Internal Immigrant Movements Within The United States

By Author: Henter White
Total Articles: 73
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The cultures are different between Massachusetts and Florida. In Framing-ham, Americans are very reserved. As the above quote suggests, Brazilians hold different place perceptions about the destination regions where they settled in the United States. Generally, most Brazilians I interviewed perceived New England as the least pleasant and friendly region of the two, and the South as a climatically warmer and more 'sociable' region. In general, most Brazilian immigrants expressed social and spatial mobility constraints regardless of legal status (Table 2). Over four-fifths of women were documented (83.3%) compared to Chanel Jewelry only a little under three-fifths of men (57.8%). However, place perceptions based on legal status alone were not as significant as the combination of legal status and the significance of gender (cultural roles).

I asked interviewees whether they would return to Brazil (Table 3). In Framingham, three-fourths of men (75%) replied "yes," compared to only about two-fifths of women (38%). Over half the women (54%) responded "perhaps," ...
... compared to only less than one-fifth of men (17%), while only less than a tenth (8%) of both men and women replied "no." However, the responses to the same question in Marietta were dramatically different. All interviewees in Framingham tended to have a stronger desire to return to Brazil than those in Marietta (Table 3). Almost all women (regardless of legal status) tended to express a "newly-found freedom" and were much happier in the United States than most men, who tended to express a longing or happiness for living in Brazil. Despite the fact that over three-fourths of men in Framingham were documented (82%), they were over twice as eager to return to Brazil than men in Marietta, where almost half of them were undocumented (45%). Again, place and gender, and not legal status alone, were significant determining factors for Pandora Jewelry place perceptions. However, more quantitative studies are needed to strengthen these assertions - particularly because in most cases, except for Framingham, I interviewed more undocumented men than undocumented women.

Thus, Brazilian immigrants are also (re)creating places and spaces as US inter-regional migrations occur (Figure 12). Several interviewees in Framingham were leaving for the South because of warmer climate, perceptions of 'friendlier' environment, and labor market opportunities. For example, Maria, in her mid-thirties, is from Parana and had worked in Framingham before moving with her family to Marietta. She informed me that three other Brazilian immigrant families from Massachusetts had also moved to the South, at the same time as her family. She explained: Here [Atlanta] is like Bahia! [A state in northeast Brazil] It is much friendlier than Massachusetts more personal. Here the roads are wide and all new [...] like the houses. In Massachusetts everything is old, the houses, the roads [...] Maria's emphasis on new houses and roads mirrors her conceptions and interpretations of modernity. And to migrate to the United States is a meta-geographical move into the idea of modernity; hence, this is why expressions of modernity in the South are symbolically important to Maria.