Narrating the Place of Immigrants in Town History: Stories From the New Latino Diaspora

• In Event: Community and School Narratives, Policies, and Practices for New Immigrant Populations

Abstract

In the past fifteen years, the town of Marshall has experienced major changes that are shaping the ways its residents view themselves and each other. Mexican immigration to this Pennsylvania suburb of 34,000 grew dramatically between 1990 and 2010. Twenty years ago Mexicans comprised less than 1% of the population; today they make up almost 25%. Mexican immigration has not been the only dramatic demographic change the town has seen this century, however. Fifty years ago Marshall was a prosperous middle-class suburb. It had recently become home to Italian immigrants who came to work in local industries. Waves of African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and South Asians followed, and a sizable African American population remains. Marshall has also experienced economic decline over the past fifty years, and now the town faces economic and social concerns including poverty, crime, and lower educational achievement than surrounding suburbs. Marshall residents understand the transformation of their town in different ways, but Mexicans figure prominently in most local narratives of the town’s history -- appearing in some stories as key to the town’s revitalization and in others as principally responsible for its decline. The objective of this paper is to identify models of social identity available to immigrants in new destination communities and to understand the ways in which those models can be used to better serve immigrants and hosts, as communities continue to be transformed by immigration.

The paper analyzes narratives of town history collected from Marshall residents and local print media. We explore the discourses that circulate in this community about who immigrants are and what their presence means. We have gathered narratives of town history over the past six years, in an ongoing ethnographic study of the town and its immigrants. This study has involved almost five hundred hours of ethnographic observation and nearly one hundred interviews in schools, homes, and various other settings. This paper explores how residents of Marshall construct and contest their own and others’ identities through the stories they tell about where their town has been and where it is going. Residents articulate various “models of personhood” in their narratives about town history -- models of the dispositions, moral strengths and weaknesses, typical behaviors and life prospects of various groups. Narrators also position themselves with respect to the others that they represent, thus evaluating those others. This paper describes how different members of the community tell often-conflicting stories about the rise and fall of the town and in so doing position various groups. We find that, while depictions of Mexican residents contain both positive and negative characterizations, these depictions almost always involve hierarchical comparisons between groups. This type of characterization has important consequences when it circulates into institutions, because many institutions have the power to sort and serve residents in different ways. In schools, for instance, how students from different backgrounds are positioned can have a lasting impact on individuals’ and the community’s future. Narratives provide a useful lens on this sorting process.

Authors

• Stanton Wortham, University of Pennsylvania

• Catherine R. Rhodes, University of Pennsylvania