African Diaspora Identities: Negotiating Culture in Transnational Migration 0739146378, 9780739146378, 0739146394, 9780739146392

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African Diaspora Identities

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African Diaspora Identities Negotiating Culture in Transnational Migration

John A. Arthur

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

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Published by Lexington Books A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.lexingtonbooks.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2010 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Arthur, John A., 1958– African diaspora identities : negotiating culture in transnational migration / John A. Arthur. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-4637-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-4639-2 (electronic) 1. Transnationalism—Africa. 2. African diaspora. 3. Ethnicity—Africa. 4. Africa— Emigration and immigration. I. Title. JV8790.A78 2010 305.896—dc22 2010018708

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

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This book is dedicated to Esther Naa Sackley Arthur. Your untimely departure from us was very painful. We will forever miss your humility and strength of character. In stressful and trying times, you still wore your beautiful smiles. Your thoughts and memories will continue to inspire all of us to learn to be shining examples to others by working tirelessly to uplift and empower the weak, the frail, and the poor in our midst. Your sacrifices for a better life endure to this day. We all bestow our love to you. Thank you very much.

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Contents

Figures and Tables

ix

Preface

xi

Acknowledgments

xv

1 2

Constructing African Immigrant Identities in Transnational Domains Situating Africa’s Brain Drain in Global Migrations

3 Transnational African Immigrant Lives and Identities

1 35 79

4

Rationalizing the Meanings of African Migrations

119

5

Gendering the Diaspora Identities of Second-Generation African Immigrant Girls

161

African Immigrants and Native-Born Blacks: Discourses on Finding Common Ground

207

Imagining the Future of African Immigrant Identities in Migration Studies

253

6 7

Bibliography

279

Index

297

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Figures and Tables

FIGURES 3.1 Ethiopian and Liberian Immigrants Legally Admitted to the United States: 1999–2008

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3.2 Nigerian and Ghanaian Immigrants Legally Admitted to the United States: 1999–2008

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3.3 South African and Kenyan Immigrants Legally Admitted to the United States: 1999–2008

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3.4 Somalian and Sudanese Immigrants Legally Admitted to the United States: 1999–2008

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3.5 African Immigrants Legally Admitted to the United States: 1999–2008

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TABLES 4.1 Immigrant Representations of the Meanings of Migration

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4.2 Immigrant Identification and Ranking of Economic and Social Problems Confronting Africa

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4.3 Immigrant Solutions to Africa’s Economic and Social Problems

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4.4 Reasons for Seeking Naturalization and Citizenship: Total Sample

141

ix

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Figures and Tables

4.5 Naturalization and Citizenship by Immigrant Country of Origin

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4.6 Reasons for Not Seeking Naturalization and Citizenship

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4.7 Immigrant Identification and Ranking of Political Problems Confronting Africa

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Preface

Africans are on the move across borders seeking economic and cultural opportunities far away from the continent. The postcolonial transnational migration involves Africa’s skilled and unskilled, men and women, including those who are displaced by the incessant wars, civil strife, and violence that have plagued almost every region of the continent. To date, more Africans have settled in the United States voluntarily than were forcefully brought to the then New World. The United States has become a site for the cultural formations, manifestations, and contestations of the newer identities that these immigrants seek to depict in cross-cultural and global settings. Relying mostly on their strong human capital resources (education and family networks), these Africans are devising creative, encompassing, and robust ways to position and reposition their new identities in global arenas. Combining their African cultural forms and identities with new roles, norms, and beliefs that they imbibe in the United States and everywhere else they have settled, these Africans are redefining what it means to be black in a race, ethnic, and color-conscious American society. Better educated than most of the recent immigrants now entering the country, the African immigrants do manifest identities that are cosmopolitan, transnational, and global. A central question is how these immigrants extrapolate meanings and create identities to represent the fact that they are now a highly visible minority group with educational credentials now exceeding white, Asian, black, Hispanic, and European American émigrés in the United States (United States Bureau of the Census, 2000). How are these educational identities transposed into other forms of identities among the immigrants? What role(s), if any, are played by the improved forms of communication, transportation, ascendancy of democratic regimes, proliferation xi

