New Pasts: Historicizing Immigration, Race, and Place in the South

Abstract

Stan Schnier, Women hold Mexican and American flags at the final Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride event, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, New York, New York, October 4, 2003. In the last two decades, immigrants, especially those from Latin America, have transformed key aspects of the US South. As recent Latino immigrants seek to make sense of their experiences in the South, they call into question how southern histories are mobilized to define and interpret the present, how southern pasts are rendered accessible and meaningful, and how new groups gain or lose legitimacy as “southern.” Through an analysis of three vignettes drawn from ongoing research on Latino migration to the South, this essay illustrates the entanglements of southern past, present, and future with the narratives of growing immigrant populations. Greater exchange between southern studies and studies of immigration, we suggest, can complicate the black-white racial binary through which “the South” has been represented and stabilized as a coherent and distinctive place. As Latino men and women create new mappings in and of the South, studies of Latino experiences help transform and enliven southern studies.

Keywords

• Global South
• Latino Studies
• Migration
• Regional Studies
• Race Relations