Skip to main content

At home in inner-city immigrant community gardens

Journal of Housing and the Built Environment volume 32, pages 13–28 (2017)Cite this article

Abstract

This paper extends the definition of the domestic sphere to include urban community gardens, which I argue serve as critical “home-like” places that marginalized Latina/o immigrants use to sustain themselves and to re-create homeland in urban Los Angeles. Based on over 1 year of ethnographic and interview research at the gardens, I argue that the immigrant community gardeners are creating new homes, attachments and means of livelihood that link their past with the present, restoring them during this historical moment of the US immigration crisis in deportations and detentions. A range of social reproductive and restorative activities normally associated with the private domestic sphere unfold at these community gardens, allowing us to see these sites as shared open-air domiciles, hybrid-domestic places, set among plant nature. I suggest that focusing on the everyday practices, the materiality and meanings of place may productively shift our theoretical gaze from understanding migration experiences only through the lens of assimilation or transnationalism, and toward one that acknowledges active assertions organized around the right to home-making.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Notes

  1. Space constraints in this article do not allow me to explain how the two gardens were started, who owns the land, how the gardens are managed, and how plots are assigned, but I discuss these issues elsewhere (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2014).

References

  • Alba, R., & Nee, V. (2009). Remaking the American mainstream: Assimilation and contemporary immigration. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aptekar, S. (2015). Visions of public space: Reproducing and resisting social hierarchies in a community garden. Sociological Forum, 30(1), 209–227.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Basch, L., Schiller, N. G., & Blanc, C. S. (1994). Nations unbound: Transnational projects, postcolonial predicaments, and deterritorialized nation states. Routledge.

  • Blunt, E. (2005). Cultural geography: Cultural geographies of home. Progress in Human Geography, 29(4), 505–515.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boccagni, P. (2014). What’s in a (migrant) house? Changing domestic spaces, the negotiation of belonging and home-making in Ecuadorian migration. Housing, Theory and Society, 31(3), 277–293.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (1999). The weight of the world: Social suffering in contemporary society. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chang, S. (2006). The global Silicon Valley home: Lives and landscapes within Taiwanese American Trans-Pacific Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duyvendak, J. w. (2011). The politics of home: Belonging and Nostalgia in Western Europe and the United States. New York: Palgrave McMillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Farmer, P. (2004). An anthropology of structural violence. Current Anthropology, 45(3), 305–325.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Golash-Boza, T., & Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (2013). Latino immigrant men and the deportation crisis: A gendered racial removal program. Latino Studies, 11(3), 271–292.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton, N., & Chinchilla, N. (2001). Seeking community in a global city: Guatemalans and Salvadorans in Los Angeles. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, D. (1988). Social justice and the city. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Head, L., Muir, P., & Hampel, E. (2005). Australian backyard gardens and the journey of migration. Geographical Review, 94(3), 326–347.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Helphand, K. I. (2006). Defiant gardens: Making gardens in wartime. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (2014). Paradise transplanted: Migration and the making of California gardens. California: University of California Press.  

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hondagneu-Sotelo, P., & Avila, E. (1997). I’m here, but I’m there: The meanings of Latina transnational motherhood. Gender & Society, 11, 548–571.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hondagneu-Sotelo, P., & Ruiz, J. M. (2014). Illegality and spaces of sanctuary: Belonging and homeland-making in urban community gardens. In C. Menjivar & D. Kanstroom (Eds.), Constructing illegality (pp. 246–271). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hou, J. (2010). (Not) your everyday public space. In J. Hou (Ed.), Insurgent public space: Guerrilla urbanism and the remaking of contemporary cities (pp. 1–18). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hou, J., Johnson, J., & Lawson, L. J. (2009). Greening cities, growing communities: Learning from Seattle’s urban community gardens. Seattle: University of Washington.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kanstroom, D. (2007). Deportation nation: Outsiders in American history. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S. (1989). The experience of nature: A psychological perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kusenbach, M., & Paulsen, K. E. (2013). Home: An introduction. In M. Kusenbach & K. E. Paulsen (Eds.), Home: International perspectives on culture, identity and belonging (pp. 1–22). Frankfurt: Peter Lang Academic Research.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Lambin, E. 2012. An ecology of happiness. Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • Laslett, B., & Brenner, J. (1989). Gender and social reproduction: Historical perspectives. Annual Review of Sociology, 15, 381–404.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lawson, L. (2005). City bountiful: A century of community gardening in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Le Espiritu, Y. (2003). Homebound: Filipino American lives across cultures, communities and countries. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lefebvre, H. (1974/1991). The production of space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