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of tertiary institutions of learning, dispersion of investment and capital formations, and the burning desires to seek incorporation into global affairs in depicting the forms of African cultural identities in the United States? How different or similar are these identities when disentangled along class and educational lines? This book positions the identities that African émigrés construct within the prism of transnational migration. It seeks to investigate the forms, modalities, and contents of these identities and the broader social contexts and parameters underpinning how these identities are constructed and rationalized. It builds upon themes that I have explored in earlier studies on African immigrants and the formation of the global black diaspora in migration. The internal contextualized genres and conditions operating inside Africa and the external forces converging to shape these identities are portrayed. More specifically, the book depicts an African immigrant population that is resilient, enterprising, and committed to the principles of collective altruism in finding solutions to meliorate the myriad of pressing issues facing the peoples of the region. The identities of the Africans that emerge show a people who are yearning for opportunities and total incorporation into global and world affairs. The identities manifested are not played out via the spectacle of victimhood and helplessness as others have often depicted about the region. Rather, we see a cadre of immigrants who are committed to excellence in education, family, individual and collective empowerment through self-improvement, responsibility, and personal growth and enrichment. Their stories and identities reflect values and beliefs cherished by Americans as a whole—that through hard work, anyone can achieve social mobility and advancement to overcome life’s problems and uncertainties. In a sense, the identities that these immigrants are forging and fostering forms a significant facet of America’s story and promise of hope and determination in overcoming adversities. Evidence of the formation of their viable ethnic communities (churches, ethnic enterprises, and restaurants) is emerging in major cities across the country. Though they try to retain their cultural institutions and traditions, the African immigrants are also receptive to learning new cultural forms and ideas from their host societies, often blending these with their unique cultures to form a hybrid of identities that span multiple countries and societies. The study demonstrates that all of these immigrants, irrespective of the modes and circumstances of their migrant journeys or what brings them to the shores of the United States, are united by a common core principle: to use migratory contacts to change how Africans as a group are viewed by the rest of the world and at the same time use the experiences they garner abroad to empower Africans. And though their absence from the African scene may continue to cause a depletion of talent and human resources, ultimately these immigrants give back to Africa more than has been invested in them by their respective home governments. After all, when they leave home, Africans are

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not known to sever ties with their places of birth. Whether through the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that they form to build roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, libraries, the wells they dig to provide clean water for their communities and villages, or the generators they send home to provide electricity for rural folks, the medicines that they ship home, or the remittances they regularly send home, these immigrants are dynamic reproducers of black cultural forms and genres. They leverage the economic and cultural opportunities they have in the United States to influence the economic and cultural fortunes of their relatives back home in Africa. Using international migration, they have managed to turn a brain drain to a resource gain for their respective countries. The African governments are on the cusp of learning to tap this synergy to facilitate and accelerate the pace of socioeconomic, cultural, economic, and political development in the region. The task ahead is daunting and challenging. But the human capital potentials, skills, and assets that are acquired by these immigrants have positioned them in the forefront and vanguard of social changes in Africa. Their struggles, hopes, and aspirations are defined by the altruistic theme and belief held by many of them that African diaspora communities have pivotal roles to play in the (re)building of Africa. Whether they settle in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, or elsewhere, the mélange of identities structured by the immigrants are typically defined and rationalized through the lens of African cultural traditions and vestiges. In city after city in the West, African immigrants are playing out the full range of what it means to be black, foreign-born, African, and also American or British. This multiplex and mélange of identities emanating from these singular and plural roles are reinforced by the complex media and agencies that these immigrants establish to anchor their cultural traditions and ideals in transnational arenas and spaces. This book offers short- and long-term insights into the formation of African immigrant cultural identities by positioning these identities within the broader contexts of social, cultural, and economic transformations and shifts in the immigrant host societies and how these changes impact continuities in African immigrant and diaspora communities and identities. It also offers a lens though which to view and understand the multiple layers of the factors likely to (re)define the future course(s) and directions of African immigrant identities in the West. The book moves beyond descriptive representations and portrayals of African immigrant and diaspora communities by focusing more on the contents of the issues that undergird how the immigrants construct and live out their identities, including a delineation of the forces that shape and are conversely shaped by complexities and vicissitudes that are germane to the unraveling of the contextualized genres of African immigrant identity constructions. There is no doubt that socioeconomic adaptation and incorporation has been the primary means whereby African immigrants continue to define

