Immigrant Integration & Sustainable Rural Development: Linking Receiving & Newcomer Communities
A Cambio Center research project funded by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Rural communities face a number of struggles to integrate immigrants. Immigrants often have limited access to networks and information that impacts their earnings and wellbeing. Lack of integration between receiving and immigrant communities results in short-term (e.g., inefficient resource allocation and underutilization of the social networks of immigrants) and long-term social costs to the community (e.g., lack of sustainability and rural community viability).
Are Latinos more engaged in the broader community networks, participating as consumers, producers, and entrepreneurs, and creating relationships between the different groups that did not exist before?
This 4-year project, which began in February 2011, examines the
economic and social integration of three rural communities in
Missouri from the perspectives of immigrant newcomers and long-term
residents. This project focuses on promoting the sustainability of
agricultural and rural communities by using an interdisciplinary,
strengths based model, and developing tools and participatory
processes to facilitate the integration between long time members of
the rural community and newcomers.
This project is supported by Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Competitive Grant No. 2011- 67023- 30105 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.