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A racial demographic transition has come to rural northern New England. White population losses sit alongside racial and ethnic minority population gains in nearly all of the small towns of the Upper Valley region spanning New Hampshire and Vermont. Homesick considers these trends in a part of the country widely considered to be progressive, offering new insights on the ways white residents maintain racial hierarchies even there.
Walton focuses on the experiences of mostly well-educated migrants of color moving to the area to take well-paid jobs – in this case in health care, higher education, software development, and engineering. Walton shows that white residents maintain their social position through misrecognition—a failure or unwillingness to see people of color as legitimate, welcome, and valuable members of the community. The ultimate impact of such misrecognition is a profound sense of homesickness, a deep longing for a place in which one can feel safe, wanted, and accepted.
Tightly and sensitively argued, this book helps us better understand how to recognize and unsettle such processes of exclusion in diversifying spaces in general.
"A well-argued book, using multiple data sources to build the case that despite its progressive identity, the Upper Valley is not particularly inclusive or welcoming to people of color. Well-written, and with a clear story and sharp analysis, Homesick is a great book for the classroom and beyond." —Sarah Mayorga, Brandeis University
"Homesick is intellectually generative, and a model for new directions in our field. We need more books about racial heterogeneity and racial exclusions in parts of the country like the Upper Valley. We need more scholarship on rural gentrification, and, in general, on rural life. This book sets a high bar by tackling several understudied dimensions of contemporary life at once, and I urge others to follow Walton's fine example." —Japonica Brown-Saracino, Social Forces
"The book's clarity, conceptual rigor and attention to lived experience make it a valuable contribution to scholarship on race, place and belonging. ReadingHomesickinvites reflection on how we come to know whether a place is home. Walton shows that belonging is not simply about residence, intention, or attachment, but about recognition and about being seen as someone who belongs without qualification." —Amy Clarke, Ethnic and Racial Studies
Introduction
1. A Socioeconomic and Demographic Portrait 10 of the Upper Valley
2. A Cultural Portrait of the Upper Valley
3. How Misrecognition Works
4. Homesickness: An Emotional Manifestation of Racial Inequality
Conclusion
Methodological Appendix
Notes
References
Index