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their immigrant identities in the United States. Economic adaptation has made it possible for the immigrants to establish multiple mediums to find expression for their cultural identities. At the same time, their economic (labor force participation) and cultural attainments (strong educational credentials) have positioned and given them the human capital resources to imagine and forge the contents of their own cultural communities. The boundaries of these cultural communities are maintained via strong transnational networks that are defined in fluid terms to allow for permeability and embracement of new identities. As these identities are lived and experienced, ties with the homeland are strengthened and seamlessly incorporated into the hybridity or mélange of cultures that are manifested in the identities of these immigrants. In untold ways, I identify with the migratory experiences of the immigrant social actors whose individual and shared experiences are portrayed in this book. In their attempts to weave the multiple genres of their culturally rich yet intricate identities in new social fields, I relate to the contours that have shaped and continue to shape my own immigrant realities in the West. Like them, I too struggle to define, shape, and reshape the elusive boundaries of my African immigrant identities in consonance with globally shifting normative, political, economic, and cultural systems that I absolutely have little or no control over. Despite this uncertainty, I take comfort in the ever-enduring and time-tested altruism and communal spirit of African cultural forms to provide me with the prisms and guideposts to effectively navigate, negotiate, and contest the complexities of what it means to be black, African, foreign, immigrant, and citizen of the United States. I am also aware of the anguish, pain, hopes, and aspirations of thousands of Africans for whom the journey to the West is not only treacherous but also punctuated with pain, anguish, fear, and often violence as Africans trek thousands of miles to make it to the “promised land” in hopes of fulfilling their dreams of a better life away from Africa. I am aware that I cannot fully capture, grasp, and comprehend the multiple and complex genres and nuances of your migratory stories and experiences. Your presence, essence, and identities also illuminate and contribute to the enlargement of the American immigrant ethnic mosaic and quilt. In this regard, we are all united by a common ethos: to use migration to redefine and reposition our identities in the global cultural arena. Dr. John A. Arthur, Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Director, African and African American Studies Program College of Liberal Arts University of Minnesota 228 Cina Hall Duluth, Minnesota 55812 USA

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Acknowledgments

I have benefited significantly from several grants in support of my research provided by the University of Minnesota. Research grants made available by the graduate school, Dr. Linda Krug (Former Dean of the College of Liberal Arts), and Dr. Vince Magnuson (Vice Chancellor for Academic Administration) made it possible for me to collect the data needed for the completion of this book. I appreciate all the assistance you continue to provide in support of my research. I am also indebted to Brandy Hoffman and Geraldine Gomes Hughes for taking the time to proofread an earlier version of this manuscript. I extend a similar gratitude to my colleague Bruce Mork, who took time from his busy schedule to read and comment on drafts of this book. I would like to extend special appreciation to Dr. Willie Henderson, Director, Alworth Institute, University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Dr. Lisa Montagno-Leahy, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. I take this opportunity to extend my profound gratitude to all of you.

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1 Constructing African Immigrant Identities in Transnational Domains

In Guests and Aliens, Sassen (1999:1) noted that today’s immigrants appear as threatening outsiders, knocking at, crashing, or sneaking through the gates into societies richer than their own.1 In this statement, Sassen captures the transforming nature of international migration and the roles economic, cultural, and political institutions play in both the developed and developing nations in spurring the global movements of skilled and unskilled workers. Africans have become part of the transforming global process of migration. Africans are now actively on the move to join the global migratory process. In particular, being on the move means that African identities are going to be propagated and diffused within international migratory sites and domains. Whether arriving in the United States, Britain, or Canada as tourists, students, industrialists, clergy, asylum seekers, refugees, or simply to fulfill a wanderlust, the presence of the growing number of Africans in the West requires sustained and systematic scholarship to unravel their histories and lived experiences.2 Their migrations are being patterned and defined by forces that can be traced to internal conditions on the continent and structural changes in the global production of economic goods and services. The forces of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, colonial empire building, global schisms resulting in wars, agitation for self-determination in the colonial possessions, frontier and settler expansion, postcolonial economic growth, upswings in exile cultures, interdependence of the world’s economies, global spread or dispersion of capital, the ease and free movement of people, goods, and services, enhanced communication technologies facilitating faster means of transportation, and the gradual loosening of national borders are all significant components of the new forms of 1

