Borders and Bridges: Negotiating the Politics of Belonging in Hazleton, Pennsylvania

• In Event: The Elusive Battle for Educational Equity in Pennsylvania: 40 Years of Changes and Challenges

Abstract

Purpose: In 2006, amid the rapid influx of Latino/as to the small town of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, the city council passed the Illegal Immigration Relief Act. The ordinance, which banned the renting of properties to and the employment of undocumented immigrants, was never enforced. Still, the legality of Latino/a residents and their belonging in the community was called into question, and Hazleton gained national notoriety as one of the most unwelcoming cities for immigrants. As a touchstone in national debates about immigration, both news outlets and academic scholarship examined the resulting divisions between white and Latino/a residents.

However, in attending to the divisiveness of the ordinance, few accounts have also included stories about how residents—both white and Latino/a—renegotiated the borders that were erected in the community. This oversight results in the reiteration of common tropes of rural poor and working class populations as xenophobic and resistant to change. Moreover, it erases on-going work of community organizers to create new spaces of belonging and connection, specifically through education. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine both the bordering practices that produced the exclusion and marginalization of Latino/as in Hazleton, as well to explore the efforts of residents to build bridges across those borders.

Perspective: Borrowing from geographic theorizing on borders (e.g. Herbert, 2009; Mee & Wright, 2009; Winders, 2007), this research contributes to discussions about how citizenship and belonging are made, experienced, contested, and remade. Borders, in this sense, are spatial boundaries, as well as social lines designed “to define the places that are safe from unsafe, to distinguish us from them” (Anzaldua, 1987). While borders have “proven a useful way to question taken-for-granted assumptions about belonging” (Mee & Wright, 2009, p. 773), we propose bridges as a necessary corollary to a focus on exclusionary bordering practices, thereby drawing attention to how many also actively work to create spaces of belonging in the face of borders.

Methods and Data Sources: The study draws on work with both Latino/a and White founders and members of an education-based community organization called Concerned Parents of Hazleton, which seeks to bridge divides in the community and address educational needs of Latino/a newcomers. Qualitative methods included semi-structured interviews that were coded for themes of belonging, exclusion, and citizenship; observation of organization activities; and a review of related literatures and public documents.

Results: This research reveals how education emerged as a unique space of contestation and renegotiation of Latino/a belonging. Although schools were politicized amid accusations about Latino/as draining public resources, education also became a site though which community members organized to heal wounds and meet people’s needs.

Significance: Hazleton provides a unique opportunity to examine how a community negotiates changing demographics. In addition to highlighting themes of this symposium, the Hazleton story offers insights for similarly changing communities across the nation. Ultimately, we suggest that engaging with the messy politics of making, remaking, and contesting local and national borders will help illuminate the shifting landscapes within which communities are made and students learn.

Authors

• Hilario Lomeli, The Pennsylvania State University

• Jenna Christian, The Pennsylvania State University

• Eric Ian Farmer, The Pennsylvania State University