National Identity and Migration in an Emerging Gateway Community
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. American National Identity and Migration
3. The Shenandoah Valley as a New Gateway
4. Data and Methods
4.1. Data Collection and Analytical Tool
4.2. Group Selection
5. Empirical Analysis
5.1. Emergent Themes
Family Values and Traditionalism
“But, I think there is a general culture, of you know, it is family values—whatever that means. I’m afraid when I say that now that it means ultra-conservative and that’s something I don’t like. I mean something distinct from that, you know, there are parks, and activities, and good publics schools, and things that make it easier to raise families here. You know, sports programs and all of that. … I mean our proximity to Washington DC is very exciting to me. We can go in and see shows and concerts easily but here are people here who have never even been to Washington DC.”
“I think that’s probably one of the bigger things that I see (focus on the family). I was grown up country. You know they might not have the fanciest, biggest houses, but they have the most love in the house you would ever want to find.”
5.2. Apriori Themes
5.2.1. Ethnocultural Identity
“the local history here is pretty well known. Typically, it’s part of the family history. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten generations of the same family living, so they know great grandfather fought in the Civil War, and great-great-great-great grandfather came here in 1752 and he was from Germany. And they know all that stuff. And you don’t find that in other places nearly as much and so local history is often treasured.”
“And, it’s hard. It was very hard for my daughter because she came here as a junior—to get in. It was extremely difficult for her to incorporate herself into the community because she was seen as an outsider. It very difficult for her. It was times like, “Dad, I hate it here.” I mean now she’s fine and she’s better after a year and half, doing athletics and sports and kind of forcing her way in. But for a long time, she was miserable, absolutely miserable.”
5.2.2. Civic Political Identity
“But, sincerely wanting to know and I think it’s hard for people to delineate whether it’s a philosophical coming overtime or whether it is these ideas we have been taught about differences in races, ethnicities, and languages. But for me I had the luxury of growing up where those things weren’t as stark in instances- my family contacts only grew up speaking English but had enough Spanish around me that it was normalized to be bilingual in a sense where I grew up, as opposed to here for a lot of our kids and a lot of our families, it is not normalized to be bilingual, it’s either in some way feeling they have to choose in some way very often or in some ways where there is such a stark contrast between the two cultures; whereas where I grew up in was one in the same. My grandfather could go off in Spanish and then he could go off in English, I mean it was kind of just the same back and forth. The things that we celebrated and the things my neighbors celebrated together became a part of our understood culture because this idea that we have one American culture and American identity, for me, seems like nothing further than the truth. When people say that well you know “they” need to assimilate, meaning people from other countries need to assimilate, well you know what do you mean? The American culture of the state of Oklahoma is very different from the American culture in Rhode Island or Maine or Chicago or California or Oregon or Montana, you know and each of those places have their own interpretation of what being American and what American culture is. One of the things they have in common is the philosophical American values and that’s always been an area of focus on how we view American culture, because I see myself as American, I do not see myself as Mexican, I do not see myself as Latin American at all, not even a little bit. I use the word Mexican American a lot, I use the word Chicano a lot, I use the word Latino, but those are all very American ideas. They are not Mexican ideas, they know about Chicanos in Mexico but they are not Mexican ideas.”
“Well it’s almost made comedic now. Something as patriotic as a gun, or somebody feels (in Southern accent) “Merica.” You know, “it’s almost like putting it down. Like, oh you’re proud to be an American. (southern accent) Merica. It’s weird dynamic that as well, nobody wants to embrace, it’s almost as if they’ve tied the term American to redneck…to the old redneck. To the old KKK. Or somebody waving a rebel flag. Larry the Cable Guy. That’s it. Yeah. Get er done. It’s unfortunate. I strongly identify myself as an American and I’m proud of it. I always have been. It’s kind of disappointing to see the direction that this nation is going in just about everything. I don’t know how we let ourselves get to this point.”
Participant 3:“Just some reflections real quick, I apologize if they seem scattered but one is that when I talk to members who are a part of the core dominant culture, for definition you could say white, but often when their attempting to frame things positive for immigrants—like when someone says oh they are just so happy to be here, they’re so grateful for all the opportunities we give them, and oh they just can’t wait to become Americans. There is an assumption that everyone who comes here wants to be an American and become a citizen and gain the American identity, especially right now with the immigration reform, but actually there are a lot of people who are saying “I don’t want to be an American citizen…”
Yes. A good friend of mine, his parents are here, and they have their legal residence but they are not ready to go ahead and change citizenship. And in my own grandfathers history, the family story is that when grandpa [[says name]] would cross the border, he would take his hat off and weep when he went back to Mexico because he missed it so much and I think that a lot of people don’t understand, especially for Mexican immigrants and descendants of Mexican immigrants, our home territory and family land is right around the corner and so it’s not like if you are coming from Sri Lanka or somewhere else where you hold that a little closer to your heart than you would physically, but when you can drive or fly back to some place you realize that tension that pushes you to the united states but the tension that also pulls you back to your own country. So, I think for a lot of Latin Americans, there are deeply conflicting identities and draws so as [[Rick]] was saying, and I can certainly attest to as a child who is Hispanic and I’m 40 years old now and I still feel like I have to qualify calling myself a Hispanic, even though I know that I am, but in the eyes of others, there are things you get from both sides of the fence/culture saying “oh well you’re not a real Mexican” and “I’m like I never claimed to be a Mexican” or you know people doubt your credentials in terms of your family and who your family background are but then there is this other side there’s this idea of “to turn white” and so among people from your core cultural background, they can levee a very brutal criticism that you’ve become “white.” So, a lot of times mastering English or you know my father were so extremely proud of being able to speak Spanish without any noticeable accents, and while he was very proud of his Spanish speaking, he didn’t pass it on to his kids. So, the United States, I don’t know that we’re are the only place where these ethnic identities are so jumbled but in terms of immigrants, its assumption that everyone wants to fit in and take on the shirt of the United States.”