  • Levitt, P. (2001). The transnational villagers. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marcus, C. C., & Barnes, M. (Eds.). (1999). Healing gardens: Therapeutic benefits and design recommendations. New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mares, T. M. (2012). Tracing immigrant identity through the Plate and the Palate. Latino Studies, 10(3), 334–354.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mares, T. M., & Pena, D. G. (2010). Urban agriculture in the making of insurgent spaces in Los Angeles and Seattle. In J. Hou (Ed.), Insurgent public space: Guerrilla urbanism and the remaking of contemporary cities (pp. 241–254). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Massey, D. (1994). Space, place and gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McDowell, L. (1999). Home, place and identity. In L. McDowell (Ed.), Gender, identity, and place: Understanding feminist geographies (pp. 45–85). Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Menjivar, C. (2002). The ties that heal: Guatemalan immigrant women’s networks and medical treatment. International Migration Review, 36(2), 437–466.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Menjivar, C. (2013). Central American immigrant workers and legal violence in Phoenix, Arizona. Latino Studies, 11, 228–252.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Menjivar, C., & Abrego, L. (2012). Legal violence: Immigration law and the lives of Central American immigrants. American Journal of Sociology, 117(5), 1380–1421.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell, K. (2004). Crossing the neoliberal line: Pacific Rim migration and the metropolis. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pena, D. (2006). Farmers feeding families: Agroecology in South Central Los Angeles. Keynote Address to the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, March 6.

  • Portes, A., & Rumbaut, R. (2014). Immigrant America: A portrait, updated and expanded (4th ed.). University of California Press.

  • Portes, A., & Zhou, M. (1993). The new second generation: Segmented assimilation and its variants. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 530(1), 74–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reichard, S. Hayden. (2011). The conscientious gardener: Cultivating a garden ethic. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rojas, J. (2010). Latino urbanism in the Los Angeles: A model for urban improvisation and reinvention. In J. Hou (Ed.), Insurgent public space: Guerrilla urbanism and the remaking of contemporary cities (pp. 36–44). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmalzbauer, L. (2014). The last best place?: Gender, family and migration in the new West. Stanford University Press.

  • Schmelzkopf, K. (1996). Urban community gardens as contested space. Geographical Review, 85(3), 364–381.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, R. C. (2006). Mexican New York: Transnational worlds of new immigrants. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Terwilliger, K. (2006). Sowing the seeds of self-determination: Why people are community gardening in Los Angeles county. Undergraduate thesis, University of California Santa Cruz.

  • Thorne, B. (1982). Feminist rethinking of the family: An overview. In B. Thorne & M. Yalom (Eds.), Rethinking the family: Some feminist questions (pp. 1–24). New York: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vallejo, J. A. (2012). Barrios to burbs: The making of the Mexican American middle class. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • von Hassle, M. (2002). The struggle for Eden: Community gardens in New York City. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.

    Google Scholar 

  • Warner, S. B. (1987). To dwell is to garden. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weston, K. (1997). Families we choose: Lesbians, gays. Kinship: University of Columbia Press.  

    Google Scholar 

  • White, M. (2011). Environmental reviews and case studies: D-Town farm: African-American resistance to food insecurity and the transformation of detroit. Environmental Practice, 13(4), 406–417.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wolch, J., Wilson, J. P., & Fehrenbach, J. (2005). Parks and park funding in Los Angeles: An equity-mapping analysis. Urban Geography, 26(1), 4–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA

    Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo

Authors
  1. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. At home in inner-city immigrant community gardens. J Hous and the Built Environ 32, 13–28 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-015-9491-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-015-9491-0

Keywords

  • Immigrants
  • Home
  • Belonging
  • Urban community gardens
  • Hybrid-domestic place
  • Social reproduction