the infamous Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Tarheel, North Carolina (Associated Press 2007; Gartner 2007a, 2007b; LeDuff 2000) where she worked glazing cuts of ham. From Smithfield, Vera moved to the night shift in the worksite I call Textile Mill (a pseudonym) in Bedford County, to an aero-systems components manufacturing company in that same county, and finally to her current job as an ESL teacher in Bedford Elementary School. Because it was difficult getting American employers to recognize her two-year college diploma from Mexico, Vera earned a GED through Even Start, an innovative parent-child continuing education program affiliated with Bedford County Community College and Bedford Elementary School (see Gozdziak and Bump 2008), and took courses toward an associate degree at Bedford County Community College.

Because Vera had lived in urban areas in two traditional immigrant gateway states, Texas and California, I was curious to know what she thought about life in the rural South, and whether she had plans to stay or eventually leave. Overall, she reported liking the region and had no plans to move. To her, not only is eastern North Carolina less crowded and safer than California, but its public schools are also "a lot better" and its police more "trustful." She even said it feels more like home to migrants like herself who come from small villages abroad. Therefore, even though Vera still has family in California and acknowledged that her wages might be higher there or in other big cities, she preferred the "country" lifestyle for its peacefulness, beautiful natural landscape, and safety for children:

Vera: People from California want to know why I live here. My cousins say, "How's the life there?" I say, "Oh, it's kind of country life." "And you like that?" they ask. "Of course, I like that! I don't like to live around crime and all of that stuff. I'm diabetic!" [laughs]

Interviewer: So they don't understand it?

Vera: No, they don't understand. They make fun of it, and way the people talk. But I say I like it better than California, New York, or those places. I even brought my sister here, because I didn't want her to go to California. I told her to come to live here because it's better now that we're thinking about our kids. That's the main thing. I might get more money for what I do, a better house, a Mercedes Benz car, a restaurant or something, a better life, but the community there is wild. Especially the Hispanics. They've got the Vatos Locos Forever [a predominantly Mexican street gang], and I don't want that for my daughter. I could even go to Raleigh to make more money for my work, but I don't want to live in Raleigh. Big cities stress me out. And another one of the reasons that I stay in this state is because it's beautiful. The forest and all of that stuff. It's quiet, nice, and ... it's like home! Yeah, you can adapt here like home. So people make fun of it here, but it's a good life!

By contrast, Silvia is a Puerto Rican American from Spanish Harlem in New York City who married a man whose parents are originally from Bedford County. In the early 2000s, Silvia and her husband, with their daughter in tow, relocated to Bedford to be closer to his aging parents. When I interviewed her in 2003, Silvia was still undergoing both North-to-South and urban-to-rural shocks from the transition. Initially she was hesitant to admit it, afraid of possibly upsetting her new friends and colleagues, but she was extremely homesick for New York, a place where she said Americans have more knowledge of life outside a "black and white" box, and where they are "less close-minded" toward different cultural, ethnic, and religious practices. For Silvia, making friends and being accepted in the rural South is harder than she expected. For the...