Education and Policy in the New Latin Diaspora

Increasing numbers of Latinos (many immigrant, and some from elsewhere in the US) are settling both temporarily and permanently in areas of the US that have not traditionally been home to Latinos—e.g., North Carolina, Maine, Georgia, Indiana, Arkansas, rural Illinois and near resort communities in Colorado. Enrique Murillo and Sofia Villenas have called this the New Latino Diaspora (Murillo and Villenas, 1995). Newcomer Latinos are confronted with novel challenges to their senses of identity, status, and community. Instead of arriving in settings, like the Southwest, where Latinos have lived for centuries, those in the New Latino Diaspora arrive in unfamiliar places where long-term residents have little experience with Latinos. In the New Diaspora, then, Latinos face more insistent questions about who they are, who they seek to be, and what accommodations they merit - questions that are asked both by themselves and by others.