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7. Latinos in New Hampshire:Enclaves, Diasporas, and an Emerging Middle Class
- Temple University Press
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7 Latinos in New Hampshire: Enclaves, Diasporas, and an Emerging Middle Class Yoel Camayd-Freixas, Gerald Karush, and Nelly Lejter T he U.S. Bureau of the Census reports that New Hampshire had 20,489 Latinos at the start of this decade: 1.7 percent of a state with a 95 percent non-Latino White population.1 Massachusetts next door had 430,000 Latinos. Why is this comparatively small Latino group in New Hampshire noteworthy? Part of the answer lies in the almost total absence of Latinos in the state twenty years ago. New Hampshire was not a state of traditional Latino settlement. In 1980 New Hampshire was surpassed as the state with the fewest Latinos only by Maine, the Dakotas, and Vermont. By the year 2000, however, the Latino population had quadrupled, and the state now hosts growing Latino enclaves. New Hampshire has become part of an emerging national pattern of Latino settlement characterized by branching regional dispersal from traditional areas of concentration into new enclaves in nontraditional states and cities. This dynamic is known as the Latino Diaspora. A second consideration is that the Latino Diaspora in the state also shows a new secondary pattern of Latino residential dispersal away from central cities into suburbia, small towns, and nonmetropolitan areas. This pattern is discernible in the state given its lower urbanization and relatively recent Latino communities. But it has not been reported in other states even though some are likely to show this secondary diaspora effect. A third consideration is that the diversity in Latino residential settlement in New Hampshire also seems to involve a changing population profile. The traditional profile of Latinos in the Northeast has been that of urban working-class immigrants, often from agricultural backgrounds, settled in enclaves within central cities. But the Latino settlement in New Hampshire is driven not by traditional direct immigration from the Caribbean but by secondary migration from neighboring states. That is, these Latinos are much more likely to be migrants than immigrants. They are labor migrants but from more diverse national origins. They are more fluent in English, more assimilated, and occupationally and economically diverse. A major element that emerges from this profile is a socioeconomic diversity that suggests the emergence of a new Latino middle class. This is a new development not only in New Hampshire but also in New England. Therefore, New Hampshire may serve as a case study on the evolution of a Latino middle class. Not that a Latino middle class does not exist elsewhere—the dynamic Cuban enclave in South Florida is an example. But South Florida is a well-established Latino community. A middle class is a new phenomenon in communities of more recent formation that emerge from the diaspora. In addition, this emerging middle class may drive some of the secondary residential dispersion evident in the Latino Diaspora. It is likely that a Latino middle class is emerging in other parts of New England, yet it is obscured by older settlements or a lack of focused analysis. An emerging Latino middle class has major political implications and can be expected to affect the relationship between Latinos and non-Latinos. The relatively small size of the Latino population in New Hampshire suggests that these effects will be gradual yet signi ficant relative to population size. The final considerations are contextual. First, New Hampshire is immersed in a dense northeast urban corridor stretching from Philadelphia through New York City, southern New England to southern Maine, and directly impacted by its dynamics. New Hampshire, at the edge of Northern New England, may serve as a barometer of changes expected in other formerly non-Latino Northern New England states like Maine and Vermont. Similarly, understanding changes in Latino settlement and its implication for economic and social participation is becoming increasingly important . Latino kinematics are fueled by numbers. Early this millennium, Latinos became the largest minority group in the United States after a generation of relentless growth—a growth rate that accelerated in the 1990s. By the March 2002 Current Population Survey, the Latino population grew by another two million, reaching 37.4 million (13.3 percent of the U.S. population).2 If this trend holds, the Latino population will grow by 67 percent this decade to 59 million in 2010. The changes from these emerging patterns will significantly impact millions of people and the communities where Latinos settle, which now include most of the United States. Latino Enclaves The most common...