Latino immigrants changing the face of rural populations
*I remember helping to organize voter registration drives in Aspen and Telluride. Even back in 2004 Latinos there were service workers, invisible to the “mainstream” community. VL
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Over the last two decades Latino immigrant populations in the United States have experienced significant growth in areas that had little previous experience with them.
[pullquote]As these wealthy newcomers flow into rural communities, property values rise, new-build housing construction expands, and demand for a range of services in the local economy increases, from restaurants to landscaping.[/pullquote]Scholars refer to these places as ‘new immigrant destinations.’ Recent Penn State research indicates that rural growth in high-amenity areas such as Sun Valley, Idaho, or Cooperstown, New York, are an important but overlooked pull factor for low-wage Latino immigrants arriving in rural communities across America.
Lise Nelson, associate professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Department of Geography at Penn State, along with her colleagues recently published a study on this topic in Annals of the Association of American Geographers.
The article explores how immigrant workers were recruited into high-amenity rural areas during the construction boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. It also demonstrates how labor supply and demand in these places shifted as a result, creating lasting demographic and social change.
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[Photo by Lise Nelson, courtesy of Penn State]
