Nick Kearns

Most of my research has been on urban Puerto Ricans who have relocated from various cities to Western Massachusetts, where they have attempted to form a community in a mostly white town while simultaneously maintaining their connections to these cities. Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork with a sample of men who had relocated to this rural area, I have studied the dynamics of the peer group that they have formed and how they have bonded despite their different cities of origin. By examining their involvement in the local economy, including farm labor, factory jobs, and other working-class professions, I hope to show how in the context of the Puerto Rican diaspora, these men have made lives between the city and the country. This research had also taken place in the context of the opioid epidemic and it also shows how it had significantly impacted the lives of some of these men.