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cross-border population mobility.3 The patterning of African migration in the West assumes, for the most part, that migrants exercise free choice rationality in terms of the decisions they have to make, such as choice of destination sites, costs of travel, ability to meet visa regulations, employment prospects in the desired location, and so on. As Scott and Scott (1989:2) suggested, for many migrants (Africans included), “it is unlikely that migration of individuals or collectivities can ever be well predicted by a rational calculus of gains and losses through mobility. For some Africans, the choice of coming to the United States or to the West is involuntary because many of the Africans enter the United States as refugees seeking asylee identity caused by wars and civil disturbances.4 Technologies of modern transportation, faster means of electronic communication, and the interdependence of the world’s economies are a few of the factors that continue to spur the transnational incorporation of African immigrants into global affairs. African newspapers, radio stations, television networks, websites, restaurants, shops, and businesses continue to represent and depict the multiple genres of African immigrant identities in the United States. When they arrive in the United States, Africans tend to maintain their unique national identities, continental identities, ethnic, clan, or tribal identities, their linguistic, religious, and class characteristics, and above all, their manifold migrant philanthropic and benevolent or mutual aid societies. Many of the immigrants count on their strong social capital in the form of an elaborate mutually interdependent family relationships, a penchant for education as a tool for self-improvement, and a tireless spirit of hard work. The immediate objective of their presence in the United States is to gain access to the economic opportunities this country has to offer. Most are imbued with the cultural orientation of shared economic responsibilities. This orientation is the force behind the millions of dollars they remit home regularly to support family members at home, hospitals, and educational institutions, to establish businesses at home, and ultimately to assist in raising the living standards of their home countries. The manifold sociological processes whereby African immigrants construct and manifest immigrant identities are now part of the American cultural and ethnic tapestries and experiences. Today, Africans are leaving the continent in droves (especially the skilled and well-educated) in search of better economic and cultural opportunities away from home. Africans from all walks of life have set their eyes away from the region, looking to destinations in the advanced economies (notably the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia) to fulfill their economic and cultural dreams. This mass exodus constitutes one of the most important social and cultural changes currently shaping and influencing the global incorporation and integration of Africans into the world arena. The contours and trajectories of these epiphenomena are rapidly changing the social, cultural, political,

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and economic landscapes of the continent, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. In a sense, the thousands of skilled and unskilled Africans who are streaming to the West is a reminder of Marx’s and Engel’s (1947) concept of the reserve army of workers, a surplus population forced to look beyond Africa for economic opportunities because the countries of Africa cannot fully absorb them into the economic production process. As both Engels and Marx contended, the surplus of workers is the “lever of capitalist accumulation and production.” The surplus African workers cannot find gainful employment within their national borders. They have to leave to the centers of capitalist accumulation and production in the metropolitan and core countries to fulfill their economic goals and dreams. For the African émigrés who have left the continent to pursue their dreams and aspirations in the United States and other Western locales, migration is constructed as the agency for linking them not only to the global community, but also to their respective ancestral places of origination. The concept of “home” is given a fluid interpretation as people move from the periphery to the core (center) and set up transnationalized diaspora lives. Country of origination and home are viewed as dynamic rather than fixed or static configurations.5 Living and dwelling at the crossroads or the confluences of the global societies constituting the West is rationalized in purely economic and cultural terms. For the African immigrants who are gathering and dispersing in the West, migration and the identities that are created are rationalized to reflect and depict migrants’ sense of being, their cultural belonging, and the articulation of their roles in the new social spaces they have entered. The process(es) shaping immigrant identities in the host societies as well as in their ancestral homes suggests that social institutions, agencies, normative definitions, and expectations are created at both points of migrant contact to structure and form the basis of migrant identities. The ongoing institutional, cultural, and normative relationships between host society and home society serve as the sites where immigrant identities are propagated and given specific predetermined contents or meanings among the group. For African immigrants, the various forms of cross-national, often overlapping, and interlocking interactions and relationships that are established following migration is important for three reasons. First, the sociological outcomes of these interactions and interrelationships have the potential of altering the fabric of African society via the structural mechanisms embodied in global incorporation. Second, the continued exodus of Africa’s skilled and unskilled population can shed light on how African immigrants, as a group, redefine and construct meanings or rationalizations associated with group identities, nationalism, citizenship, and global incorporation. Third, the interactions and interrelationships the immigrants structure outside of Africa is important in understanding how African émigrés create, sustain,

