ABSTRACT
Introduction One of the important themes of this text is that the spatial distributions of U.S. Latinos are rapidly changing, nationally, regionally, and locally. Once thought of as an exclusively ‘Southwestern Mexican population’, the influx of eight million legal, highly ethnically diverse Latino immigrants, over the last two decades has forced a reconsideration of Latino settlement geography (Office of Immigration Statistics, 2003). Formerly concentrated in gateway cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Chicago, Latinos have been dispersing to smaller cities across the country confirming the view that Latinos resident in the country are typically an urban population. But, as this volume has illustrated, Latinos have also increasingly settled in suburban and rural locations, challenging traditional settlement assimilation theory and contributing to a growing sense of the Latinization of the U.S. – a perception also fueled by the increasing attention being paid to the growing number of illegal Latino immigrants settling across the country as a whole. No region, however, has been more affected by the changing distribution and settlement dynamics of U.S. Latinos than the American South, which experienced the largest per cent increase in its Latino population, among all U.S. regions between 1990 to 2000. Common processes, including those related to globalization; social networks; social institutions, especially changes in immigration law; cultural diffusion, migration, and transnationalism, are creating new Latino geographies across the South as they are elsewhere. But, as evidenced so clearly in the preceding 12 chapters, local geographic conditions and community environments interact with global forces and help reshape existing local places, geographic spaces, and cultural landscapes in ways that are distinctive and potentially unique. Regional Comparisons: The South versus the Northeast The South is not the only U.S. region experiencing rapid social and geographic
changes due to Latino immigration and dispersion. Providing an illustration of the similarities of some of these changes, using an adjacent region, the northeast, provides an important perspective that America as a whole is changing through Latinization and its associated processes. Therefore, it is useful to place the changing Latino geographies of the South into a broader geographic context by comparing their emerging Latino settlement patterns with other U.S. regions where similar forces are at work and common spatial patterns result. Such is the case with the New England and Middle Atlantic areas of the northeast. Like the South, many urban and rural places in the northeast experienced very high growth in their Latino populations over the course of the last two decades. And, also like the South, many constituent communities of the region have undergone significant transformations of place as a result. Despite these similarities, migrant origins, the characteristics of ethnic migrant streams, and local conditions do produce different spatial patterns of settlement between geographic regions. The very fact that the South requires separate analysis is an indication of the power of the regional concept. It suggests that the nation’s surface is made up of spaces and places that form distinctive areas. While recognizing spatial commonalities resulting from global processes, regional geography also reveals distinctive patterns within a bounded area. Thus, a comparison of regional patterns can help place the South into a clearer, perhaps distinctive, regional context. The spatial distributions that reflect settlement patterns can be mapped numerous ways. One is to portray the distributions by county for large regions, differentiating them by density or intervals. For example, a population threshold of 50,000, often used to indicate an urbanized area such as the central city of a metropolitan statistical area (MSA), indicates the location of a relatively large Latino population in a county. Also, the national percentage of an ethnic group can be used as a marker. In Census 2000, the Latino population was about 12.5 per cent of the U.S. total. Therefore, in a perfectly integrated world, the Latino population, on a local basis, would be about 12.5 per cent of any county’s population. A county with a Latino population exceeding this threshold would indicate an important Latino presence. Both thresholds are used to compare the Latino distributions of the two large U.S. regions under investigation, the northeast and South, by county, in Figures 13.1 and 13.2. These maps also identify U.S. counties that have less than 50,000 Latino residents but more than 10,000. An examination of both maps reveal a number of spatial and historical commonalities between the two regional distributions. First, each region had a large metropolitan Latino core area in 2000. Megalopolis, centered on the New York City Metropolitan area, is the northeastern settlement core area, while the South-Central Florida area, centered on Miami-Fort Lauderdale area, represents a southern Latino core. Each of these metropolitan Latino population concentrations has had a longstanding Spanish speaking ethnic population. Second, both regions contain large metropolitan regions with 50,000 or more Latinos that are at a substantial distance from the Latino settlement core and, therefore, represent important secondary geographic centers of Latino concentration. In the northeast,
Rochester, New York is an example, while Atlanta, Georgia is the example in the South. Third, by 2000, smaller but significantly large (greater than 10,000 but less than 50,000) Latino populations were present in counties with small urbanized areas at the lower end of the urban hierarchy. In the northeast, these centers included Buffalo and Syracuse, New York, and Reading and Allentown, Pennsylvania, among others. In the southeast, examples included Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; Memphis, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; and Birmingham, Alabama, among others. These maps also suggest an important difference between the two major regions as well. It appears that the Latino population has made a larger impact on non-metropolitan counties of the South, compared to the northeast. This is perhaps due to the agricultural and food processing sector differences between the rural areas of the two regions. In any case, the South contains non-metropolitan counties that both exceed the 12.6 per cent thresholds and contain between 10,000 and 50,000 Latinos. Examples include Sevier and Yell Counties, Arkansas; Atkinson, Echols, and Whitfield