Carolina del Norte: An Introduction

Carolina del Norte: An Introduction Altha J. Cravey, Gabriela Valdivia

Southeastern Geographer, Volume 51, Number 2, Summer 2011, pp. 213-226 (Article) Published by The University of North Carolina Press DOI: 10.1353/sgo.2011.0019

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sgo/summary/v051/51.2.cravey.html

Access provided by The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (5 Jul 2013 22:27 GMT)

Carolina del Norte An Introduction ALTHA J. CRAVEY University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

GABRIELA VALDIVIA University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

snapshots At Johnny’s Café on West Main Street in Carrboro, North Carolina, customers savor gourmet coffee with fresh pastries. Known for more than two decades as Johnny’s Sporting Goods, the small corner market stocked fishing tackle in a ‘‘down home’’ atmosphere until 2008 when Johnny sold the store. The new owners cultivate a wellheeled clientele who play speed bingo, enjoy live music, and simply ‘‘hang out with the neighbors.’’ Customers who enter through the door on the opposite side of the building, however, immediately hear colloquial Spanish and come face-to-face with boxes of onions, jalepeños, cilantro and a display of brightly colored $2 and $5 phone cards such as Te Cuento; Boss Carolina; Bang! D.F.; Sigo Siendo El Rey; and Red Carolina, used for calling throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Separated by a single door and a wall, this parallel world is Tienda Rosita, a Mexican family business supplying fresh produce to a growing Latina/o working-class clientele in the area. Here you can buy 10 limes for a dollar, and the owners take pride in bringing wholesale produce from the farmers’ market in Raleigh. On weekend evenings, a

taco truck parks in front of Tienda Rosita, offering a range of taquería fare such as tacos, consomé, and tamales. In 2010, the family that had managed Tienda Rosita for over ten years left without notice. Police doused students at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill with pepper spray and fired tasers into the air in 2009 in response to a noisy protest of an event that students considered thinlyveiled white supremacy. Tom Tancredo, a former Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, was invited by ‘‘Youth for Western Civilization’’ to speak on why public universities should not allow the children of undocumented Latina/o migrants to enroll and pay instate tuition. Many of these children have lived the majority of their lives in the United States and view it as home, yet they are mostly excluded from universities and community colleges in North Carolina because they don’t have the appropriate documentation of residency. Chanting ‘‘there’s no debate, no space for hate’’ outside the classroom where the speech was being delivered, student protesters interrupted Tancredo’s speech. Tancredo was escorted out by campus police after a small window was smashed. Student representatives southeastern geographer, 51(2) 2011: pp. 213–226

214

cr avey and valdivia

of the Carolina Hispanic Organization (CHispA), who attended the speech to protest Tancredo’s view, felt the outcome mischaracterized the position of those who support tuition benefits for all residents. In a report by the Raleigh News and Observer, the president of the organization is quoted saying: ‘‘We are the children of immigrants and this concerns us . . . We were more interested in an intellectual conversation instead of a shouting match . . .’’ (DeConto 2009). On the other hand, Tancredo used the UNC protest to stoke his anti-immigration view via a media blitz claiming his first amendment rights were violated: ‘‘There is no freedom of speech on hundreds of university campuses today for people who dare to dissent from the radical political agenda of the socialist left and the open borders agitators’’ (ABC News 2009). Tancredo returned in April 2010 to finish his talk, his visit financed partially by residents of North Carolina. One steamy summer day in 2008, tow trucks carried away dozens of cars and trucks from an apartment complex on the edge of Carrboro, selecting vehicles with dents, significant rust, and otherwise deemed ‘‘unsightly.’’ The apartments are popular with undocumented Latina/os because the location is adjacent to an informal day labor market where men can sometimes find temporary employment. Next, the tow truck drivers began to remove vehicles of non-residents and any that had a discrepancy when signatories of apartment rental contracts were compared with vehicle registrations. This meant that an apartment resident postponing car repairs had to pay $100 to the towing company to recover her or his car. On several occasions crowds gathered to protest, to try to stop the towing, or to hurriedly move

their cars before they were hauled off. When these protests erupted, landlords declared they were acting within their rights, that the towing fees were reasonable, and that they were merely enforcing a policy designed to prevent overcrowding of the lot and to keep the neighborhood ‘‘looking nice’’ by removing unsightly vehicles. Residents of the apartment complex, many of whom did not speak English, complained to the town of Carrboro about the situation. Eventually the mayor of Carrboro came to the apartments on behalf of the residents, arguing that low-income Spanish-speaking tenants were being unfairly targeted. While some members of the public applauded the town’s intervention, others criticized its decision to get involved in a private business’ affairs. Despite the mayor’s efforts, the town doesn’t have authority over the management’s parking and towing policies. His request to suspend the towing policy was not granted. This is Carolina del Norte. The stories of parallel/hidden and (un)documented worlds sketched above and the places where these worlds materialize are exemplary of the new geographies of Latinization in North Carolina we explore in this issue of the Southeastern Geographer. At first glance, these vignettes may seem to be isolated and disconnected events and locations that mark the presence of Latina/os within the geopolitical bounds of North Carolina. A closer look, however, suggests that these ‘‘snapshots’’ not only tell us about the local negotiations/contestations between new North Carolina residents and established ones who are thrown together via economic globalization, but also about the subjectivities, politics and moral geographies that emerge in relation to such engagements. This special

