Latino Farmworkers in North Carolina: Processes of Creating, Maintaining, and Believing in “Home”

...Processes of Creating, Maintaining, and Believing in “Home.” This text offers a glance at the interplay of globalization, migration, and the agricultural economic sector of North Carolina through the lens of “home.” Immigration is often considered in terms of cost/benefits to the society or nation; statistics and theory easily sterilize and negate the humanity of the very immigrants that they describe. The stories within this text were gleaned during a time when immigration was rapidly increasing in the Southeast; North Carolina, specifically, was within the top five states with the highest percentage increase of Latinos in 2009. In providing these stories, interviews with North Carolina migrant farmworkers and the head of a farmworker aid agency, the bare bones of data are fleshed out and a point of unison between domestic and immigrant cultures is identified: the quest, desire, and sacrifice of and for "home."

Koehler Amalia Briceño was raised in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her mother is a native North Carolinian, while her father is from Bolivia. Bringing these two dynamic cultures into balance has been an integral part of Koehler's life, and what initially piqued her interest in understanding the roots & stories of immigration.