Quarterly Progress Report on St. Cloud State University Research Group on Immigrant
Workers in Minnesota Research Project on the Social Conditions of Immigrant Workers in
Minnesota
Progress Description:
To date, several key components of this research project are underway including research,
community collaboration, and student participation.
Project 1 progress:
Chukwunyere Ugochukwu (CMTY) has sent SCSU students to 6 cities in Minnesota to examine
small towns in Minnesota physical, in order to understand recent Latino immigrants’ connections
to the rest of the community physically, spiritually, economically, politically, environmentally,
socially, and culturally while exploring housing, cultural, and recreational amenities physical
layout. The communities examined includes: Gaylord, Glenco, Cold spring, Wilmar, Shakopee,
and Melrose. The study required obtaining such archival information as current comprehensive
plans, land use and zoning plans, and demographic data. In addition, observation surveys as well
as drive-bys were conducted, including photographing to document those things in the built
environment that were not currently captured in any of the archival data.
Some preliminary findings indicated that communities of color in four out of the six
communities examined were clustered in designated parts of the communities. In one case for
example, the community of color were observed to be just outside the delineated city boundary,
therefore was not captured in the planning documents. In another, the community of color is
nonexistent in plain sight. There is no recognition of their existence by the community’s
planning officials.
Students presented their findings to the public at the recent Global Goes Local: Social
Conditions of Immigrant Workers in Minnesota Conference held at St. Cloud State University
April 12-13th.
Project 2 Progress Report:
Paul Greider (SOC) and Ajay Panicker (SOC) conducted preliminary interviews with Somali
elders and social service providers in St. Cloud on patterns of incorporation into St. Cloud’s
labor markets and trends in migration to St. Cloud, especially networks that aid in their arrival to
the St. Cloud region. They have also developed a core of students whom they are sending into
the ‘field’ to conduct semi-structured interviews that trace where these immigrants worked in
their home countries and their work experiences since they arrived in the US to present. These
interviews are being conducted at the moment and will be conducted throughout the summer and
into the fall semester.
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2 Somali elders and activists and a staff member of a local Somali employment service,
administered by Lutheran Social services, participated on a panel with Greider and Panicker on
the work related issues facing Somali immigrants in St. Cloud at the moment. They also
discussed the importance of this kind of research for expanding understanding of Somali
immigrant communities’ incoporation into labor markets in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and
throughout the US.
Project 3:
Edward Greaves (POLSCI) and Stephen Philion (SOC) also conducted preliminary interviews in
the spring semester with Latino immigrant workers in Stearns County and decided to broaden
their focus from agricultural workers to Latino workers in general. The focus, however, remains
on networks immigrant workers draw on and develop in the process of finding work and also
dealing with police surveillance/harassment, which has become especially pertinent in the
aftermath of the recently signed Arizona Law giving police officers the right to arrest someone
for not having proof of citizenship. In the process of conducting interviews with social service
workers, government workers, and police, it appears that the threat of and number of
deportations is increasing. We are interested in finding out what kind of networks immigrants
have available for support, at the local and state level in the face of such threats.
A team of 5 undergraduate and graduate students have been assigned the task of helping with
conducting the interviews throughout the summer and the fall. All of the students are fluent in
Spanish and are conducting transcription when taping is not possible. Interviews are being
arranged with the help of a social service organization that aids Latino workers in Cold Spring
and in the Stearns County region. This gatekeeper has also helped with formulating questions
being asked during interviews.
Greatest Success:
The biggest success thus far was our ability to incorporate these three research projects into the
recent conference on immigrant workers in Minnesota, held at St. Cloud State University, April
12-13. These panels were packed and attracted audiences that included local community
activists, social service providers, and students from Central Minnesota and the Twin Cities. The
panels consisted of people in the community who have helped with the projects and who, in
some instances, also contributed to questions that projects have asked. The conference was an
ideal chance to showcase how this kind of research on immigrant workers’ communities can be
done, even under time constraints that MnSCU professors face due to heavy teaching and
committee work. The SCSU Faculty Research Group on Immigrant Workers plans on holding
another similar conference next year. At that conference the three research projects will be
featured again, and this time they will be featuring data findings from the interviews and also
plans for dissemination in academic journals and conferences nationally or internationally.
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Another noteworthy success has been the involvement of students in this project. For the
students this has been not simply ‘eye opening’, but given them a sense of how they can learn
from recent immigrants about something that they have in common with themselves, namely
identities as people who need to work for a living. This approach to research has lessened the
perceived and sometimes exaggerated ‘cultural differences’ between recent immigrant
communities and students at SCSU.
Finally, one other success in terms of our goals with this grant is the involvement in the project
of students from underrepresented communities. Although it did not exclusively determine who
was asked to help conduct interviews, it is something that we tried to build into part of the
project as it has proceeded.
Challenges:
Overall the key challenge has been time (!). Because the research groups consisted of professors
who teach 4-4 class loads and also were busy putting together and participating in the recent , the
possibility of conducting as many interviews as we hoped during spring semester was not as
great as initially expected. However, the plan to involve students in the projects has been a very
wise use of resources given that challenge. And we expect that by the end of 2010 we will have
met our goals in terms of quantity and quality of interviews conducted.
Another challenge that exists is that the SCSU Faculty Research Group on Immigrant Workers in
Minnesota is still relatively new (only really in existence for less than a year)). Thus, while we
were very successful in putting on a two day conference that met our goals of involving
community and students in the broader academic discussion on the conditions of immigrant
workers in the US, our contacts in the community remain comparatively limited yet. This will
remain a challenge, but one that we expect will become smaller with time and experience.
Finally, as with any project, ‘things come up’, one of which included the recent earthquake in
Chile. Since one of the members of the research project on Latino workers (Greaves) has family
in Chile and also coordinates our SCSU Study Abroad program in Concepcion, he was
‘distracted’ for about two months with that very pressing crisis. However, this is now something
that thankfully has not pulled him away from the research and it continues apace. These kind of
problems inevitably arise with this kind of project, which fortunately the timeline extension to
January 2011 has helped greatly to minimize.
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