Migration, Acculturation, and Environmental Values: The Case of Mexican Immigrants in Central Iowa

Abstract

Human–environment geography and geographic research on migration have largely been treated as separate scholarly spheres. Meanwhile, even as recent immigration exerts dynamic changes on American culture, relatively little scholarly work addresses immigrants’ attitudes toward environmental issues. In this article, we address the following questions: How do Mexican immigrants perceive and understand the environment and environmental problems? How do environmental values shift or become modified during the process of acculturation in the United States? To answer these questions, we use the results of surveys conducted with Mexican immigrants and their kin in central Iowa. We develop an interdisciplinary theoretical framework based on a modified concept of “environmentality” that incorporates insights from research on environmental values, immigration and acculturation, political ecology, and environmental justice. Based on this analysis, we find that immigrants become socialized to new norms, in part, through environmental practices. They are readily accepting of some U.S. norms around environmental thought and behavior (especially with respect to maintaining public spaces) but critical of others (e.g., the excessive materialism of American consumerism and its impacts on the environment and society). Immigrants draw on their experience of life in Mexico as they acculturate to find the right balance between protecting the environment and looking after human needs.

La geografía de la interacción hombre–medio ambiente y la investigación geográfica sobre la migración, en gran medida, han sido consideradas como esferas académicas separadas. Entre tanto, aunque la inmigración reciente se manifiesta en transformaciones dinámicas de la cultura norteamericana, es relativamente escaso el trabajo erudito que tome como tema las actitudes de los inmigrantes hacia las cuestiones ambientales. En este artículo nos centramos en los siguientes interrogantes: ¿De qué manera perciben y entienden los inmigrantes mejicanos el medio ambiente y los problemas ambientales? ¿Cómo cambian en ellos los valores ambientales o llegan a modificarse durante el proceso de aculturación en los Estados Unidos? Para absolver estas preguntas utilizamos los resultados de una exploración llevada a cabo entre inmigrantes mejicanos y sus parientes en la parte central de Iowa. Desarrollamos un marco teórico interdisciplinario a partir de una modificación del concepto de “ambientalidad” que incorpora valiosas contribuciones de la investigación sobre valores ambientales, inmigración y aculturación, ecología política, y justicia ambiental. Con base en este análisis, descubrimos que los inmigrantes, en parte, llegan a percatarse de la normatividad nueva a través de prácticas ambientales. Con facilidad ellos aceptan algunas de las normas norteamericanas en torno al pensamiento y la conducta ambiental (en especial con respecto a conservar el espacio público) pero critican otras (por ejemplo, el excesivo materialismo del consumismo norteamericano y sus impactos sobre el medio ambiente y la sociedad). Los inmigrantes se apoyan en su propia experiencia de vida en México a medida que se aculturan tratando de encontrar un correcto equilibrio entre proteger el medio ambiente y satisfacer las necesidades humanas.

Key Words:

• acculturation
• environment
• environmental values
• Latinos
• migration.

关键词:

• 社会化
• 环境
• 环境价值
• 拉美裔
• 迁移。

Palabras clave:

• aculturación
• medio ambiente
• valores ambientales
• latinos
• migración

Acknowledgments

This research project was carried out while Eric D. Carter was a member of the faculty of Grinnell College and Bianca Silva and Graciela Guzmán were students there. We wish to express our gratitude to Grinnell College's Mentored Advanced Project program for making this collaboration possible. Chloe Sikes, Eric Nost, and Hart Ford participated as student researchers in earlier phases of this project. Hannah Lewis, Norm McCoy, Linda Barnes, Stephanie Snow, Claudia Cook-Martin, Daisy Castro, Midwest Iowa Community Action, Sister Christine Feagan, and Father Jim Miller helped us to develop a network of contacts in Marshalltown. David Cook-Martin, Marie Price, Abby Hickcox, Eric Perramond, Neela Nandyal, five anonymous reviewers, and the former editor of the Nature-Society section, Karl Zimmerer, offered helpful comments on various versions of this article. Finally, our deepest appreciation is reserved for those members of the Hispanic community of the Marshalltown area for welcoming us into their homes and participating in this project.

Notes

1. Two broad exceptions can be made: studies of the environmental and land-use impacts of international migration in sending regions (Jokisch 2002; Hecht et al. 2005; Hecht and Saatchi 2007; Radel and Schmook 2008; Yarnall and Price 2010) and some of the environmental justice literature, which we explore in some detail in the literature review.

2. Agrawal (2005, 233 n. 15) acknowledged that Luke (1995), also drawing on Foucault's idea of governmentality, coined the term environmentality, but without Agrawal's focus on subject formation.

3. The 1.5 generation includes those who were born in Mexico but migrated to the United States before or during early adolescence.

4. These “new destinations” tend to have four characteristics that set them apart from areas where Latino immigrants have traditionally flocked, such as Southern California, Texas, or the Southwest. First, “new destinations” tend to be small towns (e.g., Marshalltown) and not big cities. Second, these towns are found in the Southeast and Midwest rather than regions with older Latino traditions. Third, employment in one major industry, usually meat-packing or other agricultural or livestock processing, is the major draw for immigrants. Finally, “new destinations” tend to have rapid and recent growth in the Latino population. See also H. A. Smith and Furuseth (2006) and Millard and Chapa (2004).

5. Swift and Co. was purchased in 2007 by the Brazilian firm JBS S.A., forming JBS EUA (in the U.S. market), which continues to market meat under the Swift brand. Most of our informants continue to refer to the plant and the company that owns it simply as “Swift” or “la Swift” in Spanish. This plant was the venue for memorable raids by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in 1996 (when it was still called the Immigration and Naturalization Service) and 2006, in which hundreds of undocumented workers were arrested and deported, most to Villachuato, Michoacán, Mexico (Grey 2002; Duara 2009).

6. Because of the very small number of Hispanic residents of places other than Marshalltown, these locations have been disguised in informants’ testimonies to further protect their identity.

7. We did not ask informants directly about their legal migration status, to gain their trust and avoid alienating them; we left it to them to volunteer their status. Many of those with U.S. citizenship or resident alien (“green card”) status made specific mention of it. We infer that Ignacia is undocumented because she said, “We [she and her family] can go [back to Mexico], but we can't return.” More generally we inferred that those who are able to travel regularly back and forth between the United States and Mexico have legal status, whereas those who cannot (despite an expressed desire to do so) are undocumented.

8. Although problematic, we use the term Anglo to describe white non-Hispanics in Marshalltown. Our informants themselves seem to struggle with putting this ethnic and cultural difference into words: Sometimes they used the term Anglo, but more generally they used the Mexican slang güero (meaning, roughly, “white”) or sometimes just ellos (“they”). Although Anglo–Hispanic relations are still often tense, they have improved considerably thanks in part to an informal sister cities program between Marshalltown and Villachuato, developed by sociologist Mark Grey of the University of Northern Iowa (Grey 2002).