Stanton Wortham - Migration Narratives: Diverging Stories in Schools, Churches, and Civic Institutions

Also available from Bloomsbury

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Migration Narratives

Diverging Stories in Schools, Churches, and Civic Institutions

Stanton Wortham, Briana Nichols, Katherine Clonan-Roy and Catherine Rhodes

This book describes experiences of and stories about migration in one American town that became home to thousands of Mexican migrants between 1995 and 2016. Across those two decades the towns Mexican population increased by over 1,000 percent, and Mexicans constituted almost a third of the town by 2016. The Hispanic population in the United States grew from 9 percent in 1990 to 18 percent in 2016 (Flores, 2017; Pew Research Center, 2017), and 23 percent of all schoolchildren in America in 2016 were Hispanic (Bauman, 2017). Because of their large numbers and relative youth, migrants from Latin America and their descendants will continue to play a crucial role in Americas future. Some expect that many of these migrants and their children will travel pathways similar to those imagined for previous migrant groups, like the Irish and the Italians, ultimately assimilating to the American mainstream (e.g., Gans, 2012; Levine, 2004). Others predict that they will face challenges similar to African Americans, facing racial injustice and ongoing struggle (Behnken, 2016; Jones, 2012; Manning, 2000). Both these predictions, and others, will surely turn out to be true in some casesbecause migrants from Latin America are traveling divergent pathways (Alba & Nee, 2003; Portes & Rumbaut, 2001; Pew Research Center, 2008).

In order to understand the likely futures of Mexicans and other migrants from Latin America, and in order to establish policies that will allow the United States to benefit from the advantages of ongoing migration, we need careful, empirically grounded accounts of Latin American migrants and the communities where they live in twenty-first-century America. Such accounts are particularly needed in the current political climate, which includes powerful but oversimplified and often inaccurate stories about migrants and their futures. The ascension of Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions, Stephen Bannon, and Stephen Miller in 2017 brought a formerly extremist, aggressively anti-migrant position to the center of American discourse, policy, and action. This position contrasts with the familiar, sympathetic story about America as a country largely composed of current and former migrants that has benefited from their energy, cultural traditions, and economic successes. Americas history is not that simple, of course, as African Americans and Native Americans can attest. But the countrys relative openness to migrants has yielded vibrant technologies, traditions, and businesses, as well as a younger, more entrepreneurial population than in many comparable nations (Fairlie, Reedy, Morelix, & Russell, 2016; PennWharton, 2016; Trevelyan et al., 2016; Vandor & Franke, 2016). Despite failures along the wayincluding stereotyping and the racist mistreatment of migrants that have occurred throughout American historythe familiar, positive story about American migration concludes that the nation has succeeded by allowing smart, energetic people from around the world to mix and create in ways that benefit everyone. We will argue that this story is too simple, but that it nonetheless accurately describes some migrants aspirations and experiences.

There has always been another vision of the country, one that considers newcomers a threat and tries to exclude them. On this view, migrants threaten us. They take our jobs, claim our money, and threaten our communities with crime and dangerous habits. This view of others has appeared throughout human history, in almost all times and places, although it waxes and wanes. This darker vision misrepresents some realities of migration, but not completely so. Migrants willing to work for lower pay can depress the wages of longstanding residents, for example, at least over the short or medium term (PennWharton, 2016). The longer-term consequences of migration are positive for the vast majority of residents (Bove & Elia, 2017; Nunn, Qian, & Sequeira, 2017a, b; Smith & Edmonston, 1997), but the US government has nonetheless recently justified cruel treatment of migrants and their families by telling stories that cast migrants as a threat to the nation.

It is important to see that both these visions of migration in America oversimplify. They are stories that we tell about migration, stories which are true in some respects but false in others. Migrant communities and individuals move along diverging historical pathways. These varied pathways intersect with historical changes already underway in the communities that receive migrants, with varied outcomes for migrants and longstanding residents (Alba & Nee, 2003; Lpez-Sanders, 2009; Smith, 2014). Changing host communities receive changing migrant communities, often yielding unexpected futures for newcomers and hosts. These more complex outcomes are not adequately captured by the triumphant story of migrant success, or by the pessimistic story of migrant-induced decline. We accept the strong scientific and ethical arguments that America will be most successful by welcoming migrants, instead of closing itself off in the cruel, cramped, self-defeating vision advanced by contemporary anti-migrant activists. We are not arguing that the two stories are equivalent. However, based on our empirical research, we claim that both these stories fail to describe the facts. The stories told by advocates on both sides of the political debate must be interrogated and compared to the more complex reality.

In order to move beyond simple stories and make warranted empirical, political, and moral judgments, we need scientific accounts both of the realities of migration and of the influence our simple stories have on those realities. In this book, we trace the historical development of the town we call Marshall, describing how longstanding residentsthemselves descendants of prior migrantsinteracted with Mexican migrants over the first two decades of the Mexican community from 1995 to 2016. We describe how experiences of and stories about migration unfolded both for newcomers and for longstanding residents, across various institutional spaces. We emphasize the ongoing evolution of prior migrant communities and the relations these groups developed with heterogeneous Mexican migrants, showing how interethnic relations played a central role in Mexicans diverse pathways. We intend our account of this town as a resource for more complex thought and action as Americans and others around the world struggle with increasingly consequential debates about migration.

Before turning to our analysis, we would like to explain our use of terminology for racial and ethnic groups. We understand that race and ethnicity are socially constructed and differentially experienced, and all terminological choices obscure potentially relevant differences. When we describe Black or African American residents, we are referring to non-Hispanic Black residents with African ancestors. We met no Black Caribbean or African immigrants in Marshall. Our interlocutors, including African Americans, used the terms African American and Black interchangeably, and we adopt this practice. When we describe White residents, we are referring to non-Hispanic people of European descent. On many occasions, we refer to Irish Americans and Italian Americans more specifically, but we also sometimes refer to members of these groups as White. We are aware that some Mexicans consider themselves White, but most Mexican, other Hispanic, Black, and White residents of Marshall did not refer to Mexicans as White. When we describe Mexicans, we are talking about residents who had migrated from Mexico or whose parents were Mexican and who self-identified as Mexican. Mexicans in Marshall almost never identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino, so we use these terms only when we include other Latin Americans. Throughout the book, we document the heterogeneity of Mexican residents. Despite this heterogeneity, virtually all Mexican and most other residents used the term Mexican to refer to the varied individuals who were first- or second-generation Mexican migrants. We have made these terminological choices in order to follow our interlocutors own usage. We recognize that these terms are sometimes used to stereotype and racialize people in both advantageous and disadvantageous ways, but there are no neutral terminological choices available. We use the term host to refer to residents from ethnic groups that have lived in Marshall for generations. Black, Irish, and Italian residents were in earlier historical periods migrants and not hosts, but by 1995 they were established populations in town while Mexicans were newcomers. Finally, a note on translations. Many of the passages we quote were originally spoken in Spanish. We have translated these in the following text, with the help of native speakers. In order to save space, we do not include the extensive Spanish originals.