A lack of personal transportation isolates many Latino immigrants in the South, causing slower assimilation into American society, a lecturer told an audience Thursday at Athens State University.

“Many people complain that new immigrants are not assimilating fast enough, but the reality is that many immigrants are stuck in co-ethnic communities working in jobs with other immigrants,” said Stephanie Bohon, associate professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee, who has researched and written about immigration in the South. “Not being able to move around freely in the larger society means that their ability to get better jobs and better homes, participate in their children’s school activities, and even learn English is limited.”

Bohon spoke to a group of professors, students and community leaders at a noon lecture in the ballroom of Sandridge Student Center, and then addressed another group at 7 p.m. in McCandless Hall.

The noon lecture focused on one aspect of life for Latino immigrants in the South: Lack of transportation and how it isolates. The evening talk was a broad discussion of the impact of the growing Latino population and future trends.

The lecture was the first event of the inaugural season of the Livingston Concert Lecture Series at ASU.

Bohon said at the noon event that many people might not realize how lack of transportation affects people. She said about 80 percent of white Americans drive to and from work alone in personal vehicles. In a study in six counties in Georgia — a state in which the Latino population grew 299 percent from 1990 to 2000 — Bohon found that about half of immigrants carpool. The definition of carpooling, though, is not coworkers riding together to conserve fuel or be environmentally responsible, as many Americans would think. In many Latino communities — where 22 percent live below the poverty level — an example of carpooling is residents in a mobile home park paying a weekly fee to the only person in the park with a car to drive them to and from work.

In addition, because public transportation is not available in many rural and agricultural areas, or can be confusing and limited even in metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, many employers of large numbers of immigrants provide transportation on buses. But these buses and the carpool driver typically take immigrants to their jobs, where they work side-by-side with other immigrants in poultry processing, construction, landscaping, agricultural or textile jobs, and then home, where they live in immigrant communities.

This prevents them from learning the language, learning about job or housing opportunities and having access to services.

In one example, Bohon said a mother did not get immunizations for her children, although they were offered at no charge, because she was unsure what forms she might need and could not afford to spend $40 for round-trip cab fare only to be turned away.

Bohon said the lack of transportation creates a “bottleneck” that “impedes adjustment in all areas of life.”

Mothers feel especially isolated because a bus picks up their children to take them to and from school, a place they may never have been because they have no way to get there, and if they did, they could not meet with teachers because they do not speak English, Bohon said.

Another roadblock to transportation is difficulty in obtaining driver’s licenses. Bohon said legislation in place meant to keep illegal immigrants from obtaining licenses makes it difficult for all immigrants, many of whom don’t have documentation of their birth.

“If you block people from getting a driver’s license and they drive anyway, you’re putting people at risk because they’re not bothering to learn the rules of the road,” she said.

In addition, residents without a driver’s license cannot obtain auto insurance, she said.

The influx of Latinos to southeastern states has raised concerns but Bohon said she feels people are not seeing the true picture.

“Unfortunately, although there has been considerable speculation about the answers to these questions, and the alarmist rhetoric surrounding this demographic change has escalated, few facts support these speculations and rhetoric,” Bohon said.