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"Better Than White Trash": Work Ethic, Latinidad And Whiteness In Rural Arkansas, Miranda Cady Hallett

Sociology Faculty Scholarship

Diverse sites in the US South are being transformed by "new Latino immigration." Rather than being a homogeneous process, experiences of migrant settlement are shaped by the racialized social worlds of particular historical social communities -- and may in turn transform local racial formations (Winders, 2005). In one small town in rural Arkansas, Latina and Latino migrants perform boundary work (Lamont, 2000; Hartigan, 2010), constructing their identities as "good" workers and neighbors. Although migrants assert belonging and dignity by framing themselves as "better than White trash," nonetheless this belonging is predicated on the reproduction of racial and class hierarchy as …