Issue Introduction

issue, focused on the connections, paths, and inter-relations of Carolina del Norte, explores the challenges associated with the Latin American diaspora as it unfolds here and now, in North Carolina and the United States’ South.

the latinization of place For this special issue, we asked contributors to consider how Latinization is shaping the dynamics of the place we know as North Carolina. Here, Latinization refers to the growing presence of Latin American and Caribbean peoples in places with limited previous exposure to them, as well as to the issues this growing presence raises regarding diversity, belonging, and difference. Latinization, as the felt and observed presence of Latina/o peoples, is transforming established places, politically and materially, and has the potential to nurture the emergence of new places and subjectivities. In geography, discussions of place emphasize the importance of nonlocal processes and events and how these affect places (Massey 2005); how different actors interpret and imagine places and by doing so end up transforming them (Duncan and Ley 1993; Casey 2001); how places are not fixed but actually change over time through their interaction with other places, sometimes in dramatic ways (Hall 1997); and how places are part and parcel of broader sets of social relations (Harvey 1996; Cresswell 2004). As these theorizations suggest, places are relational and dynamic; they have trajectories over space and time as a result of their shifting relationships and connections to other places, things, and peoples. Places are also material sites for the ex-

215

pression of struggles, cultures, economies and environments, not only ‘‘nodes in space’’ that connect processes (Escobar 2001; 2008). They are sites of encounter and disagreement, both experienced and embodied, as the Tienda Rosita, Carrboro apartments, and UNC campus snapshots suggest. Conceptualizing place this way means recognizing that place has some sort of internal order/coherence, mapped according to territorial politics. In some instances, defense of place involves boundary-making such as fixing certain peoples and cultures—identities—as different from each other and thus belonging (or not belonging) to a territory. Nation-making projects, for example, have sought to establish these sorts of people-territory articulations (e.g., Gregory 2004; Sawyer 2004). In turn, people living in place often seek to defend the connections, relationships, and identities that bind them—root them—to that particular location. In other words, they exercise the right to make their own places, rather than have them made for them by others (Castree 2004; Reyes 2010; 2011 forthcoming). In the more ‘‘regressive’’ of these cases, such mapping can lead to real or potential geographical apartheid, where difference implies an ethical evaluation of worth, and thus, of the right to belong to place (Gregory 2004). Yet, in other cases, people may embrace the translocal ties and social differences that challenge spatial distinctions of identity, that is, who belongs (or not) to a territory. The evaluation of ‘‘regressive’’ or ‘‘progressive’’ placemaking thus must take into account both the context of boundary-making (or -unmaking) (Castells 1997) as well as the power relations that frame efforts to maintain the ‘‘order of place,’’ as these can perpetuate the marginalization and exploita-

216


tion of those who are not empowered to claim place as their own. Borders and the defense of the ‘‘order of place’’ shape the dynamics of Latinization in the United States. This can take many forms. Borders can be represented by a line on a map representing geopolitical divisions between countries, or a wall that blocks the movement of people and things across national borders. Borders also can be embodied in legal objects such as passports, visas, and social security numbers that grant access to goods and services; trade agreements that sanction the flow of capital but not of people or their wants; or by actors, such as immigration control officers within states that police ‘‘proper’’ documentation and surveil those who appear visibly different (i.e., Hispanic). In all of these cases, the ordering/defining of place occurs through performative and exclusionary acts that identify those who supposedly have ‘‘the right to belong’’ to a geographical area and those who do not. In this introduction, we draw on conceptualizations of place as both dynamic and situated, relational and unbounded, to bring attention to the production of Carolina del Norte. While the term Latinization is often used to refer to demographic change associated with Latina/os settling in a U.S. state (and attendant changes, such as increasing demands for services, housing, education, as well as the proliferation of new businesses where Spanish is regularly spoken and the revitalization of some economically depressed areas) (Mohl 2003; Zarrugh 2008), the contributions in this special issue underscore that Latinization is also about the encounters, negotiations, and contestations between Latina/o and non-Latina/o peoples (and among La-

tina/os). From the multiple, ongoing relationships that link Latin American countries with the United States to the politics of gender and race that transform soccer fields in Siler City, to the negotiations of identities and borders within different public and private places (e.g., rural-, academic-, leisure-, art-, urban- and homeplaces), the contributors to this special issue demonstrate that the Latinization of North Carolina, and the South more generally, has intellectual, ethical, and embodied dimensions.

