Lexington Books Immigrants Outside Megalopolis: Ethnic Transformation in the Heartland

The booming 1990s saw a new demographic pattern emerging in the United States-the shift of immigrants toward smaller towns and metropolitan areas in ethnically homogenous (or traditionally bicultural) areas. These places offer growing, specialized economies in need of unskilled or semi-skilled (and occasionally skilled) labor; they also offer, for some immigrants, a favorable physical and social climate. Immigrants Outside Megalopolis documents this trend with case studies including Hmong in Wisconsin, Iranians in Iowa, Mexicans in Kansas and Colorado, Vietnamese in coastal Louisiana, Mexicans in North Carolina and south Texas, Cubans in Arizona, Bosnians in upstate New York, Asian Indians in north Texas, and Ukranians and Russians in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Truly, this process is resulting in a cultural transformation of the U.S. heartland. The implantation of new features on the cultural landscape (businesses, homes, churches, schools, possessions, and the peoples themselves) is giving many Americans a world geography lesson-at a time when increased world understanding is something the country cannot do without. This geography lesson comes at a cost, however: the difficult process of social adjustment, playing out on a daily basis between immigrant and host populations, which remains largely unresolved. This process is an important focus of Jones's book. Review In this extremely informative collection, Richard Jones's objective to provide a wider, comparative examination of the adjustment experiences of new immigrant groups outside the country's traditional destination metropolis is not only successful, it even confounds his own somewhat skeptical expectations. As this collection documents, in both the East and West, non-megalopolitan America is adjusting to the presence of new immigrants from diverse global regions, and the final analysis is largely, (indeed overwhelmingly) positive. This collection once again confirms that America is still the 'immigrant nation' it has always been since the Encounter and onward through its nation-building history to the present era. The social, cultural, and economic vigor these new immigrant groups bring revitalizes our society, strengthens it and brings diversity, which inevitably becomes welcomed rather than disavowed, as this most recent wave of newcomers overcomes the resentments and suspicions of the residing 'host' communities, that have commonly accompanied 'others' presences during the initial 'encounters'.--Dennis Conway, Indiana University, Bloomington The 11 original case studies in this important collection by geographers and other social scientists each focus on one new immigrant group in one location....These essays may not calm the furious debate over new immigrants, but the concrete data they provide cannot be simply ignored. Highly recommended.--CHOICE, February 2009 This book is a significant addition to the emerging literature on immigration taking place outside of America's gateway cities. The chapters capture the richly varied ways in which recent immigrants are adapting to destination communities and, in the process, creating new cultural landscapes. It will appeal to migration scholars from all disciplines.--Kavita Pandit, The State University of New York From Leadville to Utica and Portland to Charlotte, recent immigrants are touching, and being touched by, a great variety of places across the United States. The geographic approach embraced by this volume adds rich knowledge to our understanding of this variety in the early 21st century.--Curtis C. Roseman, University of Southern California About the Author Richard C. Jones is professor of geography in the department of political science and geography at the University of Texas at San Antonio.