The Price of Belonging: Tucson, AZ

Many American cities over the last century have been defined as melting pots. Tucson, Arizona, was no different. Less significant than Los Angeles or New York City, but not to people like me, not to people who endured the blistering heat and lived in the pueblo-inspired stucco houses. Growing up, I never considered the impact Tucson had on my identity. Not until now—when I’m in college, on the opposite side of the country, when the US is being defined by citizenship and immigration status—have I realized the everlasting impact growing up in a majority Latino community had on me. 

My favorite restaurant as a kid was called Guero Canelo, which doesn’t have a direct English translation, at least not one that sounds right in the English context; however, it essentially is named Light Cinnamon or Cinnamon Blonde. They served Sonoran cuisine, some more inspired and Americanized, while others were traditional. A representation of our city, Latino-American and Mexican-American, the blending of cultures. This blending is not coincidental; it is a byproduct of centuries of migration, power, and the physical manifestation of borders. Immigration has never been an abstract political issue for Tucson; I had friends whose parents worked for border patrol and others whose parents worked to send money back to family members in Mexico who had hopes of one day being able to enter the land of the free. 

When family members finally arrived in Tucson, they did not encounter a land of freedom; at least not in the way the phrase connotes. Housing affordability in Tucson has steadily worsened since the 2008 financial crisis, only getting more affordable in the late 2010s. However, today, a significant share of Pima County residents are considered “housing cost burdened,” spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent or mortgages, while wages have failed to keep pace with rising prices (Burdened households (5-year estimate) in Pima County, AZ). 

Housing is never just about houses, especially in Tucson. A report from the Common Sense Institute of Arizona shows that it now takes the average Arizona household roughly 64 hours of work just to afford one monthly mortgage payment at current prices and interest rates. The following chart maps a dramatic climb since 2020, with both housing costs and the labor required to meet them rising faster than wages can keep up. What the follwoing graph really measures is not economics alone, but access: access to stability, to neighborhoods, to a future that feels permanent. Without established credit, citizenship status, or generational wealth, the dream of owning a home—the promise so often attached to America—moves further out of reach.

(Milne, Housing Affordability in Arizona, quarter 2, 2025 update).

It’s interesting how the same region that once belonged to Indigenous nations, then to Mexico, now to the US, has come to define belonging by capital. This shift is driven by a history of reimaging land and control. Colonialism was about controlling land and who could use it, who could own it, and who was pushed off of it. As William Glover describes in his Making Lahore Modern, empires operated through a colonial spatial imagination that reorganized land according to European ideas of ownership, productivity, and order (Glover Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and imagining a Colonial City). Borders, property lines, and zoning codes are modern descendants of this theory of colonial spatial imagination. In Tucson, the grid of subdivisions and highways overlays older Indigenous and Mexican geographies, translating the landscape into parcels that can be bought and sold if buyers meet the proper criteria. Housing unaffordability is therefore a continuation of colonial ways of seeing and valuing space. In settler colonial cities, even concepts like the freedom to move across the landscape are intertwined with the right not to be displaced in the first place, a right that many people living in Tucson today still lack. The “freedom to roam” and the “freedom to stay put” are two sides of the same coin, determining who belongs and who does not (Blatman and Sisson, Full article: Rethinking Housing Inequality and justice in a settler Colonial City).

   The current polarization over immigration is inseparable from the city's economic and spatial realities. In late January of this year, thousands of TUSD (Tucson Unified School District) students took to the streets and protested federal immigration enforcement efforts, expressing solidarity with immigrant families facing ICE raids and deportations (3/4 of TUSD students Miss Friday due to the ICE protest, canceled classes - click PIC for more).  Demonstrating how deeply these issues resonate with young Tucsonans, a group not much younger than I am, with whom I see myself and my peers at college aligning. Immigration is not separate from us as a nation; it is tied to real families, identities, and belonging. 

I grew up on a street called West Calle Libro Del Retrato, near a restaurant called Guero Canelo and a panadería named La Estrella Bakery. My address, my community, and my city were embraced by the same language. Now, living across the country on a street with an English name, I know that even something as small as an address or the name of your favorite restaurant can shape your understanding of belonging. Streets are more than words on a map; they filter through our everyday conversations, and they fill space on our resumes and job applications. 

Growing up in Tucson, I learnt that belonging is not guaranteed by borders, paperwork, or even time spent in a place. It is built through proximity, language, memory, and the ability to remain. When housing becomes unaffordable, and immigration is framed as a threat rather than a human reality, belonging turns conditional. Who gets to stay, who gets pushed out, and who is allowed to imagine a future in a place becomes less about community and more about capital. I understand my hometown not just as where I grew up, but as a case study in how American cities negotiate identity, power, and space. The melting pot metaphor obscures the fact that melting requires heat, pressure, and loss. What survives from this are traces, including street names, food, languages, and neighborhoods that hold stories even as the people who built them are increasingly displaced. 

To think seriously about housing and immigration is to think seriously about belonging. Tucson made that clear to me long before I could articulate it. And as debates over borders, affordability, and citizenship intensify nationwide, the question remains the same: who is allowed to belong? And will we design cities that make room for the people who built them, or cities that replace them?

Works Cited

3/4 of TUSD Students Miss Friday Due to Ice Protest, Canceled Classes - Click PIC for More:, 2026, www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/020526_tusd_walkout_numbers/3-4-tusd-students-miss-friday-due-ice-protest-canceled-classes/.

Blatman, Naama, and Alistair Sisson. “Full Article: Rethinking Housing Inequality and Justice in a Settler Colonial City.” Taylor & Francis, 20 Nov. 2023, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19491247.2023.2269621.

“Burdened Households (5-Year Estimate) in Pima County, AZ.” FRED, 29 Jan. 2026, fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DP04ACS004019.

Glover, William J. Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a Colonial City. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Milne, Zachary. “Housing Affordability in Arizona Quarter 2 2025 Update.” Common Sense Institute, 18 Sept. 2025, www.commonsenseinstituteus.org/arizona/research/housing-and-our-community/housing-affordability-in-arizona-quarter-2-2025-update.