Minnesota soccer fields as practical laboratories of democracy
The soccer field goes quiet after the final whistle. Players shake hands, spectators fold lawn chairs, families drift toward parking lots speaking Spanish and English in separate clusters. Sunday afternoon competition ends, but the relationships formed through shared play either persist into Monday morning civic engagement — or they don’t.
What determines which communities successfully navigate demographic change while others fracture under similar federal pressures? Six months of reporting across Jackson, Worthington, and St. James reveals patterns distinguishing proactive integration from reactive accommodation.
The reporting suggests infrastructure matters more than ideology.
The St. James difference
“The default opinion in St. James is much more positive toward Hispanic people, toward the diversity of being together,” said Carissa Lick, executive director of Uniting Cultures. She acknowledges this assessment comes from community members’ experiences rather than survey data — a perception shift rather than measured outcome. But participation numbers suggest genuine engagement: Fewer than 20 people plan Uniting Cultures programs year-round, yet the annual Multicultural Fiesta draws more than 2,000 attendees in a town of 4,600 residents — nearly half the population.
This shift didn’t happen accidentally. St. James explicitly positioned itself as a “welcoming community,” joining Welcoming America in 2024. The national network, which connects more than 2 million Americans across 12,000 Zip codes, provides toolkits and frameworks for communities choosing to “live out values of service and opportunity” through immigrant integration. St. James joined small towns, suburbs, and cities across every state implementing systematic welcome rather than reactive accommodation to demographic change.
Uniting Cultures, founded in 2017, leads Watonwan County Cares, an immigrant defense network coordinating protective measures across the county. Beyond the annual fiesta, which requires most of the organization’s time and effort, UC has organized story-collecting projects documenting immigrant experiences, partnered with southwest Minnesota’s Region 9 on rural equity training, and presented Teatro del Pueblo, an immigration play performed in 2018. The partnership with Convivencia Hispana, also established in 2017, provides scholarships and elderly support through Latino-led community organizing.
“We felt like as the public face, we could help people who have different immigration statuses,” Lick explained. That deliberate choice — becoming the public face so vulnerable community members don’t have to — represents strategic adaptation to the federal enforcement climate.
Compare this to Jackson’s approach. The Center for the Arts hosts Heritage Fiesta, ESL classes, community conversations on “Who is your neighbor?” But these remain separate programs without connective tissue. The church basement integration event reproduced segregation. The Heritage Fiesta succeeded. Both happened in the same building, organized by overlapping leadership, drawing from similar communities.
Volunteers serve food at the Heritage Fiesta at Jackson Center for the Arts in Jackson, Minnesota, on Sept. 18, 2025. Credit: Amy H. Peterson
The difference wasn’t participants’ willingness but institutional design. St. James built protective infrastructure — constitutional observers trained through COPAL, participation in a national welcoming network, coordination with a county-wide immigrant defense system — before hosting integration events. Jackson responds to opportunities as they arise without systematic approach to relationship building or protective mechanisms across cultural lines.
Both strategies represent different approaches to integration challenges.
When employers become integration architects
New Fashion Pork’s ESL investment demonstrates another integration mechanism: economic interdependence forcing institutional cooperation.
“I want you to be paid for each and every minute you’re here,” teacher Cay Gjertson tells students, while tracking their arrival times. Workers who understand English navigate safety protocols, communicate with supervisors, uphold quality standards. Their families who speak English engage with schools, health care systems, local government.
The business case for integration creates sustainability that volunteer goodwill alone can’t achieve. Companies invest because bottom lines depend on stable, integrated workforces. Workers participate because economic advancement requires English proficiency. The arrangement serves mutual interests rather than depending on charitable impulses.
But even this employer-sponsored model faces federal barriers. Most of the Jackson Center for the Arts ESL students hold college degrees from Mexico — credentials U.S. systems don’t recognize. They process pork not because they lack qualifications, but because credential recognition failures and visa restrictions prevent them from contributing their actual expertise.
Rural Minnesota faces critical shortages in health care, education, professional services. College-educated workers live in these communities, prevented by federal policy from filling those gaps. Economic interdependence that could facilitate integration encounters regulatory barriers.
The volunteer teacher economy
Liliana Becerra co-teaches the Jackson ESL class while her visa prohibits payment. Several students’ spouses attend class because they can’t work — the same visa restriction affecting their teachers.
What could this program accomplish with sustainable staffing? More class sections serving more workers. Curriculum development tailored to meat processing vocabulary and rural civic participation. Community outreach to families not yet connected. Professional development for teachers navigating bilingual instruction.
Instead, it depends on Gjertson’s creativity and Becerra’s donated labor — a fragile arrangement that one illness or family emergency could collapse.
This pattern repeats across rural Minnesota. Luke Ewald, working in public health for Nobles and Jackson counties, sees the health outcomes: isolation affecting mental health, language barriers preventing health care access, fear of enforcement keeping people from seeking services they need.
Communities develop sophisticated integration tools, then federal policy creates challenges for their sustainability.
