Abstract
Estimates place the unauthorized population in the United States at about 11.2 million (Passel and Cohn 2011; Krogstad and Passel 2014). Both proponents and opponents of comprehensive immigration reform seem to agree that our immigration system is broken, but the key lesson I learned from studying Postville, Iowa, is that our immigration system functions: It functions to maintain a marginalized population in a state of deportation risk. It perpetuates vulnerability and inequality and criminalizes a population that is forced to live in fear within the shadows of our society.
I first became interested in Postville, Iowa, after learning of the dramatic immigration raid that occurred there on May 12, 2008. During this raid, nearly four hundred unauthorized workers were arrested, charged with federal identification theft, and later deported. It was the largest workplace raid at the time and gained international attention. After realizing that most of the workers were from Guatemala, I decided to travel to Postville and learn more about the Guatemalan community in the small town of two thousand.
My first trip to Postville was somewhat uneventful except that before leaving I stopped by a Guatemalan bakery to buy bread for my trip back to Iowa State University. At this bakery, I had a chance encounter with a baker who crystallized my research plans. The baker, Walter (whom I never saw again), told me that most of the Guatemalans in Postville were from the small town of El Rosario in the highlands of Guatemala. I was familiar with the transnational literature and realized that Walter had just pointed out very important transnational relationships present in this small Iowan town. I realized that the raid had potentially reshaped these transnational connections and I formulated my research question on the spot. I knew I had to visit the deported workers from Postville in El Rosario.
As a qualitative researcher, I took an in-depth case study approach to understand the transnational relationships between Postville and El Rosario. I interviewed about one hundred individuals in both towns. From their stories, I learned of how El Rosario residents struggled in Guatemala and were forced to migrate to Postville. They described their dangerous journey through Mexico and into Iowa and how they built a sense of community in Postville while remaining hidden as unauthorized workers. In the article, I specifically identify networks that support this Shadow Transnationalism, which are the “relations that transcend the territorially bounded jurisdiction of the nation state and link together unauthorized immigrant societies of origin and settlement within socioeconomic structures intended to remain informal and actually or plausibly ‘under the radar’ and invisible” (p. 177). In Postville, these shadow networks functioned through recruitment networks, smuggling networks, lending networks, and remittance networks that linked the towns together. This transnational linkage is facilitated by the state that criminalizes immigrants by regulating migratory flows, by employers who facilitate the pull of workers, and by migrants who are forced to “seek purposeful invisibility” within this shadow system as they search for opportunities in the United States.
Although immigration policy is set at the federal level, the impacts are local. They are felt in neighborhoods and communities throughout the United States and in the immigrant sending communities. Hence, planners play a critical role in the immigration policy debate as they are identifying how transnational relationships are reshaping cities and rural communities (Miraftab 2011). Scholarship is also emerging that demonstrates how planning institutions are in turn changing as immigrants exercise their economic, political, and cultural agency on neighborhood placemaking efforts (Main and Sandoval 2015; Sandoval 2010; Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2011). Hence, immigrant neighborhoods are now understood as dynamic transnational spaces instead of marginalized places.
I would not have been able to understand the dynamics in Postville without the help of residents in Postville and El Rosario who were willing to share their stories. The raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) created difficulties for these residents and it was not easy for them to share their experiences. Hence, I am very grateful for their willingness to share their stories. I am also indebted to Dr. Eugene Boostrom who helped me think through my conceptual arguments and assisted me in putting them on paper. I am grateful to my colleagues at both Iowa State University and the University of Oregon who supported this research. Lastly, I would like to thank Delia Sandoval, my mother, who helped me connect the dots between Postville and El Rosario as she understood the process as a Guatemalan immigrant.