Oregon town gradually accepts immigrant influx

Immigration, legal and otherwise, is transforming the look of America's small- and medium-sized communities. Lise Nelson, a University of Oregon geography professor, found a case study of those changes in Woodburn, Ore., which in the 2000 census had 20,000 people and was the largest city in the state with a majority of Latinos. (Encarta map)

Drawing from archived newspaper articles, public records and personal interviews conducted in English and Spanish, Nelson described a somewhat grudging acceptance of the new neighbors in journal articles for Geographical Review and Cultural Geographies. "Woodburn is a place that represents a microcosm of the broader-scale migration and settlement dynamics that are changing small- and medium-sized towns throughout the United States," Nelson said in a university news release.

"Woodburn's farmworker housing struggle in the 1990s offers a window into the shifting dynamics of belonging and identity," Nelson writes. "The housing struggle reflected a deep resistance on the part of some white residents to the presence of Mexican immigrants, yet today we see, at least on an official level, a more active embracing of Woodburn's multicultural identity. A few years ago Woodburn inaugurated, as its first urban renewal project, a downtown plaza, designed in a Latin American style. For several years now the city has helped organize a community celebration of Mexican Independence Day. This is not to say the picture is all rosy, as racism and discrimination against immigrant residents have not disappeared, but there have been public and visible changes."

Woodburn is not truly rural, but Nelson's work looks at the population changes occurring throughout the adjoining farming areas of the Willamette Valley, including the small towns of Gervais and Canby, thanks to expansion in the nursery industry and increase in agricultural processing plants. (Read more) To read Nelson's Geographical Review article, go here. To read her article from Cultural Geographies, go here. To view a slide show on the subject, narrated by Nelson, go here.