Lecturer: Lack of transportation impedes immigrant assimilation

This makes sense. If the immigrants have trouble traveling out of their community, they will stay in it. This certainly affects all parts of assimilating, even learning English. DP

By Kelly Kazek

enewscourier.com: A lack of personal transportation isolates many Latino immigrants in the South, causing slower assimilation into American society, a lecturer told an audience Thursday at Athens State University.

“Many people complain that new immigrants are not assimilating fast enough, but the reality is that many immigrants are stuck in co-ethnic communities working in jobs with other immigrants,” said Stephanie Bohon, associate professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee, who has researched and written about immigration in the South. “Not being able to move around freely in the larger society means that their ability to get better jobs and better homes, participate in their children’s school activities, and even learn English is limited.”

Bohon said at the noon event that many people might not realize how lack of transportation affects people. She said about 80 percent of white Americans drive to and from work alone in personal vehicles. In a study in six counties in Georgia — a state in which the Latino population grew 299 percent from 1990 to 2000 — Bohon found that about half of immigrants carpool. The definition of carpooling, though, is not coworkers riding together to conserve fuel or be environmentally responsible, as many Americans would think. In many Latino communities — where 22 percent live below the poverty level — an example of carpooling is residents in a mobile home park paying a weekly fee to the only person in the park with a car to drive them to and from work.
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