UI Press | Edited by Linda Allegro and Andrew Grant Wood | Latin American Migrations to the U.S. Heartland: Changing Social Landscapes in Middle America

Latin American Migrations to the U.S. Heartland

Changing Social Landscapes in Middle America

New perspectives on Latin American migration to the interior United States

This collection examines Latina/o immigrants and the movement of the Latin American labor force to the central states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa. Contributors look at outside factors affecting migration, including corporate agriculture, technology, globalization, and government. They also reveal how cultural affinities like religion, strong family ties, farming, and cowboy culture attract these newcomers to the Heartland. Throughout, essayists point to how hostile neoliberal policy reforms have made it difficult for Latin American immigrants to find social and economic stability.

Filled with varied and eye-opening perspectives, Latin American Migrations to the U.S. Heartland reveals how identities, economies, and geographies are changing as Latin Americans adjust to their new homes, jobs, and communities.

Contributors: Linda Allegro, Tisa M. Anders, Scott Carter, Caitlin Didier, Miranda Cady Hallett, Edmund Hamann, Albert Iaroi, Errol D. Jones, Jane Juffer, László J. Kulcsár, Janelle Reeves, Jennifer F. Reynolds, Sandi Smith-Nonini, and Andrew Grant Wood.

"Allegro and Wood have organized a volume that provides a more humane depiction of Latin American immigrants by carefully documenting the challenges and possibilities they present in the region. . . . They also do an excellent job of positioning the Midwest as a dynamic region where complex and often contradictory politics coexist."--The Annals of Iowa

"Allegro and Wood have assembled an interesting and informative set of essays useful to any scholar interested in the history of immigration to the United States and its regional, local, and national implications for the present and the future. A welcome assessment of what can happen when globalization disrupts rural communities on both sides of the border."--The Journal of Southern History

"An important contribution to our understanding of Latin American migration beyond the coast and borderlands. The contributors, ranging from historians to anthropologists to political scientists and sociologists, rethink and reconceptualize our traditional understanding of Latin American migration as well as the Heartland."--Kathleen Mapes, author of Sweet Tyranny: Migrant Labor, Industrial Agriculture, and Imperial Politics

"This collection of well-written essays stands out because it is a unique treatment of a geographical area--the American Heartland--which has been begging to tell its story. The essays break new ground in documenting the growing diversity of the migrant experience in the United States."--Norman Caulfield, author of NAFTA and Labor in North America

Linda Allegro is an independent scholar engaged in immigrant and worker advocacy in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Andrew Grant Wood is the Stanley Rutland Professor of American History at the University of Tulsa. He is the author of Agustín Lara: A Cultural Biography and Revolution in the Street: Women, Workers and Urban Protest in Veracruz, 1870–1927.

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