CLLAS Faculty Event
VIDEO
View the video for this CLLAS Research Series Faculty presentation by John Arroyo (School of Planning, Public Policy, and Management), here.
Over the past 20 years, Mexican communities have bypassed historic, urban ethnic enclaves to settle in and physically transform suburban areas of U.S. South. Nowhere is this spatial “Latinization” phenomenon more acute than in small towns such as those in Gwinnett County (metropolitan Atlanta), one of the foremost frontiers of new immigrant destinations in America. Coinciding with the growth of predominantly undocumented Mexican immigrants in these regions have been popular state and county-level immigration policies —all of which have use explicit language to position states like Georgia to be a national pioneer of hyper immigration surveillance and a regional enforcement model for neighboring metropolitan areas. The culmination of these adverse effects has required Mexican residents to create covert, built environments. Findings from this research analyze the key reactionary anti-immigrant federalism policies that influence how Mexican immigrants reshape culturally-specific land use in suburban Atlanta.
John Arroyo, PhD, AICP is an Assistant Professor in Engaging Diverse Communities and director of the Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute for Racial and Climate Justice at the University of Oregon. Previously, he was an The Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Latino Studies at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, NM. As a scholar and practitioner of urban planning and migration studies, Arroyo’s applied research and teaching agendas focus on inclusive urbanism. He is particularly interested in the social, political, and cultural dimensions of immigrant-centered built environments and neighborhood change in underrepresented communities. He received a doctorate in Urban Planning, Policy, and Design as well as a Master’s in City Planning and a Certificate in Urban Design from MIT. He is a governor-appointed member of the Oregon State Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation and serves on the boards of the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities and the Public Humanities Network.