Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Power of Place: Ethnic Urban Geographies and the Negotiation of Central American Immigrant Identities in Atlanta, Georgia

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Conventional understandings of immigrant adjustment assume that newcomers progressively lose their ethnic and/or national identifications over time as they assimilate into a normatively white North American context. Although assimilation research too often is overly simplistic and based on static categorical notions of racial identity, recent research has stressed the fluid and shifting nature of identities. This Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement project will examine the importance of place, conceptualized as socio-spatial context, in the process of negotiating ethnic/national identity by Central American-born residents of Atlanta, Georgia. Not only must recent Central American immigrants navigate the binary yet dynamic racial structure they encounter in Atlanta, they must also negotiate their evolving personal notions of ethnic identity with perceptions of others as to who they are and where they belong. A mixture of quantitative and qualitative approaches will be used to address the following research questions: (1) How are Central American immigrants fitting in to Atlanta's racially structured yet dynamic settlement geographies? (2) How and to what degree do the ethnic/national identities of Atlanta's recent Central American immigrants shift in response to Atlanta's racial hierarchy? (3) How do the socio-spatial contexts in which Central American immigrants live and experience their daily lives (such as home and places of work, recreation, worship, and shopping) affect the process of identity negotiation? A key theme connecting the three questions concerns the degree to which Central American immigrants in Atlanta embrace a pan-ethnic "Latino" identity, and the degree to which the expression and meaning of ethnic identity may, or may not, shift across the various socio-spatial contexts that define everyday life.This project will broaden the range of research on the experiences of contemporary immigrants in the U.S., and it will provide new insights that may be useful for those who deal with immigration policy and/or the livelihoods and welfare of immigrants. In addition, this research project will highlight the growing impact of immigration on non-traditional destinations like Atlanta. Latino immigrant populations are rapidly growing in the southern United States, a region marked historically by the absence of immigration and a strong black/white racial hierarchy. Atlanta has experienced rapid influxes of Latino immigrants, and newcomers from Central America constitute an increasingly important component of Latino immigration flows. The insight provided by the proposed research will guide future research on Central American immigrants in Atlanta and other locations. By strengthening the links between studies of place and identities and research on the adjustment experiences of newly arriving immigrants, this project also will provide a model for research on other groups in other contexts. The project should have general public policy implications, as it will emphasize the need for immigrant adjustment policies and initiatives that target specific groups in order to understand the interplay between these groups and the places in which they reside. Finally, as a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award, the support will facilitate the establishment of a solid independent research program for a promising young scholar.