Latin American Migrations to the U.S. Heartland

Linda Allegro is an independent scholar engaged in immigrant and worker advocacy in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Andrew Grant Wood is the Stanley Rutland Professor of American History at the University of Tulsa. He is the author of Agustín Lara: A Cultural Biography and Revolution in the Street: Women, Workers and Urban Protest in Veracruz, 1870–1927.

"Allegro and Wood have organized a volume that provides a more humane depiction of Latin American immigrants by carefully documenting the challenges and possibilities they present in the region. . . . They also do an excellent job of positioning the Midwest as a dynamic region where complex and often contradictory politics coexist."--The Annals of Iowa"Allegro and Wood have assembled an interesting and informative set of essays useful to any scholar interested in the history of immigration to the United States and its regional, local, and national implications for the present and the future. A welcome assessment of what can happen when globalization disrupts rural communities on both sides of the border."--The Journal of Southern History"An important contribution to our understanding of Latin American migration beyond the coast and borderlands. The contributors, ranging from historians to anthropologists to political scientists and sociologists, rethink and reconceptualize our traditional understanding of Latin American migration as well as the Heartland."--Kathleen Mapes, author of Sweet Tyranny: Migrant Labor, Industrial Agriculture, and Imperial Politics

• CoverTitle PageCopyrightContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Heartland North, Heartland SouthPart I: Geographies in Historical PerspectiveChapter 1. Mexicans in the United States: A Longer ViewChapter 2. Betabeleros and the Western Nebraska Sugar Industry: An Early-Twentieth-Century HistoryChapter 3. Latinos and the Churches in Idaho, 1950–2000Part II: Contesting Policy and Legal BoundariesChapter 4. Seeing No Evil: The H2A Guest-Worker Program and State-Mediated Labor ExploitationChapter 5. On Removing Migrant Labor in a Right-to-Work State: The Failure of Employer SanctionsPart III: Transnational Identities and New Landscapes of HomeChapter 6. Rooted/Uprooted: Place, Policy, and Salvadoran Transnational Identities in Rural ArkansasChapter 7. Contesting Diversity and Community within Postville, Iowa: "Hometown to the World"Part IV: Media and Reimagined Sites of Accommodation and ContestationChapter 8. Humanizing Latino Newcomers in the "No Coast" RegionChapter 9. Immigrant Integration and the Changing Public Discourse: The Case of Emporia, KansasPart V: Religion and Migrant CommunitiesChapter 10. "They Cling to Guns or Religion": Pennsylvania Towns Put Faith in Anti-immigrantPart VI: DemographicsChapter 11. Latin American Migrations to the U.S. Heartland: Demographic and Economic ActivityConclusion: Latin American Migrations to the U.S. Heartland: Reshaping Communities, RedrawingContributorsIndex