Inside the Gilded Cage: The Lives of Latino Immigrant Males in Rural Central Kentucky

Between 1990 and 2006, Kentucky's Latino population grew by 300 percent. Using semi-structured interviews, this paper offers a qualitative account that incorporates immigrants' stories into explanations of how Latino males arrived in rural Central Kentucky and the adjustments they faced upon arriving. Rather than moving from traditional settlement states or large metro areas, study participants move first to "new gateway" states of the Southeast, especially Georgia and North Carolina, before coming to Kentucky. Upon arriving in Kentucky, they initially find accepting communities with low competition for employment and good pay, but simultaneously experience social isolation and strenuous work days. These Latino men must negotiate the paradoxes of immigration in the contemporary United States as they adjust to their new lives in this non-traditional destination.