Community as Place and Identity: Mexican Immigrant Workers on Both Sides of the Border

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — As Mexican immigrant workers have moved into the heartland of the United States seeking stable employment, particularly in the poultry industry, they have developed a sense of home that encompasses life on both sides of the border. According to a University of Arkansas anthropologist, community identity is important, both for ties to Mexico and survival in the United States.

In an article published in the current issue of American Ethnologist, Steve Striffler writes about the yearly trek of some Arkansas poultry workers back to their hometown, a place he calls “Santo Domingo.” More than 80 percent of people who call Santo Domingo home live in the United States, the vast majority in Arkansas.

“Once they brought their families, established a permanent home in the United States, became consumers, and sent their children to U.S. schools, the possibility — if not always the dream — of returning to Mexico became increasingly unrealistic,” Striffler wrote.

Although Santo Domingo as a physical place declines, Striffler noted that it has not lost its power in terms of identity, both for those who once lived in Santo Domingo and for those born in the United States.

“This is partly because being from Santo Domingo no longer requires being from Santo Domingo,” Striffler wrote. “Exactly who belongs to the community — how Santo Domingo is understood as a place and identity — has become more flexible.”

Many immigrants continue to identify themselves as Santo Domingan both out of nostalgia for life in small-town Mexico and because of the reality of their life in the United States.

“Being from Santo Domingo may not matter so much in Mexico for immigrants who no longer live there, but it remains very important for surviving life in Arkansas,” Striffler wrote.

Striffler had worked with many Santo Domingans in a poultry plant and spent considerable time with them in Arkansas over a four-year period. He traveled to Santo Domingo several times, and his article was based on his third trip across the border to the small town. He accompanied two men on their trip home for the Christmas holidays, a time that brings many Santo Domingans back for two important weeks that Striffler characterizes as an annual ritual.

Men and women, old and young, have differing experiences and reasons for valuing the visit to Santo Domingo. For many, it is a place in which they feel normal and respected. They can show how successful they are by buying the beer or funding a fiesta. For most, day-to-day life in the United States is puro trabajo — nothing but work — and the trip home allows them to show themselves and the people back home that migrating was worth it, “that the humiliation, hard work and sacrifice were worth it.”

At the same time, Striffler suggests that the trips back to Santo Domingo are not simply about maintaining ties with Mexico. They are also important for “creating and reproducing social relationships that support life in the United States.”

“Santo Domingo, and the trip home, more generally, is important because it provides a relatively safe place — physically, imaginatively, and culturally — where immigrants can form alliances, networks and understandings that sustain and facilitate their (partial) incorporation into the United States,” Striffler wrote.

Striffler’s article “Neither Here Nor There: Mexican Immigrant Workers and the Search for Home,” was published in the November-December issue of American Ethnologist. Striffler is an associate professor of anthropology in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.