places have trajectories What do Tienda Rosita, university students’ responses to former United States Congressman Tancredo, and the Carrboro apartment complex tell us about the trajectories of Latinization in North Carolina? North Carolina is one of the new top destinations for Latina/os. Between 1990 and 2000 the Latina/o population in the state increased by approximately 394% (Kochar, Suro and Tafoya 2005), which led to palpable changes in the social, political, and economic fabric of the state (Hershfield and Simpson 2001; Smith and Furuseth 2006; Gill 2010). Stores like Tienda Rosita currently dot the North Carolina landscape— and the South, in general (e.g., Mohl 2003; Zarrugh 2008)—because they serve a clientele of translocal Latina/os that need and desire certain commodities to feel ‘‘at home’’: calling cards to reach loved ones in other countries, food products to prepare specific meals (nopales, chiles, tomatillos), Spanish-speaking stores where people can communicate with more ease, and so on. This clientele, Latinas/os, in Carrboro, is attracted to the area because of strong labor markets, policies that formally and in-

Issue Introduction

formally bring foreign workers and their families to the state (Perreira, this issue; Murphy, Blachard and Hill 2001; Selby, Dixon and Hapke 2001; Cravey 2005) and the desire to live in a more ‘‘tranquilo’’ place—a place where kids will not be as exposed to gangs and drugs as in the established gateway cities of the United States (Smith 2006). In the 1990s and the first years of this century, North Carolina appeared to be a safe place for Latina/os to raise a family— long term residents might be unfriendly but the situation was not as hostile or prone to violence as the west coast (Johnson-Webb 2000). During this same period Latina/os began small businesses and also began to find urban jobs. Day labor markets sprang up in the parking lots of building supply stores and at heavily traveled intersections to meet labor demands associated with a fast growing economy. The Carrboro apartment complex described above is an attractive housing option for new Latina/o residents seeking to increase their chances of obtaining daily wages; it is conveniently located in close proximity to a well-known informal day labor site. The high concentration of Latina/o tenants also offers a sense of community and support networks for new and established migrants. These sorts of demographic changes are not accidental in North Carolina or the South (Johnson-Webb 2002; 2003). As Leon Fink documented in the Maya of Morganton, support networks that facilitate the Latinization of the South are closely linked to the specific labor demands of rapid economic expansion. Poultry disassembly factories for instance, while expanding rapidly in the southeast, paid Mexican and Guatemalan workers a cash premium ‘‘per head’’ if they brought other

217

Latino workers from South Florida or from Latin America (Cravey 1997; Fink 2003). Likewise, Mexicans living in California heard about the ‘‘good jobs’’ and ‘‘tranquilo’’ atmosphere in North Carolina and moved east (Johnson-Webb 2000). Indeed, North Carolina, along with other Southeastern states, still promotes itself as an attractive destination for those searching for better economic opportunities (Figueroa 1996; Ross 2002). According to the North Carolina Office of the Governor, North Carolina is the third best state for businesses in the United States and has a ‘‘top business climate’’; second in the nation for job creation (2009–2010); third best among states in declining unemployment; fifth in the nation for personal income growth since 2009; and jobs added and promised are on the rise (North Carolina Office of the Governor 2010). This optimistic economic profile may well be changing as a result of the recent economic meltdown, which raises questions about how the changing economy of the state will affect the labor markets and ‘‘tranquilo’’ atmosphere for Latina/os. We discuss these impacts in more detail below. Confrontations taking place on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus illustrate the vehemence of debates over the responsibility of the state to provide public goods such as higher education for the children of both new and established residents (Winders 2005: Smith and Winders 2008; Ansley and Sheffner 2009). At the heart of this discussion is the issue of citizenship: Who belongs and who does not? Who participates in place-making and in what ways? How do the technical issues of residency and/or citizenship delimit (or not) access to a college degree and the social worlds that only college graduates may enter?

218


The question of when it matters is also fundamental. Given the budget deficit that the State of North Carolina is currently facing, expected to be $3.2 billion next year according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, questions of labor, residence, and education and who will finance education and other public goods have become red hot. The presence of former United States Congressman Tancredo at the UNC campus and the responses he received from supportive and protesting students illustrate how and where state policies are being discussed and how individuals see themselves and others affected by public policy and popular discourse in these times of financial stress. Quite a few Latina/o students in the UNC statewide system, not just the Chapel Hill campus, have organized in support of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act), a bill re-introduced in Congress in 2009 to open the doors of public universities to certain undocumented students who graduate from high schools in the United States. Latina/o students have also taken the lead on diverse immigrant issues and events.1 Many of these students are either migrants themselves or daughters and sons of migrants and their actions demonstrate that Latina/os (with and without documentation) are active in setting an agenda about their own future. A willingness to fight for the right to education for all can be deeply transformative on a personal level, according to Gabriela Lemus, representative of HOLA (Herman@s Orgullos@s en Las Americas), the Latina/o outreach group at UNC-Asheville (Lemus, unpublished manuscript).2 In this regard, students’ struggles for the right to a place that they can claim as their own

