Lifting the Burden: Negotiations of Inclusion in the Lives of New Immigrant Communities in New Bedford, MA

• In Event: The Transnational City: Architecture and Identity Interweaving Urban Dialogues in the Modern City

Abstract

This work is a preliminary study on the relationship between urban space and the activities of the new immigrant community in the region of New Bedford, Massachusetts. The research explores the ongoing negotiations between the native population (including its traditional immigrant communities) and the Latin American newcomers (including Brazilians) as seen in the space they use, create, share, and interpret. This investigation centers on the formation of immigrant social practices, identities, transnational exchanges, and their coping with the pressing urban issues of transportation and housing. The first part deals with the economic situation in the New Bedford region focusing on immigration as one more social dimension of market integration. The second part explores the recent scholarship on Brazilian immigration, which provides grounded information on a range of thematic issues such as population, pan-ethnic identities, and social exclusion. To trace the immigrants’ effort to construct social identity and negotiate inclusion, the final section addresses the region’s socio-economic specificities taking the Brazilian community as lens into the current ongoing negotiations among the native, traditional, and the new immigrant groups. The basis for this work results from close consultations with some key non-profit local organizations.

Author

• Cristina M Mehrtens, University of Massachusetts/Dartmouth