Soccer as democratic microcosm
Sunday games between Worthington and Estherville, Iowa, started as pickup soccer among Spanish-speaking men, evolved into an interstate league with referees and championship tournaments. Their children form teams on neighboring fields by skill. Families watch from lawn chairs, sharing popsicles and walking tacos.
But spectators still separate by language. Spanish speakers cluster near one goal, English speakers near the other. The children playing together create potential for parent relationships — potential that remains unrealized without institutional structures facilitating connection.
Political scientists call these “cross-cutting affiliations” — relationships preventing political differences from becoming total social divisions. Soccer creates the opportunity. Whether communities capitalize on it depends on infrastructure supporting those relationships beyond the field.
St. James would position constitutional observers, use the league to connect Uniting Cultures programming, and create deliberate bridge-building mechanisms. Jackson lets the games happen organically, hoping proximity generates connection. Worthington’s approach falls somewhere between — the JBS plant creates economic interdependence, but civic institutions haven’t built systematic integration infrastructure.
All three communities navigate the same federal pressures. All face similar demographic changes. What distinguishes their outcomes is intentional design versus reactive accommodation.
The economic reality
Rural Minnesota can’t afford ideological purity about immigration. Roads need plowing regardless of the driver’s documentation status. Schools need funding that higher populations bring. Fire departments need volunteers regardless of country of origin. Meat processing plants need workers who’ll accept physically demanding jobs that many native-born Minnesotans won’t perform.
The college-educated worker processing pork could be staffing the understaffed rural hospital. The H-4 visa spouse cooking tamales for donations could be teaching in the school facing teacher shortages. The qualified interpreter volunteering at ESL class could be working at the clinic where language barriers prevent health care access.
Federal policy prevents credential recognition while rural communities face documented professional shortages — a gap between immigration control implementation and community economic needs.
What actually works
Six months of reporting reveals integration succeeding where three elements align:
Economic interdependence: Employers like New Fashion Pork invest because workforce stability requires it. It’s not charity, but calculated business interest creating sustainable funding.
Institutional infrastructure: Organizations like Uniting Cultures build systematic bridge-building mechanisms rather than hoping proximity creates connection. This includes constitutional observers, protective partnerships, deliberate “welcoming community” positioning.
Creative workarounds: Teachers like Gjertson and Becerra navigate federal restrictions through volunteer arrangements. Communities develop informal economies where legal employment is prohibited. Families make family of friends when geographic distance separates them from blood relatives.
But successful integration remains fragile. Volunteer arrangements collapse when teachers have competing obligations. Informal economies operate in legal gray areas creating vulnerability. Communities develop protective infrastructure at cultural celebrations in response to enforcement concerns.
Communities navigating demographic change successfully do so while adapting to federal policy constraints.
On Monday mornings, children arrive at Jackson schools with passports in backpacks, afraid they’ll be separated from parents. On Sunday afternoons, they play soccer together, forming teams by skill rather than documentation status.
They’re growing up in communities teaching them that democratic participation works across cultural differences — that teamwork matters more than background, that communication enables cooperation, that neighbors become family through shared action rather than shared ideology.
But they’re also learning that federal enforcement could fracture these bonds at any moment. That qualified teachers can’t be paid for teaching. That constitutional observers position themselves at celebrations. That parents watch them play from separate sides of the field.
The Good Samaritan parable asks not “Who deserves my help?” but “To whom am I willing to be a neighbor?” In rural Minnesota church basements, soccer fields, and ESL classrooms, communities answer through daily practice: to anyone willing to participate in democracy’s difficult work.
Federal immigration policy faces a similar question: whether to support the local cooperation that economic reality requires, or to continue creating pressures that complicate integration efforts serving multiple interests.
Rural Minnesota reveals both democracy’s potential and its fragility. Communities can navigate demographic change, economic transition, and cultural difference. The success depends on whether institutions — both local and federal — design systems that support rather than hinder the relationships enabling democratic participation.
The church basement stayed divided while the Heritage Fiesta brought people together. Constitutional observers protect fiestas while qualified teachers volunteer unpaid. Children form soccer teams together while parents watch from separate sides. Employers invest in integration while federal policy creates barriers.
These contradictions persist despite individual goodwill and community effort. Rural Minnesota communities demonstrate that economic reality creates interdependence, and democratic participation functions when institutions support relationships across cultural lines.
The soccer field goes quiet. Players shake hands. Families drift toward parking lots. Monday morning arrives.
The reporting shows communities trying to be neighbors — through ESL classes and cultural celebrations and Sunday afternoon games. The question is whether federal policy will adapt to support rather than complicate that choice.
In small towns across southwest Minnesota, children who carry passports to school play soccer together on weekends. They represent communities building infrastructure enabling people to be neighbors across cultural lines, even as policy creates pressures working against what economic reality requires.
The field lights go dark. The children go home. And the question remains.
This is Part 3 of Fields of Belonging, a series about rural communities building integration while navigating federal immigration policy. Read Part 1 and Part 2.
Amy H. Peterson is a rural journalist and founder of The E’ville Good bilingual newsletter. Her research on community integration and democratic resilience is supported by the Joyce Foundation. Photography for this series documents Heritage Fiesta celebrations and soccer league participation across southwest Minnesota.
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