underscore the need for a better understanding of the relationship between Latinization and projects of ‘‘Latinidad,’’ selfdirected attempts at formations of new subjectivities that don’t simply resist exclusion, or even demand inclusion, but carry an implicit and distinct alternative to the parameters of ‘‘the order of things’’ in North Carolina. These are the sorts of entanglements of Latinization we aim to highlight and the sorts of questions we believe are necessary to ask regarding the North Carolina/Carolina del Norte dynamic. The papers in this issue not only highlight transformations among Latina/os, and between Latina/os non-Latina/os, in North Carolina but also take a reflexive stance as to how to theorize Latinization in place. From reflections on the moral geographies of responsibility and cosmopolitanism vis-à-vis Latina/os in the state, to the ways in which intimate politics of gender, class, and race intersect migration and education policy, to the metaphorical and physical presence of geopolitical borders in North Carolina—a ‘‘non-border’’ state—(e.g., the creation of a Latina/o Studies program or art that playfully and provocatively meshes cultural symbols of North Carolina and Mexico), each paper offers stories of place that are sensitive to social and political specificities, while also reflecting on the intellectual challenges of writing about the Latinization of place. Discussions of Latinization are not new, as Winders points out in the concluding commentary. Neither are theorizations of place and place-making within geography. What this special issue contributes is a much needed contextualization of how Latinization produces place and a reflexive exploration of the ethics of such produc-

Issue Introduction

tion. The contributors to this issue do so by showcasing social, political, cultural and ethical dimensions of Latina/o presence in North Carolina today. They bring attention to the processes by which Latina/o diaspora is recharting racialized and classed urban/rural politics, social terrains of belonging, and identities in the South, as well as how the already existing uneven geographies of space and place interact with these rechartings to produce a new sociocultural landscape in North Carolina. The Latin American diaspora in North Carolina has unmistakably transformed places within the state, creating a multitude of sites from which to conceptualize new social and cultural realities. In some North Carolina places, there are efforts to ‘‘purify’’ space, while in other locations hybrid spaces have emerged and are nurtured. In yet other parts of the state, parallel worlds seem to operate side-by-side, albeit uneasily. Below, we introduce each of the papers and chart out some of the ways in which the Latinization of North Carolina places is explored in this issue.

carolina del norte places Rural/urban places Latinization of North Carolina began in the rural places that are the focus of Jeff Popke’s reflective essay (this issue). Foreign workers were recruited for, and quickly became dominant, in a variety of rural agricultural activities in the state in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. Farmers who had steadfastly resisted the idea for decades, began relying on massive flows of Mexican farm workers.3 As Popke points out, the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) marked a dra-

219

matic transformation in small towns and rural parts of the state. On one hand, rural North Carolinians were told that many textile jobs would be sacrificed for the greater good of ‘‘free trade.’’ On the other hand, sunbelt expansion in the state involved the ‘‘insourcing’’ of Mexicans and Guatemalans who toiled in rural places such as low-wage poultry and hog processing factories; cucumber, tobacco, and sweet potato fields; and Christmas tree and wreath enterprises. For a few years, Latinization was literally hidden from view in farm worker camps, rural fields, and other remote places in the state. By the turn of the century, Latinization was becoming visible to North Carolina’s urban residents. Analyzing both sendingand receiving-community-contexts, Perreira shows that many immigrants to the state came from areas in Mexico that were not involved in previous waves of migration (i.e., historic flows initiated by, and/ or stimulated by, the Bracero Program (1943–1965)). Instead, newcomers came from poorer—and more indigenous—locations in Southern Mexico and Southeastern Mexico. If in North Carolina NAFTA meant the decimation of certain manufacturing jobs (e.g., textiles), in Mexico it meant the privatization of rural lands (ejidos) and the wholesale destruction of smallholder and peasant agricultural production, forcing hundreds of thousands of people off of their lands and into the migration trajectories that today link these two places. Latinos do most of the menial agricultural tasks in North Carolina today and during the 1990s they also began to settle in cities where they were recruited into construction, landscaping, restaurant, and janitorial work (Kasarda and Johnson

