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Village of immigrants [electronic resource] : Latinos in an emerging America / Diana R. Gordon

Author
Gordon, Diana R.
Published
New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, 2015.
Physical Description
xi, 256 pages ; 24 cm.
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Contents
Part I. A Village Transformed -- Hola, Greenport -- Lost and Found -- Part II. Absorbing Immigrants since 1840 -- The European Legacy -- Boom, Bust and Back Again -- Migration from Within -- Is Demographics Destiny? -- Part III. Classroom Challenges -- Schooling New Citizens -- Edgar and the Blue Mosque -- Part IV. Settling In -- Housing or Houses? -- Sofia's Quest -- Part V. Toward Community Health -- Cobbled Care -- An Accidental Nurse -- Part VI. Dilemmas of Control -- Legal Limbo -- Deferred and Delivered -- Part VII. Working Lives -- Where There's a Will There's a Job (or Two) -- Sacrifice and Success -- Part VIII. What Next? -- The New American -- A Small-Town Model?
Summary
"Greenport, New York, a village on the North Fork of Long Island, exemplifies a little-noted national trend--that of immigrants spreading beyond the big coastal cities, driving much of rural population growth nationally. In Village of Immigrants, Diana R. Gordon illustrates how small-town America has been revitalized by the arrival of these newcomers in Greenport, where she lives. Greenport today boasts a population that is one-third Hispanic. Gordon contends that these immigrants have effectively saved the town's economy by taking low-skill jobs, increasing the tax base, filling schools, and creating and patronizing local businesses. Greenport's seaside beauty still attracts summer tourists, but it is only with the support of the local Latino workforce that elegant restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts are able to serve these visitors. For Gordon the picture is complex, because the wave of immigrants also presents the town with challenges to its services and institutions. Gordon's portraits of local immigrants capture the positive and the negative, with a cast of characters ranging from a Guatemalan mother of three, including one child who is profoundly disabled, to a Colombian house painter with a successful business who cannot become licensed because he remains undocumented. Village of Immigrants weaves together these people's stories, fears, and dreams to reveal an environment plagued by threats of deportation, debts owed to coyotes, low wages, and the other bleak realities that shape the immigrant experience--even in the charming seaport village of Greenport. A timely contribution to the national dialogue on immigration, Gordon's book shows the pivotal role the American small town plays in the ongoing American immigrant story--as well as how this booming population is shaping and reviving rural communities"--
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ISBN
9780813575902 (hardcover : alkaline paper)
9780813575919 (ePub)
9780813575926 (Web PDF)
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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