This recent New York Times article about Bosnian refugees in St. Louis caught my eye.
The story details how the refugees who fled the wars of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s helped create a vibrant neighborhood in Bevo Mill, but are now starting to move out to the suburbs of St. Louis.
“Today, St. Louis, like some other Midwestern cities, is battling a new round of contraction, with a stagnant economy, challenged schools and one of the highest murder rates in the country,” writes Melinda Delkic.
“And over the past few years, the people who fled brutal violence and concentration camps in their homeland and created Little Bosnia have been fleeing again, to the suburbs.”
Delkic notes that immigrant communities in other parts of the U.S. have spread to the suburbs. “Many Chinese immigrants have moved to the San Gabriel Valley from the Chinatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, and Korean immigrants in the New York area have moved to the northern New Jersey suburbs and to Long Island,” the story notes. “But the urban neighborhoods they were leaving behind were generally healthy or rejuvenating.”
The Immigration and Refugee News Digest 