220


2006; Gill 2010). Guestworker visas such as H2A and H2B allowed some migrants to cross the international border and arrive in the state with official permission, although many more migrants came to the state without official permission.4 Thus, while one branch of the federal government helped to facilitate rapid demographic change in the state in the late 1980s and the 1990s, another branch of the government subsequently assisted in a crackdown against Latinos that was fueled by the economic meltdown of 2008, consequent high unemployment, as well as nativist reaction in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2002. Latinization in North Carolina thus, follows a long established United States pattern of invitation and reversal, of toleration and subsequent harassment and deportation. As in California, Texas, New York and Illinois, these upand-down cycles of tolerance/intolerance closely correspond to economic cycles: Latinos are welcome in boom times yet demonized (or worse) in recessions. Thus as in earlier iterations of Latinization in other parts of the country (for example, see Mitchell 1996), Latinization in North Carolina has allowed powerful employers to create a highly flexible, distinctly vulnerable, precarious workforce in low wage sectors of the state. The Latinization of rural/urban places in North Carolina is experienced and embodied by both established and new residents. For political conservatives on the immigration issue—especially those in rural areas of the state—NAFTA and economic neoliberalization delivered new hardships while simultaneously devaluing agricultural and other rural livelihoods (Popke, this issue). NAFTA also delivered brown skinned workers to towns and farm-

steads in which local families’ histories (white and African American) had been entwined for generations. The unfamiliar men who arrived in yellow school buses with government work visas spoke Spanish and sometimes even indigenous languages such as Zapotec, or Otomi, or Mixtec. Before long their children were present in local public schools that had been desegregated only recently (in the 1970s and later) and that in any case had ‘‘belonged to’’ local white and African American families for four or five generations or more (Stack 1996; Cravey et al. 2001; Louis 2004; Smith Nonini 2005). For many members of the Latina/o diaspora (especially of those of the working class) North Carolina has entailed heartaches mixed with day-to-day pleasures and a few successes (Southern Oral History Program at UNC-Chapel Hill 2004). They have made homes, raised children, discovered new foods, divorced, married, died, loved, listened to music, played soccer, painted murals, and studied English (Cuadros, this issue; Valdivia, Palis and Reilly, this issue). Economic neoliberalization and NAFTA pushed many away from home and inserted them into long-distance networks of care and care-giving; transnational parenting; risky journeys to tend to aging parents, legal matters, or health crises; opportunities for new careers; precarious jobs; spiritual awakening; and unfamiliar English-speaking people and ways of life. For hundreds of thousands in Carolina del Norte who live in households of mixed residency status, or who lack permission to be in the United States, there is a lot at stake in seemingly innocent daily interactions with co-workers, employers, neighbors, fellow students, police, storekeepers, and/or clients.

Issue Introduction

Leisure places Like other places in the world that have experimented with guest worker programs, North Carolina learned that guest workers are complex human beings who sleep, play, have sex, sing, and do many things besides doing the jobs that ‘‘no one else wants to do.’’ At the beginning, Latinization was dominated by young, hardworking men. Newly emergent Latino spaces in North Carolina were starkly masculine spaces for a few short years (Cravey 2005). As sunbelt investment skyrocketed and jobs expanded in the state, migrants invited relatives and friends to join them (Perreira, this issue). More Latinas came to the state, children were born, and families and young people carved out leisure spaces for Latino pastimes such as listening to music, dancing, shopping at outdoor markets, and playing soccer (Cuadros, this issue). As Paul Cuadros shows, such leisure places reveal deep insights about positive aspects of Latinization in North Carolina. For example, like their male counterparts, Latinas enjoy the soccer field as a place to unwind and express oneself freely. And unlike Latino men, these women sometimes must battle cultural stereotypes of proper feminine behavior in order to claim the same simple pleasures (Cuadros, this issue). Places of artistic expression The evocative descriptions of Latina futboleras provide just a hint of the creative potential that lies in artistic expression, such as the paintings of Cornelio Campos (Valdivia, Palis and Reilly, this issue). Campos’s artwork, its circulation to schools, galleries, and festivals, and its reception and interpretation challenge us to think more carefully about the profound social psychologi-

221

cal inscriptions of Latinization in the state. How does Campos’ life inform his treatment of certain subjects? Valdivia, Palis, and Reilly analyze the urgency of Campos’ paintings and document the way Campos’ own life story propels his vision and desire to communicate through painting (this issue). Pushing further, these authors explore the reactions of undergraduate students to his imagery and artwork. These media spaces—or perhaps art spaces is a more appropriate term—record and arouse embodied feelings of joy, suffering, love, freedom, and resilience. The variety of student interpretations is in line with Campos’ explicit goal of using aesthetic activism to generate reflection on topics such as inequality, cultural difference, and (il)legality. Art also has potential for longevity: It is difficult to silence brown bodies painted on canvas that may live on in art galleries and other art venues. Likewise, Latinization in North Carolina has spawned many types of new art places and enriched the range of artistic expression through music, cuisine, handicraft, dance, literature, and video (Bishop et al. 2008; DeGuzmán, this issue). For instance, indigenous Otomi in Durham gather to celebrate carnival with specific ritual music and costumed dancing (Cravey and Bishop forthcoming 2011). Likewise, followers of the Virgin of Guadalupe self-organize elaborate annual celebrations in La Maldita Vecindad (‘‘the damned bad neighborhood’’) where matachine dancers of all ages perform their devotion. Hundreds of students in K-12 and college classrooms have seen this event as videotaped by Mexican social activist Javier Garcia Méndez and his collaborators (Bishop et al. 2008; Cravey 2009).

