“Rantoul es como Jayuya:” (De)valued migrations, education, and progreso within media, Puerto Rico, and the rural Midwest

This dissertation juxtaposes representations of Puerto Rican migration in the media with narratives of individuals engaging in rural-to-rural migration between the island and the United States in the 21st century. Specifically, this qualitative project based on ethnographic methods unveils how (1) migrants, (2) people in Jayuya, Puerto Rico, (3) individuals of varied ethno-racial backgrounds in Rantoul, Illinois, and (4) online media engage in ideologies of value and devaluations regarding social mobility and education. Data stem from interviews with migrants, kin, educators, administrators, and local community members; participant observations in both locations, and critical content and discourse analysis of varied forms of online media. Findings appear as an unfolding chapter-based set of cases, each having several findings within. Chapter four recovers the recent history of a group of Puerto Ricans who were recruited as labor migrants to work in a Rantoul pork plant in 2007, after immigration raids took place across the state of Illinois. Chapter five, along with interludes between chapters, traces how news and social media (re)presented migration in different ways. Critically examining and recording such representations sheds light on the sociocultural and political climate in Puerto Rico that migrants were facing when they decided to move to Rantoul thanks to social networks. Chapter six centers attention mainly on migrants who arrived in and after 2012 while chapter seven focuses on how these parents, their children, and school stakeholders negotiate schools and schooling. This dissertation opens a window into the growth of Latinidad in the Midwest in particular and provides insight on life for individuals with different ethnic and racial identities in general. It is a story about movement, labor, class, ethnicity, race, education, families, language, and media. As already always colonized and racialized individuals, at the core of Puerto Ricans’ experiences with work, classed social locations, learning, and living were ethnoracial ties and tensions in the rural Midwest. Ultimately, I argue that despite the extent to which migrants used varied forms of capital and perceived upward mobility, given the challenges within rural-to-rural migration, they were subjected to devaluations of a variety of stakeholders in the media and on the ground.LimitedAuthor requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD syste