Fieldschool: Now the fun begins

We finished the second week of the field school on Thursday.  The procedures have been reviewed, teams selected and contacts distributed.  For the first time since summer school started, I returned home without a load of recorders, mics and batteries.

The first weeks of a field school are intense, but fun.  We've toured the Pike by car and bike, the students have been sent out to hang out, observe and document.  My sense is that the students are ready to make the move into the field put into practice what they've been learning in the classroom.

In planning for the project, my goal was to have a solid list of potential informants for the students to interview.  Something reasonable, about 2-3 interviews per person.  My preliminary fieldwork was much more successful than I expected, and I have a list of about 50 people who would like to participate in the project.  My hope is that the student teams can interview most of them.  

I'll be meeting with individual teams throughout the rest of the term.  I'll keep you posted on their progress.

Here are a few photos from the last week.

Field school participants Marielle Barrow and Brittney Pierce.  They will be examining musical traditions on the Pike

Folklife Specialist Guha Shankar from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress gives a lecture on the use of digital recording equipment

Annie Hallman and Sahar Haghighat will be focusing on the Douglas Park neighborhood of Columbia Pike

Field School: Participant-Observation on the Pike

The first week of the field school was exhilarating and exhausting.  The students spent most of the week learning the finer points of cultural documentation, focusing on interviewing techniques and working with field equipment.

Over the weekend students were instructed to complete their first foray into participant observation.  They set out of the Columbia Pike Farmer's Market, Bob and Edith's Diner, among other places.

Tiffany Kajer Wright explaining the field school project to Marie Flores

CPDP was invited to a family Memorial Day weekend cookout--the 46th Annual Flores-Gambino Picnic.  Three students, Tiffany Kajer-Wright, Jessica Brenchick, and Katie Kerstetter all attended the picnic and spend a productive afternoon meeting some long-time Columbia Pike residents.  The photos that follow are courtesy of Lloyd Wolf, lead photographer for the Columbia Pike Documentary Project.

Field School participants Tiffany Kajer Wright (left) and Jessica Brenchick (center)
talk to Joe Flores about CPDP and the work they will complete this summer.

Bike the Pike

On Sunday May 22  I met with five students who have signed up for the Field School for Cultural Documentation--a collaboration between GMU and the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.  This was an optional bike tour of the Pike neighborhoods, led by the director of the Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization, Takis Karontonis.  The goal was to become familiar with the neighborhoods along the Columbia Pike and to get a feel for the history through an examination of the built environment.

We met at the farmer's market on the corner of Columbia Pike and Walter Reed Drive.  From there we biked toward the Pentagon to visit neighborhoods that have almost been swallowed up by roads and government installations, then headed west.  The students got a good feel for the different neighborhoods, and the distinctiveness of this community.    We finished about three hours after we started.  We were dehydrated and exhausted, but as a group I can say the students were very enthusiastic about the tour and the project.

Special thanks to Takis for taking time on Sunday to show us around.  

Columbia Pike Documentary Project -Emmy nomination

 

This film, a production of Arlington County, documents the Columbia Pike Documentary Project.  It has received a regional nominated for an Emmy.  On Monday, a group of GMU students will begin training to span out and begin taking systematic oral histories of Pike residents.  This course, The Field school for Cultural Documentation,  is a collaborative between the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the Folklore Studies Program at George Mason University

What happens in a folklore class?

This semester I'm teaching Latin American Folklore.  I have a great group of students, all who have joined into the multiple activities I require when taking an upper division folklore course.  A few weeks ago we visited an authentic Salvadoran restaurant, yesterday we hosted a baile folklorico, in this case a Bolivian folk dance troupe, Alma Boliviana.  Below are a few photos taken by Rebecca Martin, a student in the class.

News from the Pike: Holiday edition

There were two notable news items from the Columbia Pike.  I'll start with the most mundane.  Columbia Pike is going to have a new Taquería Poblano at the corner of Columbia Pike and South Adams Street.  I've eaten at the Del Ray restaurant, and I look forward to visiting the new location.


It was also reported that a Flash Mob convened inside the Bank of American on the Pike.  The demonstrators were with Tenants and Workers United as part of a national tax day protest. It's not that TWU opposes taxes, but the fact that B of A paid no taxes last year.  Some 50 people participated in the protest.  No one was arrested.

