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xi Preface This volume is the product of many hands, including the principal investigators , researchers, study participants, and photographers. While we studied the process of migration of Latinos to the rural Midwest, nearly all members of our research team also migrated. The authors have shared a common bond for years in producing this work and continue to bring a vibrant cross section of interdisciplinary experience to research on contemporary Latino issues. The authors maintain a strong commitment to understanding and accurately reporting the dimensions and significance of Latino sojourners and Latino communities. The interest in rural Latinos is growing today, as well as the need to keep abreast of the changes brought forth as Latinos become established workers, new neighbors, and civic participants in local governance. For the authors, the prospects look good and very promising for the rural United States. The country’s old citizenry has always welcomed the nation’s newcomers, and together they have maintained a creative and vital society for all. This project began with a research proposal, “Latinos in the Rural Midwest : Community Development Implications,” submitted to the United States Department of Agriculture by Refugio Rochín and Rogelio Saenz. The proposal focused on various aspects of immigration from Mexico to the United States and in-migration from the Southwest to the Midwest. When the proposal was submitted, Dr. Rochín was director of the Julian Samora Research Institute (JSRI) at Michigan State University; he later moved to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and he is now a senior fellow and Washington, D.C., liaison for the Inter-University Program for Latino Research at Notre Dame University. Throughout the project, Rogelio Saenz has been the co–principal investigator , as well as a professor and head of the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University. The grant supported Dr. Saenz’s demographic research and sociological studies with Lourdes Gouveia and students at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, which is being published elsewhere. Jorge Chapa succeeded Dr. Rochín as acting director of JSRI and was the 00-T3109-FM xi 00-T3109-FM xi 9/29/04 6:48:08 AM 9/29/04 6:48:08 AM xii Preface principal researcher coordinating the project for a year. Dr. Chapa carried out the demographic analysis of rural population dynamics published in this volume, left JSRI to start the Latino Studies Program at Indiana University , and continued work on this project throughout all remaining phases. In Bloomington, Chapa met Jeremy Hogan, a photographer with the Bloomington Herald-Times nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Hogan has a long-standing interest in using photography to portray the Latino condition. Eileen Diaz McConnell, a visiting professor in Latino Studies at Indiana University at the time, extended her dissertation research to the subjects covered in this book. She has moved on to join the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ann Millard started working on the ethnographic component of the project when Dr. Chapa was at JSRI and, when he left, she became the principal investigator of the project. She worked closely with Maríaelena D. Jefferds and Ken R. Crane, who were ethnographic research assistants and graduate students at Michigan State University. After finishing her Ph.D. in anthropology , Jefferds moved to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while Crane finished his Ph.D. in sociology and moved to Ancilla University in Indiana. Catalina Burillo, who has worked with some of us on a number of research projects on Latinos in rural Michigan, finished her undergraduate education at Michigan State University and moved to Hart, Michigan. In the final year of the grant, Ann Millard moved to the South Texas Center for Rural Public Health in McAllen, Texas, which is part of the School of Rural Public Health, Texas A&M University System Health Science Center. Isidore Flores also moved from JSRI to the South Texas Center. As is evident, every author in this volume, except Saenz, moved to a new community and began a new job as we completed work on the manuscript. As academics, we tend not to be called migrants, but like the people in our book our moves were related to learning more and to employment; and like a familia of colleagues, we have stayed in close contact. The contrast of our experiences as migrants—many of us Latinos—with those of many people in this book reminds us of the importance of social class and its many ramifications in making...

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