Much of our work this summer has focused on barriers to access within the community. What enables, or fails to enable, the immigrant community in Brentwood to succeed in education or careers? What about the hamlet of Brentwood itself gives some people a leg up on the ladder of economic mobility, while pushing others down? These questions have been very present in our interviews, of which we’ve completed about seven so far. The more people in the community that we’ve been able to speak with, in loosely structured conversations ranging anywhere between thirty minutes and over an hour, the more a comprehensive image of Brentwood has begun to emerge. One subject mentions the lack of quality public transportation, and then we begin to ask others about it. Several reaffirm that there are very few transportation options in Brentwood, until another happens to further clarify that options are even more slim for undocumented persons in the community… because undocumented persons cannot get a driver’s license in the state of New York.
In a similar development, we noticed a common thread throughout several of our first interviews. Many people self-identified language as a primary barrier to access, and when asked for further details, told stories of their parents attending night school or studying for hours to increase their English language skills. For several, improving their English meant the opportunity to move up at a factory or retail job, or to move into a field less physically demanding as they aged and could no longer do manual labor fifty hours a week. For younger immigrants, or first generation Salvadoran Americans, being able to speak English articulately could even mean the difference in pursuing higher education or getting a factory job after high school. Community resources like the Sisters of St. Joseph and Brentwood Public Library offer very affordable ESL classes and conversation groups for those attempting to learn or improve English language skills. In this way, certain institutions in the community serve as entry points to access and means of mitigating the barriers we’ve thus far identified. Findings such as these have led our research in such exciting new directions that we could not have necessarily gleaned from researching purely in books and online.
