Hispanics and Asians in the New South

• In Event: 3251 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 2. Asian Immigrants, Citizenship, and Belonging

Abstract

As Hispanics and Asians have entered new destinations in the American South in increasing numbers, researchers have begun to assess the experiences of these relative newcomers in a growing body of literature. This literature often reflects demographic understandings of the South as a whole, not necessarily of the places in the South where Hispanics and Asians are actually likely to live. These understandings of the South include conservative racial and immigration attitudes among whites, a large African American population, and more rural residential settings. I assess the residential and experiential realities of Hispanics and Asians in the South, comparing these assessments to those for Hispanics and Asians in the country as a whole and in the traditional immigrant gateway states, as well as to the average Southern experience. Using the 2011-2015 American Community Survey, I find that the current literature reflects residential realities in some ways and not others. Moreover, analyzing the Cooperative Congressional Election Study of 2016, I find that white attitudes toward immigration and white voting in the 2016 presidential election are much less conservative in places where Hispanics and Asians are most likely to live within the South, as compared to whites in the South as a whole. Subsequently, these attitudes and voting patterns are much more similar to whites living in traditional immigrant gateway states. This indicates that Southern Hispanics and Asians are most likely encounter Southern whites with a more liberal orientation than we might expect. Lastly, on various questions approximating racial experience, Hispanics and Asians in the South report similar feelings to those in the gateways. Overall, this article challenges some of the assumptions about Hispanic and Asian migration to the New South and provides a framework to guide the research agenda moving forward.

Author

• Christopher Maggio, City University of New York-Graduate Center