Assignment Two - Three Lenses on Geographies of Identity

In their article, Latino immigrants and the renegotiation of place and belonging in small town America (2008), Nelson and Hiemstra employ critical theory to examine and compare the creation and maintenance of the Latin American identity through two case studies of immigrant/non-immigrant relations in Leadville, Colorado and Woodburn, Oregon. Both of these small communities have a 50% or above Latino population but the structures of these town created two separate outcomes of identity.
In Leadville, CO, the sociospatial structure is maintained in a way that separates immigrant Latinos from their non-immigrant counterparts. Latino immigrants occupy space on the outskirts of Leadville and use public spaces at different times (usually at night) than non-immigrants. Nelson and Hiemstra have found that these "parallel communities" created by geographically seperating immigrants from non-immigrants allow for residents to maintain images of immigrants created by the national media (p. 324). The authors have found that increasingly society-wide discourse that stresses the "illegality" of immigrants gives non-immigrants a publicly acceptable narrative to justify the exclusion of immigrants as well as functioning to make these immigrants feel like they themselves can never belong (p. 325). As Mexican-Americans in Leadville see the presence of immigrants as a threat to their own belonging, any chance of a unified Latino identity in this particular case study is shattered.
Nelson and Hiemstra saw a different outcome of the creation of identity in Woodburn, OR. Immigrants, largely working in the migrant farming industry, have been able to better assimilate into the Latino community, and have gained and maintained the support of Mexican-Americans in Woodburn. The acceptance of immigrants in this community can largely be attributed to the popular Chicano solidarity movements of the 1970s, and immigrants are not seen as a threat to the Latino-American identity (p. 329). The support garnered from this groups allows for immigrants to have a stronger and unified voice to negotiate their own "place" in this community. The Latino community in Woodburn has created a unified identity and sense of place and belonging, regardless of issues of citizenship (p. 333).