Restructuring of the US Meat Processing Industry and New Hispanic Migrant Destinations

摘要

FINDINGS FROM the 2000 US Census confirm two critical Hispanic population trends within nonmetropolitan counties. The first is an extraordinarily high rate of Hispanic population increase outside urban areas over the past decade, with growth rates exceeding both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan growth rates for all other racial and ethnic groups (Cromartie 2000; Guzman and Diaz McConnell 2002). The second is that for the first time in US history, roughly half of all nonmetropolitan Hispanics live outside the traditional five Southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas (Kandel and Cromartie 2004). While many new destinations include urban areas, the diversity of new rural destinations raises questions about forces attracting migrants to areas outside the Southwest and the links between economic restructuring and Hispanic population growth in nonmetropolitan counties. Recent studies document growing proportions of Hispanics and immigrants in various primary and manufacturing industries over the past decade. However, the relative newness of these demographic trends revealed through Census 2000 data has limited the number of quantitative analyses that relate demographic and economic changes on a broader scale, particularly for rural areas (Saenz and Torres 2003).