5.2.3. Civic Republican Identity
“Growing up here in the valley, I’ve had two kinds of disparate experiences, I grew up in Bridgewater just 10 min south of here, born and raised and live there now. I was born into an ultra-conservative family and through listening to the media and travelling within the states, I began to understand the Shenandoah valley was very conservative and as I sent my son away to college, away to Columbia, again hearing about how different we were from everyone else he met at VA Tech or everyone else he is experiencing abroad, and yet at the same time there seems to be in the valley also another side of greater sophistication where there is a tendency to make sense building and have more open eyes. I can see in myself, through education, through travel, that there has been a movement away from identifying with conservative, whatever that meant for us when I was young to something a little bit different, and somehow the Shenandoah valley is identified as ultra conservative to other parts of the country, and yet somehow something has evolved here of significant support and openness, which is something I’m very proud of. Now I get to talk to people about how receptive and responsive parts of the community are.”
“I think in a sense that’s why we can be a little bit of a poster child of a community because maybe it’s the influence from the universities or the Mennonite and peace background, but we do have a number of people with a leadership or voice and that although as you said may not belong to one group or the other, but are able to make these connections and express them and just create that little bit of a balance. It makes us have those moments of brightness that we all love and make us want to stay here.”
“We had a group called the Minute Men who had this VA chapter of the Minute Men and the present-day formation of the Minute Men is those who started in Arizona with protecting the borders and keeping those from crossing the border. So, there is a VA chapter in Herndon and some one out of Waynesboro invited them to come speak in Harrisonburg and had a rally. Basically, the goal was a rally and sort of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and 3/4ths of the audience there were pro-immigrant. And, I was actually invited to speak at the event (to their credit the minute men invited me to speak). But to me it emphasized that the anti-immigrant rhetoric is not consistent with the values of the Shenandoah Valley. It’s not consistent with who the valley is and when the valley has come, and who they express themselves to be. The least common denominator sometimes becomes the spokesperson for groups, but you know they happen to be loud. The loudest is the least common denominator, so because their voice is louder, they adopt themselves as the spokespeople. For example, the same could be said with the TEA party, you know when I look at some of their core beliefs, I don’t agree but I can understand them but then the rhetoric that comes out because of the vocal least common denominator really changes the nature of our conversation. The simple fact that we don’t have an immigration debate in this country anywhere, we have one side doing their press rallies and conferences and then the other side has their press rallies and conferences and then they speak to each other through the media. They don’t actually ever sit down and have a real conversation with each other. So, that has always been a real strong underlying point when we talk about the macro level of immigration in the US and then use the Shenandoah Valley as a micro causal. All the things that talk about, the fears of what immigration is bringing, in their minds to our country, is not true in the Shenandoah Valley. When I give presentations about immigration, what I first do is I suspend political correctness (give them permission to not be politically correct), most of you would probably cringe at my presentations, but these are poised for conservatives who have not been exposed to these issues, to talk with their jargon. I have them list all perceived stereotypical problems of immigration and illegal immigration, so we write them all down on the board. Then one by one we can go through those and say well actually this isn’t relevant or true in the Shenandoah Valley. This isn’t what is happening here, actually the real percentages are this and that and this. So just by doing this I think it has been a great way to use as a poster child for talking about immigration in this country.”
6. Conclusions
Acknowledgements
Conflicts of Interest
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1 | (Singer et al. 2008) define a pre-emerging gateway as a place where immigrant populations have grown very rapidly over the last ten years and are likely to continue to grow as immigrant destinations. |
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Byrne, J. National Identity and Migration in an Emerging Gateway Community. Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 73. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci7050073
Byrne J. National Identity and Migration in an Emerging Gateway Community. Social Sciences. 2018; 7(5):73. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci7050073
Chicago/Turabian StyleByrne, Jennifer. 2018. "National Identity and Migration in an Emerging Gateway Community" Social Sciences 7, no. 5: 73. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci7050073