Fields of Belonging: Democracy under pressure in rural Minnesota

I stood at a soccer field in Worthington on a Sunday afternoon in May, watching a spirited game, mixing languages and backgrounds. The families watched from opposite ends – Spanish speakers and English speakers or bilingual spectators sorted. 

That pattern became the question driving six months of reporting on polarization across three southwest Minnesota communities: Why do some integration efforts work while others reproduce the divisions they’re meant to bridge?

I started this project through a Joyce Foundation grant, originally focused on soccer as a lens for examining polarization and community integration in rural Minnesota. But immersive reporting — Monday nights in ESL classes, Sunday afternoon games, cultural celebrations, church basement conversations — revealed something deeper: Federal immigration policy creates contradictions that local institutions must navigate daily.

The H-2B temporary worker visa program brings workers to fill what federal law defines as “temporary” positions in meat processing — work that’s actually year-round and permanent. Their spouses hold H-4 visas prohibiting employment, forcing college-educated professionals into economic inactivity while rural Minnesota faces workforce shortages. No federal system facilitates credential recognition. Immigration enforcement authority extends to schools and community celebrations.

I focused my reporting on Jackson, Worthington, and St. James — three communities at different stages of demographic transformation. Worthington is now 43.5% Hispanic, Minnesota’s most Hispanic city. St. James has reached 44.7%, up from 31% in 2010. Even Jackson, at 5.1% Hispanic, draws workers from across county and state lines.

Communities respond with sophisticated workarounds: volunteer teaching arrangements where qualified instructors can’t be paid, constitutional observer networks protecting cultural event participants, informal economies operating in legal gray areas, employer-sponsored integration programs. On Oct. 30, 2025 — while I was completing this reporting — federal policy deepened these contradictions when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) eliminated automatic work authorization extensions for asylum seekers, refugees, and green card applicants renewing their documents.

Over six months, I attended ESL classes where meat processing companies pay workers to learn from teachers who can’t be paid for teaching. I watched Heritage Fiesta in Jackson bring 200+ attendees together while a church basement conversation weeks earlier showed separation. I observed St. James and its protective infrastructure — such as constitutional observers trained through a Minnesota advocacy group — while Jackson responds to opportunities with a more informal approach.

The three pieces that follow document what I found: how design and infrastructure matter more than goodwill (Part 1), how federal policy creates structural barriers communities must navigate (Part 2), and what distinguishes communities that successfully build integration infrastructure from those that don’t (Part 3).

This isn’t commentary about what communities should do. It’s documentation of what they are doing — and whether institutions support or complicate the local cooperation that economic reality requires.

Children carrying passports to school play soccer together on weekends. They’re growing up in communities either teaching democratic participation across cultural difference, or fractured by enforcement pressures working against what proximity makes possible.

The field goes quiet after the final whistle. Monday morning arrives. What happens next depends on infrastructure, not intention.

Fields of Belonging is a three-part series written by Amy H. Peterson, a freelance journalist based in Estherville, Iowa, about rural communities building integration while navigating federal immigration policy. The project received financial support from the Joyce Foundation.

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