Beyond the Borderlands

Well, it's finally happening.  My book is coming out.  Here is a preview of the cover.  It will be available on Amazon in April.  Here is a synopsis:

Immigration from Mexico was once considered a localized problem.  In the last three decades immigrants have moved beyond the U.S.-Mexico borderlands to diverse communities across the U.S., with the most striking transformations in American suburbs and rural small towns.  These new locations of immigrant settlement have generated new ways of thinking about immigration, belonging and local identity.  Beyond the Borderlands vividly captures the difficulties of the early years of Mexican settlement in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, a small farming community known as the "Mushroom Capital of the World."  In an evocative and highly readable account based on a ten-year ethnographic study in Mexico and Pennsylvania, Beyond the Borderlands considers how feelings of belonging and displacement are central concerns for communities that have become new destinations of Mexican settlement.

Beyond the Borderlands traces the process of migration and belonging, drawing on experiences of Mexican settlers and their American neighbors.  It demonstrates that newcomers and long-term residents must each adjust to the transformations brought on by immigration and the new community that is emerging as a result.  Beyond the Borderlands completes the cycle of migration, following Mexican families as they return to their home community in Mexico for holidays and vacations, and in the process revealing the tenuous sense of belonging that Mexicans experience as they journey home.

News from the Pike

I spend a lot of time in Arlington this week.  Most of it was spent interviewing folks and getting familiar with the cultural landscape, but two things struck me as interesting, one of which I want to follow up on in the coming weeks.

The first is the destruction of the Arlington Mill Community Center.  Built in 1965 and originally a Safeway store, the community center is largely acknowledged as an important part of the social life of  immigrant communities along the Pike.

The center, pictured on the left, looked to be in pretty good shape.  The new center will be larger, more modern and offer more amenities for community members.  It won't be finished until 2013, however.

There is a strong need for a community center like this in most neighborhoods, but only a handful in Northern Virginia have the luxury of having one within walking distance.

I'll be documenting the progress of the new Arlington Mill here

This is the plan for the new Arlington Mill Center.  It should be an amazing addition.

The Utah Way

The last few years have been somewhat Dickensonian--the best and worst of times.  I can cheer for the new gay marriage resolutions, but despair at the Congressman King's anti-Muslim crusade on the Hill.

Then there are the unexpected joys, like the "Utah Way."  The immigration bill passed in the Utah state legislature, and immigration enforcement bill.  The legislation includes both an enforcement provision that is a much more reasonable approach to dealing with immigrants who have committed crimes (that police say won't make much difference) and a guest-worker program that could mark a turning point in the way Americans think about immigration, if it survives constitutional challenge.  The law grants legal status to undocumented workers and allows them to live normal lives.  It appears to be a one-state version of the overarching immigration reform package that Congress has repeatedly tried, and failed, to enact.

What is so encouraging about this is that the Mormon church has been such a strong moral force behind this legislation, as has the business community.  Finally, conservatives have come to see the importance of immigrants to local economies and living up to their religious values.  The Catholic Church could learn a few lessons from the LDS community in this regard.

The law is not perfect, but it give me hope.  For that, I'm giving thanks today.

Learning a New Community

An amazing series of stories from some of Arlington's newest arrivals.

Tell Arlington's Story

I'm very pleased to announce my participation with Tell Arlington's Story, a county-wide initiative to collect the stories of everyday Arlingtonians.  Check out the website, it's amazing.

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.

Workforce Compliance and the IMAGE program

As I've long stated, effective immigration control has to go after employers. This article from the Washington Post seems to confirm this position.

TYSON FOODS, one of the world's largest food processing firms, has a checkered past when it comes to employment practices, specifically the hiring of undocumented workers. A decade ago, the firm faced federal charges that it conspired to smuggle undocumented workers into the country to operate its production lines. A jury acquitted Tyson, but the damage to the company's name was done.

So it was notable this week when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced that Tyson had received a federal seal of approval for its hiring practices, which it has improved over the past five or six years. After months of scrutiny by officials, who combed through employment records for virtually every one of Tyson's 100,000-plus workers in this country, ICE and Tyson signed an agreement certifying that the firm and its workforce were on the right side of immigration law.

The event is instructive, not least because Tyson is an outlier; in the past four years, only 115 companies have enlisted in the so-called Image program that Tyson signed up for last week. Most of them are small- to medium-sized ventures; Tyson is one of just two Fortune 500 firms on the list. Although some 250,000 companies have enrolled inE-Verify, a federal program that screens potential new hires for employment eligibility, most firms appear reluctant to have their existing workforces scrutinized, as the Image program requires. And no wonder: An estimated 6 million or 7 million undocumented immigrants are in the U.S. labor force.