222


Places of knowledge production Latino experience and expression also lies at the heart of the new Program in Latina/o Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (DeGuzmán, this issue). Bringing together diverse fields of study, this initiative as well as the Latijam media project5 spearheaded by Journalism and Mass Communications Professor Lucila Vargas (http://weblogs.jomc.unc .edu/latijam/), create new knowledge, innovative practices, as well as more densely networked material linkages from the elite spaces of the university to the ‘‘real world’’ and back again. Latinization in this way permeates the spaces of knowledge production and the social relationships that connect campus and community spaces. It also materializes through the creation of new academic courses, the development of student and scholar activism, and the growth of academic curricula that is more representative of contemporary North Carolina society. DeGuzmán signals this positive potential with the term ‘‘hybrid spaces’’ though she acknowledges that Latinized linkages between academic and ‘‘real’’ worlds cannot be guaranteed to meet the expectations of those that promote them. As she carefully notes, Latinized places of knowledge production, such as the university, involve struggles that require a continuous investment of cultural, financial, and political capital.

concluding remarks As Arturo Escobar recently argued (2008), a focus on the everyday practices of marginalized peoples provides an analytic on contemporary struggles that are often hidden from view, camouflaged in plain sight, transient, fluid, and hard-to-

define. The contributors to this issue are animated by the need to analyze and understand the geographies of Carolina del Norte and show some of the ways these intersect the parallel—and less hidden worlds—of North Carolina. The papers also push these connections further in an effort to help us imagine the potential in these encounters (Popke, this issue) as well as to highlight the role of academics in bringing these two worlds into conversation (DeGuzmán, this issue). If places are constructed out of articulations of social relations (social and economic connections, thoughts of home and belonging, imaginaries of what constitutes ‘‘proper’’ places) that link the local to places elsewhere, what do these stories of place say about the contemporary conjuncture, and vice versa? What do we know about the current moment of Latin American diaspora in North Carolina? All of these narratives indicate that there are or have been several disruptions of the ‘‘order of things’’ and that these are producing anxieties about what is coming in the future. Those, like Tancredo’s supporters, who would bar undocumented Latina/o students from the state’s colleges, see Latinization as a disruption of state affairs. Many such immigration hardliners insist on reinforcing existing and building more physical and metaphorical borders within North Carolina to protect ‘‘our’’ collective resources, such as community colleges, state universities, and public clinics. From the perspective of the diaspora, the proliferation of borders translates into the need to create new ways to continue working and raising families in place despite increasing political volatility, that is, to overcome borders so they too can live as residents who both contribute to and use

Issue Introduction

state resources. The narratives of Latinization and place in this issue invite us not only to recognize these dimensions of Carolina del Norte but also to consider the implications of its construction and transformation for all residents. These explorations of the role of Latinization in the production of the South as the Nuevo New South are not meant to serve only as documentation of change but also themselves have consequences. As Massey (1995) points out: ‘‘the description, definition and identification of a place is thus always inevitably an intervention not only into geography, but also at least implicitly, into the (re)telling of the historical constitution of the present. It is another move in the continuing struggle over the delineation and characterization of space-time’’ (p 190). Aware of the implications of this (re)telling of North Carolina and its Other, Carolina del Norte, we recognize that there are geometries of power at work in any academic endeavor, including this one. As such, we see this special issue as the beginnings of a conversation about the present Latinization of North Carolina and its potential trajectories and futures. A look at the effects of recent national debates on immigration reform, the securing of geopolitical borders, and the devolution of immigration policing to state and local authorities (Winders 2007; Coleman 2007, 2009; Varsanyi 2008) affirms our position that attention to both the translocal and embodied dynamics of place is necessary for better understanding Latinization in the South. As we write this introduction, the geographies of parallel/hidden and documented/undocumented places continue to shift among Latina/os in North Carolina. Most recently,

223

there has been a proliferation of borders that inhibit mobility within the state, especially for those who are undocumented, or who live in households of mixed residency status, or neighborhoods/communities with many undocumented members.6 For example, routine traffic stops have led to arrest (and deportation) of hundreds of undocumented Latina/os by Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE) agents and, in certain locations, police regularly use roadblocks to stop vehicles in order to request and review drivers’ licenses (which undocumented Latina/os can no longer obtain in the state).7 Latina/o church attendance has dropped off in counties (such as Alamance County) with aggressive surveillance, rural flea markets (and the vendors who sell there) have suffered a sharp decline in attendance, and undocumented people find new routes for travel to their jobs so that they can avoid detection (Cravey and Worthen 2009). In the words of Domenic Powell, a member of the immigrants’ rights group the North Carolina DREAM Team: ‘‘North Carolina has returned to segregation—to putting people at the back of the bus’’ (Powell 2011). Segregation and fear stand in contrast to efforts that encourage the making of Carolina del Norte. For example, organizations such as El Centro Hispano, sponsored by the City Council of Durham, GlaxoSmithKlein, and the United States Department of Human Health and Services, among many others, seek to support the basic rights of all Latina/o residents by offering English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, legal counseling, and resources that keep individuals and families connected to their home countries while in North Carolina.8 In other words, these organizations and many others work to knock down new and

