Virginia's Changing Communities

I've decided it's time to refocus this blog so that it is more in line with my current research agenda.  I began blogging in 2006 when I started fieldwork in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.  I was studying a group of North American and European retirees who had decided to make Mexico home.  It was a great run, but a series of health problems and new job demands in the U.S. have pushed my research in new and exciting directions.  I am, and always will be, a scholar of human migration.  However, my focus has reoriented toward communities in Northern Virginia. 

In 2007-2009 I did some work with Latino and U.S.-born residents of Manassas, Virginia.  It's an interesting place, but the work was not a good fit.  I found that although I enjoyed the people who were willing to share their life experiences withe me, the racial and ethnic tension there was overwhelming.  There are a lot of great people there, but also a few bad apples who aren't interesting in getting along.  They want to push their Latino neighbors out.  I did not want to continue to work under that constant pressure, so late last year as I was writing up my last article on Manassas, I decided it was time to start something new.

Since then I've started a new project in Arlington County.  For Washingtonians it probably seems like a move to the other side of the world, and in some respects, that's true politically.  Arlington is more urban, and certainly much more accepting of their immigrant populations.  But what draws me to studying Arlington is the fact that despite the rapid changes and the many immigrant populations, they've taken a different approach to their new neighbors.  My plan is to examine this as another of Virginia's changing communities.

Because my interests will be similar, I will still post on immigrant issues and legal proceedings.  I will also talk about my research process, as I will be working with students and community members throughout the project.  For this reason, I've returned to the blog's original title, "Living Ethnography."  I'm still "the Gringa," but my identity as a researcher is likely to be more expansive, and thus not limited to the U.S.-Mexico context as it was before.

I hope you'll continue to join me on this new ethnographic adventure.

Mexicans in Cananda

For years I have wondered why Mexicans seeking a better life have not simply bypassed the U.S. for our northern neighbor, Canada. There is ample work in Canada's oil industry in Alberta, for instance. And the Canadian government has long been fairly lenient admitting foreign residents. (The only drawback is the weather, as Mexicans in general avoid places with long harsh winters.)

It appears that some Mexican immigrants have also thought of this, as evidenced by talks at the NAFTA summit this week in Mexico. Immigration has been raised as a major issue at the meetings, but this time tensions are expected to be focused on Mexicans entering Canada, not the United States.

As reported by the NY Times today:

Too many Mexicans, the Canadian government complained, are fraudulently claiming political asylum in Canada, overwhelming the system. So Canada announced last month that it would begin requiring Mexican citizens to secure visas before entering the country, a decision that elicited outrage in Mexico.

When your neighbors overcrowd their house

Reading this article about overcrowding in suburban neighborhoods, it reminded me of my own street when I moved here 6 years ago.

One of my neighbors lives in a house much like my own: a 4 bedrooms 2.5 bath colonial. The houses are big by historic standards (~3000 square feet on three levels), but small compared to the typical suburban monstrosities that are populating the newer Northern Virgina suburbs.

Those first few years were interesting. My family and I had lived in a working class neighborhood in Philadelphia. The houses were "twins" or duplexes on a narrow one-way street. There were frequent squabbles about parking and crowding. In comparison, my newer home is on a wide suburban cul-de-sac. We back up to a wooded area that (at the moment) cannot be developed, so we were looking forward to having extra room.

We were surprised by the number of cars parked in the cul-de-sac by two of our neighbors. The house right next to us had no fewer than 4-5 cars on an average day. People were always coming and going. But the house at the far end of the cul-de-sac was as busy as Union Station at rush hour. Most days there were between 10-12 cars and a large truck parked in front the of the house. People were driving into the cul-de-sac at high speeds and parking in the most unusual places. What I once saw as a wide cul-de-sac looked pretty narrow when things settled down in the evenings.

Can you guess what my neighbors looked like?

They were white middle and working-class families who had between 3-5 kids. Those kids had become that menace to American society known as the driving teenager. And friends--did they have friends. They must have been among the most popular teenagers at the local high school (if traffic flow is any indication). In both homes the said teenagers often had overnight guests: their buds, love interests, visiting relatives.

It was quite an experience. Do you know what I did about it? Nothing.

Do you know why? Because I truly believe, as much of a pain in the bazooka it was, the house belonged to the neighbors, not me.

Did I like it? Not at all. It was really annoying sharing a driveway with a family that basically lined the entire place with cars. It was annoying to wake up on a Sunday morning to find a car almost blocking my drive (it turns out one of the young men in question was quite a romeo, and his paramour had rushed into the house and parked on my side of the cul-de-sac rather than that of Mr. Stud).

My point is this: many older suburban neighborhoods were not designed for D.C. in 2007. Who would have dreamed in 1970 that families would be so foolish as to by each of their teenagers their own cars? Who would have guessed that parents would have been so lax (or liberal, depending on your position) to have their son's and daughter's one night stands take place in their own home?

