![]() ![]() “I’ve been here for eight years! Eight years! My husband and I are here with our kids. Typical of Latinos in central Ohio was Elena Martinez who settled in Columbus (in the Hilltop neighborhood) with her husband and children after leaving California and her extended family early in 2002. ![]() The average income for Latinos in Columbus was $14,241 in 2007 with 22.1% of the group officially living in poverty in 2006 ( ACS 2006). While many migrants came to Columbus believing it was an affordable place to live and a safe place to raise a family, poverty and poor schools remained a serious problem. Latino immigrants came to Columbus in search of reasonable wages, a lower cost of living and economic stability as the city grew ( Barcus 2007 Borgas and Tienda 1985 Johnson and Lichter 2008 Suro and Singer 2002 Zúñiga and Hernández-León 2001). The restructuring of agriculture and the growth of the meatpacking and poultry-processing industries as well as the expansion of service jobs encouraged Latinos to relocate and in the midwest low-wage service worked pulled in Latino immigrants ( Johnson-Webb 2003 Kandel and Parrado 2005 Millard and Chapa 2004 Smith and Furuseth 2006). We conclude with a focus on the ways in which the Latino community responds to these challenges.Ĭolumbus is a secondary destination for Latinos and 85% of our interviews were with Latinos who had relocated from other parts of the US (and see CRP 2003 Frazier and Reisinger 2006 Gouveia and Saenz 2000 Kayitsinga 2009). We argue that cotemporary Latino immigrants live separate lives in Columbus, regardless of their status (and many are US citizens). A discussion of state laws follows and we note the barriers that laws create for Latinos who hope to integrate with the city. Second, we examine the social and economic isolation that recent Latino immigrants face and the discrimination that immigrants encounter around work, schooling and healthcare. We begin with a review of immigration to Columbus and note the diversity of the community as well as the discrimination that defines the lives of contemporary Latino movers in the city. In this paper, we use data collected as part of ethnographic work with Latinos in Columbus to investigate the contradictions that immigrants encounter as they settle in the central Ohio. The discrimination that marks the lives of Latino immigrants in Columbus reminds them that many Ohioans believe they are illegally in the US and a threat regardless of their country of origin, legal status and work history. They lack programs to support their incorporation into the city and state laws that challenge their legal status. They live in homogeneous neighborhoods with other Latinos (often other co-nationals) and are separate from the city’s Anglo-America majority and large African-American communities. Nevertheless, these very same immigrants face discrimination in the city. ![]() Latino immigrants in Columbus, Ohio describe their experiences in generally positive terms and say that they are optimistic about their futures in the city. ![]()
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