Newcomers to Old Towns

Althought the death of the small town has been predicted for decades, during the 1990s the population of rural America actually increased by more than three million people. On this book, Sonya Salamon explores these rural migrants and the impact they have on the social relationships, public spaces and community resources of small town America. Salamon draws on richly detailed ethnographic studies of six small towns in central Illinois, including a town with upscale subdivisions that lured wealthy professionals as well as towns whose agribusinesses drew working-class Mexican immigrants. She finds that regardless of the class or ethnicity of the newcomers, if their status (or social status) differs relative to that of oldtimers their effect on a town has been the same: suburbanization that erodes the close-knit small town communities, with especially severe consequences for small town youth. To successfully combat the homogenization of the heartland, Salamon argues, newcomers must work with oldtimers so that together they sustain the vital aspects of community life that first drew them to small towns.