THE PERIPHERALIZATION OF RURAL AMERICA - A CASE-STUDY OF LATINO MIGRANTS IN AMERICA HEARTLAND

Archival and ethnographic data are used to examine the recent influx of Mexican and Chicano laborers to a rural community in southern Iowa. The author argues that the changing role and presence of Latino labor in the Midwest is an effect of global economic restructuring which has consequences at the local level, manifested in part by contested ideas of community and citizenship. It is contended that the state plays an integral role in the world system by fostering the reproduction and maintenance of ''core-periphery'' distinctions as marginalized social relations.