224


existing boundaries of place so that Latina/os too can become visible within North Carolina. Our hope is that this special issue will call attention to the way Latinization has, and continues to, provoke an explosion of border-making and bordercrossing in the South.

competent local reporting about Latino life in North Carolina. This mission is carried out through a strategy that addresses needs in four areas: news, research, curriculum, and engagement and public service. For more information see http://weblogs.jomc.unc.edu/. 6. Research shows that many of the estimated 12 million immigrants ‘‘in the shadows’’

notes

in the contemporary United States live in house-

1. The Dreamers are represented as silhouet-

holds where one or more persons have citizen-

ted graduates with mortarboards in the artwork

ship or residency and others do not. This is par-

of Cornelio Campos on the cover of this special

ticularly true for Mexican immigrants due to the

issue.

long politicized history of out-migration and

2. HOLA, based at UNC-Asheville, is a student group that seeks to connect students with the Latin@ community throughout Western North Carolina. HOLA organizes on campus

settlement from Mexico in the United States (Frey and Passel 2009). 7. State law in this regard changed in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

events and volunteer opportunities in the com-

8. El Centro Hispano, founded in 1992, is a

munity, and sponsors and supports a number of

grassroots community based organization that

Latin@ groups in the community, including

aims to strengthen the Latina/o community and

TELASH, COLA, Nuestro Centro, and Defensa

improve the quality of life of Latina/o residents

Comunitaria. HOLA emphasizes the recognition

in Durham, North Carolina, and the surround-

and protection of human rights and equality;

ing area (see: http://www.elcentronc.org).

diversity in the university and community at large; and education and leadership for Latin@

references

students. For more information, see the organi-

ABC News. 2009. UNC protest gets rowdy.

zation’s

weblog:

http://holaunca.wordpress

.com/. 3. In the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, southern

Local/State News. Tuesday, April 15. http:// abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section= news/local&id=6761633.

farmers were even opposed to the idea that

Ansley, F., and Shefner, J. (eds). 2009. Global

farm workers should be allowed to travel from

Connections and Local Receptions: New

county to county because of the incremental in-

Latino Immigration to the Southeastern U.S.

crease this could have on labor costs. For the

Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

same reason, southern farmers fought tooth-

Bishop, E., Cravey, A.J., and Garcia Méndez, J.

and-nail to ensure that agricultural workers

2008. The virgin appears in ‘la maldita

were exempt from New Deal labor protections

vecindad.’ Video documentary in English

(Hahamovich 1997).

and Spanish versions (33-minutes). http://

4. The H2A and H2B provisions of United States immigration law has granted temporary visas to foreign workers for particular employers

virginappears.unc.edu/. Two Quetzales Productions. Casey, E. 2001. Between geography and

in a few specific economic sectors since the Im-

philosophy: What does it mean to be in the

migration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

place-world? Annals of the Association of

5. Latijam promotes and practices fair and

American Geographers 91:683–93.

Issue Introduction Castells, M. 1997. The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell.

225

labor, NACLA Report on the Americas, 30 (November/December):18–22.

———. 2004. Differential geographies, place,

Fink, L. 2003. The Maya of Morganton: Work and

indigenous rights and ‘local’ resources.

Community in the ‘Nuevo’ New South. Chapel

Political Geography 23(2):133–167. Coleman, M. 2007. Immigration geopolitics

Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Frey, R., and Passel, J.S. 2009. Latino children:

beyond the Mexico-U.S. Border. Antipode

A majority are U.S.-born offspring of

39(1):54–76.

immigrants. May 28, 2009. Pew Hispanic

———. 2009. What counts as geopolitics, and where? Devolution and the securitization of

Center Report. Gill, H. 2010. The Latino Migration Experience in

immigration after 9/11. Annals of the

North Carolina: New Roots in the Old North

Association of American Geographers, 99.