Life has changed a great deal in the intervening years since my subdivision was built.

Fast forward to 2006. One of the long-term rental properties on my street went up for sale. It was a slow time for the real estate market, but when it did sell, two young men bought it: an Asian and Latino. They're business partners, and they're very young, so they have (just for the two of them) 5 cars and 3 large construction vans. We have no prohibition in our neighborhood about trucks, etc., so on the weekends and late in the evenings, the street and driveway is crowded with lots of cars, but it is just the two of them.

I may not like everything that goes on in my little corner of suburbia, but I'm not willing to move out to Loudoun County on a large property and commute my life away. This is not ideal, but it works. And when I get really annoyed, I go onto my deck (which faces away from the street and into the trees) and thank God for flood plains.

Immigrants fill the gaps from out-migration

Immigrants are filling the voids in large metro areas as domestic residents continue to move further out away from cities and inner suburbs. in these contexts, immigrants are the only source of growth. Consider the following:

Between 2000 and 2006, the New York metro area (including the suburbs) increased by 1 million immigrants; otherwise the region would have lost nearly 600,000 people. During the same time period in Los Angeles metro area would have lost more than 200,000 residents, and the San Francisco area would have lost 188,000 and the Boston area would have lost 101,000.

Many demographers associate shrinking populations with economic problems, typically poor job markets or prohibitive housing prices.

"A lot of cities rely on immigration to prop up their housing market and prop up their economies," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

The understanding here is that growth is good, and immigrants maintain growth in areas where citizens are not willing to live. But is this growth necessarily a good thing? Are there other ways to address population decreases without adding more people?

I am certainly in favor of immigration and, more importantly, immigrant civil rights, but I do not think it a good idea to assume that immigration is the answer to economic problems in large metro areas that are otherwise facing depopulation.

On the other hand, there are areas of the nation, such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia, that are not large metro areas and are depopulating to the point that there is no tax base. In these cases, immigration does solve a significant problem, and influse life into otherwise dead communities.

Mexico's Immigration Reform

Central to the folklore of U.S. immigration are the stories that immigrants tell about their journeys north. If you ever talk to an immigrant from Central (and sometimes South) American, more than likely they will tell you that the hardest part of their journey is not crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, but passing illegally through Mexico.

There are many reasons for this--Mexico is a large country, there are bandits and federales along the way that can make illegal passage difficult (i.e., thievery or arrest)to impossible (i.e., being bribed or physically assault by an immigrant officer or the police).

Mexico's President Felipe Calderón has announced a sweeping immigration reform package that will address the problems of people traveling through Mexico. Among the proposed reforms:

1) A "Safe Southern Border Program," which will crack down on illegal crossers, violent gangs in the border zone and abuse of migrants by authorities throughout Mexico.
2) A guest worker program to allow Central Americans to work legally and temporarily in Mexico, especially along the southern border
3)Providing improvements to 48 detention centers in Mexico for apprehended undocumented immigrants. This change is being made in response to criticism that illegal Central American migrants are denied the same respect Mexico demands for its citizens in the United States.
4)Calderón also plans to encourage his Congress to make being undocumented a civil violation, rather than a crime.

All of these changes are significant; especially in the case of improving human rights treatment, they are long over due. However, it remains to be seen if any of these changes will influence the northward migration of men and women to the U.S. It appears that Calderón's action is geared more toward encouraging the U.S. to take similar action about its undocumented immigrants.

No Place like Home

Americans often overlook the fact that, despite how nice life can be in the U.S., most people have a natural inclination to prefer to natal homes. This article from the Washington Post examines the possible effects globalization on immigration as the final provisions of NAFTA are enacted. In the next two years, Mexico's markets will be opened to poultry imports from the U.S. Mexican farms will have to compete with American agribusinesses. Most chicken farmers in Mexico expect that this provision will effectively eliminate chicken farming in Mexico. If Mexico imports cheaper American poultry, thousands will lose their jobs. After that, what would be their next best alternative? Why, immigrating to the U.S., of course.

Ironically, Americans have consistently failed to see the link between globalization and immigration. Opening the international border for trade purposes by necessity opens it to just about everything else--communication, culture and labor. Thus, as trade routes open through treaties like NAFTA, so too do immigration flows.

Another interesting, and often overlooked, fact highlighted in the article: Mexicans who have not yet immigrated are necessarily interested in moving their lives north. Life in Mexico is certainly not as extravagant as life in the U.S., but it is rich in culture and community. If you take a look at the San Miguel Fieldwork Diary (see link on the right), you will see that thousands of Americans give up their lives in the U.S. for the same reasons. Life in Mexico is good, even more so for those who have lived their entire lives there.