To its credit, the Obama administration has more than tripled the number of ICE agents assigned to check hiring practices. The agency has targeted several thousand employers with stepped-up audits of their workforces, arrested hundreds of company officials and levied fines amounting to millions of dollars against companies hiring undocumented workers. Recently, ICE announced that it is beefing up its ability to go after larger companies that may employ undocumented workers. All that is a sensible shift from Bush administration policy, which emphasized raids on factories featuring mass detentions of the workers themselves.

If the current policy turns up the heat on corporations, so much the better; they may in turn increase pressure on Congress to reform America's broken immigration system. As it stands, that system ignores the fact that millions of undocumented workers play an integral role in the economy and that the nation needs a realistic mechanism for admitting sufficient numbers of low-skilled employees to fill jobs that Americans don't want, even with the nation suffering from high unemployment.

The administration has cracked down on employers, tightened border security and stepped up its deportation efforts, particularly against undocumented immigrants with criminal records. Those steps, combined with the recession, have dramatically slowed the inflow of workers here illegally. Still, some 11 million of them remain in America, working in the shadows. As long as Congress refuses to act, the problem will continue to fester.

Immigration Reform's Image Problem

This is an amazing commentary about the lack of marketing strategy used by non-profits trying to promote the DREAM Act.  The basic message: you cannot sell a rights issue by saying you deserve it.

There is a subtext to this piece, about the fact that Americans don't believe anybody deserves anything (except perhaps the rich who deserve to make as much money as possible and have little or no social or community obligation).

It's something we should all think about.

Dare to Dream

Lou Dobbs, American Hypocrite

Lou Dobbs on Illegal Immigration: He rallies against them, but they're working for him

It's been a long time since I last thought, wow, that's some great investigative journalism.  If you know how the American economy works you know that many of the rich not only employ undocumented immigrants to cut their grass, clean their houses and care for their horses, they benefit from their labor in other less direct ways.  We all benefit from undocumented immigration whether we want to admit it or not.  In Lou Dobb's case, he benefits and vilifies at the same time.

Revisiting Manassas: Watching 9500 Liberty

Last night 9500 Liberty was aired on MTV2.  It was the first time I have been able to see the final cut version of the film.  I've been watching the development of the project since its first video clips went viral three years ago.  I've also hosted Annabel Park and Eric Byler to campus for a screening of the film as a work in progress.

That said, watching the film in its entirety was an emotional experience for me. I conducted fieldwork in Manassas and in the surrounding county from 2008-2009, speaking with native-born residents and immigrants, and I was impressed how the filmmakers were able to capture the essence of the immigration controversy in Prince William County, particularly the overwhelming influence of a small group of residents, the role of groups outside the community in pushing an anti-immigrant agenda, and  Cory Stewart's crass and obvious use of a local conflict to advance his political career.

What really struck me, however, was the overwhelming pain that Prince William County's "rule of law" ordinance inflicted on the largely Latino immigrant community.

The film documents an important and rarely understood aspect of the immigration debate: how immigration is shaping local communal identity, and how poorly equipped many communities are to deal with those changes.

Annabel and Eric--job well done.

Water in the Desert-littering or lifesaving?

When I read this story in the NYT yesterday, I thought, "my goodness, I live in a hateful country."

What type of person would ticket and charge someone with littering when they're leaving jugs of water to be consumed by dying men and women in the desert?

The act of leaving water is basic humane behavior.  To think otherwise is simply obscene.

Immigration, Economics, and Nativism

This essay by Ezra Klein argues that the positive aspects of immigration on the economy outweigh the negative one.  He'll find no argument with me on that point, however, he falls into the trap that so many pro-immigrant advocates do: he assumes that the obscure intellectual economic discussion will actually influence people who believe that immigrants are transforming their way of life.  And as idiotic as it may sound--some people would rather give up the economic benefits to live in communities where everyone speaks English, is white, and has the same cultural and aesthetic values.

I say this after years of experience working in new destination immigrant communities in the U.S.  It's irrational, but there are a lot of otherwise good-natured folks out there who see immigrants in their community about as positive as a radioactive brownfield. 

If, as a nation, we are going to address the issue of immigration in communities, it has to be done at the local level.

There is no other way.