Counties, Georgia; and Onslow County, North Carolina. Of course, authors in this volume have noted other southern counties that have smaller but important growing Latino populations as well. There is another important difference between the Latino populations at this regional scale, which is not revealed by the maps. This is the ethnic composition of the Latino population of each region. Before examining some of the differences in composition between the two regions, it is important to note that both have drawn from a wide range of Latin American and Caribbean nations and, therefore, contain substantial Latino ethnic diversity. Nonetheless, the northeast and South also have a single dominant ethnic group that was disproportionately represented among its Latino population in 2000. In the northeast, due to historical forces, especially the role of government institutions that guided Puerto Ricans to New York, more than two million Puerto Ricans accounted for nearly 40 per cent of the total Latino population in 2000. This is indicative of New York City’s early attraction for Puerto Ricans. Recently, however, this group is migrating from the New York city metropolitan area to smaller cities in nearby states (Reisinger, Frazier and TetteyFio, 2006; Reisinger, 2006; Torres-Cuevas, 2005; Duany, 2002; Perez y Gonzalez, 2000). Importantly, as culturally distinct Latino groups move in large numbers and take their ethnicity to new locations, they create new places by changing local cultural landscapes. This is true of Puerto Ricans, who are significant Latino majorities in cities like Waterbury and Danbury, Connecticut; Allentown and Reading, Pennsylvania; and Rochester, New York. Previous research has demonstrated their significant cultural imprints in these reshaped places (Reisinger, Frazier and Tettey-Fio, 2006). There are other Latino ethnic concentrations as well, including Dominicans and Mexicans in New York City (Galligano and Frazier, 2006). Despite the importance of Puerto Ricans as the largest group, other ethnic Latinos comprise an important percentage of the total Latino population of the northeast. Mexicans (ancestry) totaled less than a half-million in the region, less than 10 per cent of the Latino population. However, those of ‘other’
Hispanic/Latino origins constituted nearly one-half of the region’s Latino population. In the South, the ethnic composition of the Latino population is very different. Those of Mexican ancestry are dominant among Latino ethnic groups. More than 6.5 million people of Mexican origin called southern states home in 2000 and represented more than 56 per cent of the Latino population living in the region. But, as in the northeast, ethnic concentrations can vary from place to place. In the South, for example, those of Mexican ancestry constituted more than 61 per cent of the total Latino population in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2000. They also were the majority in Charlotte, North Carolina. However, the pattern in the state of Florida is very different. Cuban Americans are highly concentrated in South Florida, especially in the Miami region, a fact that sometimes obscures broader Latino ethnic diversity in the area (see Chapter 7 by Alberts). As a result of ethnic concentrations in particular places, it is not uncommon on a local basis for Latino subgroups to reshape the cultural landscape and to portray symbols of their particular ethnicity (e.g. Puerto Rican and Mexican flags). In the case of Cubans, the creation of ‘Little Havana’ was an obvious example of the transmission of culture to place. However, it is also true that, with increasing ethnic diversity, other groups also are contributing to the reshaping of Miami neighborhoods on a local basis. Thus, it is clear that ethnic dominance and ethnic diversity combine with global and local forces to create new regional and local human geographies. Some of these patterns are similar at the regional level, but different patterns also emerge for a variety of reasons, especially on a local basis. America is changing dramatically due to Latinization and its associated processes. The comparison of the northeast and southeast shows many similar geographic arrangements, but there are substantial differences between the two regions in the patterns as well. The historical geography and social milieu of the two regions is resulting in a reshaping of the South in a way that is somewhat different than the North. For example, the early Puerto Rican settlement in New York City and the contemporary dispersal to smaller cities is driving the Latinization of the northeast. In the rural South, the long history of agricultural and extractive industries, as well as employment opportunities in food processing, are major factors in the large flows of Latino migrants. Indeed, these are important issues in the work by Torres, Popke, and Hapke presented in Chapter 3 as well as Emery, Ginger, and Chamberlain in Chapter 4. These rural economies are disproportionately important in reshaping the ‘Nuevo South’, serving as contemporary magnets that complement the urban attractions for newly arriving Latinos. Despite these differences, the sheer magnitude of migration/immigration and the ethnic diversity created by U.S. immigration laws, have led to a commonality of a broadening set of Latino ethnicities in both regions. Themes and Discussion Understanding the dynamics of the place specific intersection between general forces
and local conditions helps explain the emergence of similar and dissimilar geographic patterns at various scales. Thus, we now turn to a discussion of the questions raised and the overriding themes presented in this text that help clarify how those linked forces and conditions recreate spaces and forge new cultural landscapes in the urban, suburban, and rural communities of the New South. Following contemporary and multi-disciplinary views, the chapters of this text pose a series of implicit questions about the Latinization of the South. These include: • What motivates movements between regions and places? • What impact does migration have on origins and destinations? • How does cultural diffusion operate in an increasingly complex global
environment? • What are the settlement patterns of Latino migrants in various places and how
do they inform and challenge preexisting theory? • How does social reproduction and place-making operate in a Latino migrant
context? • What are the emerging Latino cultural landscapes in the South? • What are some of the major social, economic, political, and geographic issues
and challenges that the South must address due to the Latinization of this region?