State. Chapel Hill: The University of North

Cravey, A.J. 1997. Latino labor and poultry production in rural North Carolina. Southeastern Geographer 37(2):295–300. ———. 2005. Desire, work and transnational identity. Ethnography 6(3):357–383. ———. 2009. Creating a cultural connection. Tar Heel Junior Historian 49(1):30–32. Special issue on ‘‘Creative North Carolina.’’ ———, and Worthen, H. 2009. Region, race, and reproduction: Mexican transnational lives in the U.S. South (June). Paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association Meeting. Rio de Janeiro. ———, and Bishop, E. Otomi Translocal lives in Durham and San Pablito. 2011. Southern

Carolina Press. Hahamovich, C. 1997. The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870–1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Hall, T. 1997. Images of industry in the postindustrial city: Raymond Mason and Birmingham. Ecumene 4(1):46–68. Harvey, D. 1996. Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell. Hershfield, J., and Simpson, P. 2001. Nuestra communidad. (60 min documentary film). New South Productions. Johnson-Webb, K. 2000. Formal and Informal

Spaces. Multimedia essay (narrative, still

Hispanic Labor Recruitment: North Carolina

photos, and video clips). Special issue on

Communities in Transition. Dissertation.

‘‘Migration, Mobility and Exchange in the U.S. South.’’ Forthcoming. Cresswell, T. 2004. Place: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Duncan, J., and Ley, D. (eds). 1993. Place/ culture/representation. New York: Routledge. Escobar, A. 2001. Culture sits in places: Reflections on globalism and subaltern strategies of localization. Political Geography 20(2):139–174. ———. 2008. Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Durham: Duke University Press. Figueroa, H. 1996. The growing force of Latino

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ———. 2002. Employer recruitment and Hispanic labor migration: North Carolina urban areas at the end of the millenium. The Professional Geographer 54(3):406–421. ———. 2003. Recruiting Hispanic labor: Immigrants in Non-Traditional Areas. LFB Scholarly Publishing. Kasarda, J., and Johnson, J., Jr. 2006. The Economic Impact of the Hispanic Population on the State of North Carolina. Chapel Hill: Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. Katz, C. 2001. Vagabond capitalism and the

226

cr avey and valdivia necessity of social reproduction. Antipode 33(4):709–729.

Kochar, R., Suro, R., and Tafoya, S. 2005. The New

in the New South: Transformations of Place. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing. Smith, B., and Winders, J. 2008. ‘‘We’re here to

Latino South: The Context and Consequences of

stay’’: Economic restructuring, Latino

Rapid Population Growth. Pew Hispanic

Migration, and place-making in the U.S.

Center, Washington, DC.

South. Transactions of the Institute of British

Lemus, Gabriela. 2010. Supporting the DREAM: Students Demand College Access for All. Unpublished manuscript. Massey D. 1991. A global sense of place. Marxism Today (June):24–29 ———. 1995. Places and their pasts. History Workshop Journal 39:182–192.

Geographers NS 33:60–72. Smith, R.C. 2006. Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants. Berkeley: University of California Press. Smith-Nonini, S. 2005. Federally-sponsored Mexican Migrants in the Transnational South. In Peacock, J. L., H. Watson and

———. 2005. For Space. London: Sage.

C. R. Matthews., Eds. The American South in

Mitchell, D. 1996. The Lie of the Land: Migrant

a Global World. Chapel Hill: The University

Workers and the California Landscape. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mohl, R. 2003. Globalization, Latinization, and

of North Carolina Press. Southern Oral History Program at UNC-Chapel Hill. 2004. Neighborhood Voices: New

the Nuevo New South. Journal of American

Immigrants in Northeast Central Durham/

Ethnic History 22(4):31–66.

Voces del Barrio: Nuevos Imigrantes en la

Murphy, A., Blanchard, C., and Hill, J. (eds). 2001. Latino Workers in the Contemporary South. Athens: University of Georgia Press. North Carolina Office of the Governor. 2010. http://www.governor.state.nc.us/.

Zona Noreste del Centro de Durham. Multimedia software. Chapel Hill, NC. Stack, Carol. 1996. Call to Home: African Americans Reclaim the Rural South. New York: Basic Books.

Powell, D. 2011. The year of the immigrant. The

Varsanyi, M.W. 2008. Rescaling the ‘‘alien,’’

Carrboro Citizen. Editorial. (January 6).

rescaling personhood: Neoliberalism,

Reyes, A. 2010. Sovereignty, indigeneity and territory. Colloquium presentation of the Geography Department, UNC-Chapel Hill (December). ———, and Kaufman, M. 2011. Autonomy and the new practices of decolonization. South Atlantic Quarterly 110(2). Forthcoming (Spring). Ross, K. 2002. Economic system rests on fragile house of cards. Chapel Hill News, 31 March. Selby, E., Dixon, D., and Hapke, H. 2001. A woman’s place in the crab processing

immigration, and the state. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 98(4):877–896. Winders, J. 2005. Changing politics of race and region: Latino migration to the U.S. South. Progress in Human Geography 29(6):683– 699. ———. Bringing back the border: Post 9-11 politics of immigration, borders, and belonging in the contemporary U.S. South. Antipode 39(5):920–942. Zarrugh, L. 2008. The latinization of the central

industry of Eastern Carolina. Gender, Place

Shenandoah Valley. International Migration

and Culture 8(3):229–253.

46(1):19–58.

Smith, H., and Furuseth, O. (eds). 2006. Latinos