Changing politics of race and region: Latino migration to the US South

Abstract

Questions and practices of race in the US South have historically been unthinkable outside the register of a black-white binary. In recent years, this connection between the South as a region and race as a dualism has been challenged by Latino migration to southern cities and towns. This article reviews the emerging literature on this southern arm of Latino migration, arguing for more attention to its interactions with racial formations and practices in southern communities and the geographic and place contingency of its features across the region. To achieve more critical understandings of these processes, it suggests, future studies must contextualize this migration in relation to studies of both immigrant gateway cities across the USA and the historical geographies of race and ethnicity in southern cities.