21 st Century Rural Life at the End of the Oregon Trail: Global Migration and Economic Change In Woodburn, Oregon by Edward Kissam [email protected] with Lynn Stephen Anna Garcia October 8, 2006 Aguirre Division, JBS International 555 Airport Blvd. – Suite 400, Burlingame, California 94010 This material is based upon work supported by the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture under Agreement No. 2001-36201-11286. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Acknowledgments Over the 5 years we conducted the New Pluralism study in Woodburn, Oregon, a wide range of people supported the project in diverse ways—in planning this study, conducting research, and in commenting on interim reports. I would like first of all to thank the project research team for their tireless and dedicated work on the Woodburn Community Case Study. Anna Garcia joined me in conducting the initial field research in Woodburn during the summer of 2002 and subsequently provided field research supervision survey activities throughout 2003, as well as ongoing field in-depth field research of her own. Lynn Stephen of the University of Oregon was a marvelous collaborator and skilled field researcher. In addition to conducting a number of key interviews herself, she recruited and worked closely with us in supervising a skilled team of researchers drawn from her students at the University of Oregon. Rachel Hansen, from the graduate program in Anthropology at the University of Oregon was a real pioneer in the study, conducting our first interviews in Woodburn during the spring of 2003 under very challenging circumstances. Jessica Cole, Tami Hoag, and Danielle Robinson from the graduate program in Anthropology, and two undergraduate students, Gabriela Romero and Edwin Vega then worked skillfully and dedicatedly during three intense weeks of further community surveying in September, 2003. Amparo Bustos-Navarro from our Aguirre Division, JBS International did an extraordinary job of coding survey data, capturing the richness of the extensive information the team had done so well in eliciting from survey respondents. Shannon Williams, now at the University of California, Santa Cruz, did statistical analysis of both survey responses and complex household data. Special thanks are due to two people, Michael Dale, now with the Northwest Workers’ Justice Project and Mark Wilk of the Oregon Law Center, who very graciously introduced us to Woodburn initially (during the course of an earlier study of transnational teenage migrant workers) and who later share valuable insights from their years of living and working in the community. provided crucial insights early on. Subsequently, Julie Samples and Santiago Ventura of The Oregon Law Center shared valuable information they were gathering on new migrants to the Willamette Valley. Woodburn City Administrator, John Brown provided crucial assistance in agreeing to support our conducting the community survey and, subsequently, in reflecting about issues Woodburn faces and reviewing the study to correct factual errors, as well as contributing very thoughtful reflection on my initial analysis of several key issues. Pete McCallum, long the principal of Woodburn’s High School, and a long-time member of the City Planning Commission, also provided crucial insights. Woodburn Mayor, Kathy Figley and several City Council members also were open and patient in educating us about the issues they faced and their thoughts about solutions. A wide range of City staff, local business owners, educators, non-profit program staff, and other community leaders were also generous with their time and provided us valuable insights in a wide range of informal, non-formal, and formal interviews. More than 30 key informants and 160 community survey respondents to whom we promised anonymity did more than answer questions. They shared in-depth insights, personal experiences, and unique perspectives on life in Woodburn, as well as being personally hospitable to strangers who appeared at their door to take their time. I have tried to capture their diverse experiences and perspectives but, of course, the errors in this report are entirely my own. Table of Contents Genesis of the New Pluralism Project and the Current Monograph p. 1 Overview of Woodburn p. 4 Profile of Immigrants and Natives in Woodburn p. 16 The Migration Networks Shaping Woodburn’s Social Life p. 44 Coming to the U.S. and Settling Into Woodburn p. 57 Residential Patterns and Housing Arrangements p. 64 Factors Affecting the Social Integration of Immigrants P 77 Livelihoods in Woodburn p. 81 Linguistic Profile of Woodburn p. 86 Support for Immigrant Integration p. 91 Woodburn Residents’ Assessment of Community Life p. 95 Woodburn Residents’ Civic Concerns p. 111 Social Program Use and Utility p. 121 Civic Dialogue in Woodburn: Sources of Information p. 126 Civic Involvement in Woodburn p. 130 Civic Engagement and Municipal Response to Community Change p. 136 Community Responses to Current Challenges p. 150 The Role of Immigrant Businesses in Community Life p. 163 What Can We Learn from Woodburn’s Experience p. 172 Recommendations for Ongoing Social Integration Efforts in Woodburn p. 178 Final Conclusion p. 184 Genesis of the New Pluralism Project and the Current Monograph In the fall of 2001, the US Department of Agriculture’s Fund for Rural America announced an initiative to support in-depth research into the ways in which immigration was impacting rural American life. Our “New Pluralism” study, concluded in the fall of 2005, is one of five multi-year projects which USDA’s Cooperative State Research and Extension Education Service (CSREES) funded. The initiative’s central goal was to generate practical guidance for rural communities, as well as for county, state, and federal planners and decision makers as to how sweeping demographic, technological, and economic change affected these communities, to describe “best practices” and identify promising strategies for nurturing healthy communities and improvements in the quality of rural life. One of the proposed emphases for this research program was to better understand how to harness demographic change to increase rural opportunity. We designed our research in response to this charge, focusing on the social dynamics of interactions among immigrant and native-born residents of rural communities and how these might shape civic life. In order to understand not only the overall macro-level patterns of change in rural communities in the U.S. but to also gain insight into the micro-level dynamics of community life, we decided to base our research on case studies of a diverse range of rural communities which were being impacted by immigration—two along the Eastern Seaboard (Adel, Georgia and Newton Grove, North Carolina), two in the Midwest (Marshall, Minnesota and Marshalltown, Iowa), and two along the Pacific Seaboard (Arvin, California and Woodburn, Oregon). This monograph reports the findings from our field research over a period of 5 years in Woodburn, Oregon. The field research included observations during four stretches of research in Woodburn during this period, in-depth interviews with more than 30 key informants (city staff, non-profit managers and staff, immigrant and non-immigrant Woodburn Monograph Final October 2006 p. 1 residents), as well semi-structured interviews with a small sample of local immigrant entrepreneurs and non-immigrant business owners and managers, community. Special efforts were made to secure information from older Woodburn residents about the post- World War II period. The centerpiece of the community case study was a community survey of a random sample of 160 households in Woodburn; this survey was conducted in two waves—the first during the spring of 2003, the second in September. The survey questionnaire included information on coming to Woodburn (for both immigrants and non-immigrants), personal background and life experiences, household composition, perspectives on community life, service utilization, and civic engagement. Key Issues Addressed in This Monograph There are three key issues addressed in the overall study design and in this monograph on Woodburn, Oregon. • What is the magnitude and nature of immigration to rural US communities? • What are the impacts of immigration? • How can communities respond to changes stemming from immigration? The answers to the basic research questions are, in fact, important in terms of developing practical strategies for proactive responses to integrate immigrants into community social, economic, and civic life—because, in some cases, the “solutions” developed in the abstract process of policy and political debate make virtually no contribution to improvements in community life since they are not linked to day-to-day realities and, thus, can do little to guide improvements in service delivery systems, or the legal/regulatory frameworks developed to improve societal functioning. Woodburn Monograph Final October 2006 p. 2 Macro-Level Context of Rural Immigration to the Pacific Seaboard Region The contribution of immigration to demographic change in rural America is dramatic. In 23 rural states identified by Jeffrey Passel and Michael Fix as “new growth” states for immigrant settlement, .the foreign-born population increased by more than 90% in the decade from 1990-2000.