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and contest issues pertaining to class, cultural, economic, and political representations in their respective home societies. The lessons and values imbibed in the migratory process are given resonance and import in localized settings at home. In this regard, immigrant identity formations become pivotal in terms of how new roles and statuses are conceptualized or transformed to benefit the emerging nation-states of Africa. The confluences of globalization and Africa’s bold ambitions to seek incorporation into global economic and cultural systems are catalysts spurring social changes on the African continent. The global spread of mass media technologies and systems of communication as part of the globalization process have also ushered Africa and its people into the world community of nations. The net effect is that Africans are beginning to demand more of their governments and seeking a better management of their resources along with accountability of their leaders. Part of this process of change is spurred by the linkages that African émigrés are able to establish and maintain with their home countries. Through the interrelationships that these migrants are able to form and forge in the global arena, ways to change or reinforce specific cultural and normative expectations affecting the overall development of the region of Africa are being forged and pursued not only by returning migrants, but also by what other Africans learn via the instruments of globalized communication structures. African immigrants in the United States are fast achieving social and economic mobility. This mobility stems from their deep-seated commitments to education and the values of self-improvement via continued education. Over one-half of Africa’s immigrants enter the United States to pursue postgraduate education in specialized fields in the arts and sciences. Coming from merit-based societies where education is viewed as a proven agency for attaining status and mobility, many African immigrants avail themselves of the tremendous educational opportunities that they find in the United States. The outcome of this commitment is the burgeoning growth in the percentage of African immigrants who have attained graduate and postgraduate credentials. According to the U.S. census, for example, the educational attainment of Africa’s émigrés exceeds those of the native-born population.6 African immigrants are now found among the ranks of surgeons and medical personnel in Britain, the United States, and Canada. They continue to outperform the nationals of their host societies in terms of educational attainment. As a group, African immigrants who settle in the West are more likely to work in professional and managerial jobs relative to their British male counterparts. Their fast-track approach to social mobility is enhanced by the strong familial networks and kinship bonds that these immigrants utilize to navigate educational, cultural, and economic opportunities. Equally playing a

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major role in the continued upward mobility of the African émigré are the favorability of past and present immigration laws that favor family reunification, the diversity lottery system, and visas set aside for immigrants who have attained advanced degrees in technical and scientific areas so that they can adjust their status from nonimmigrant to immigrant based on skills. But perhaps, the piece of immigration law that leveled the playing field and made it possible for African immigrants to start coming to the United States in high numbers was the 1965 Hart-Cellar Immigration Act7 and the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA).8 The social construction and negotiation of African immigrant identities can be problematic in cross-border or transnational migration. As a group, African immigrants are more likely than other subordinate and minority groups to be subjected to intense scrutiny at border and security points of entry because of entrenched global depictions and representations of Africans as helpless victims, poverty stricken, a marginalized group with less social or human capital, and citizens of a continent of missed opportunities. The portrayal and depictions of African émigrés as dependents of the welfare state belies the high scholastic accomplishments that they bring to transnational migration. Irrespective of their educational attainment and skill levels, African émigrés are cast as economic refugees and therefore more likely than other immigrant groups to need social welfare assistance. Coupled with this is the persistent notion that when they do engage in cross-border migrations, Africans do so illegally, often without valid traveling papers or documents. This is a myth. The reality is that less attention is focused on Africans as a well-educated class of immigrants whose contributions to their host societies are immeasurable. Their racialized identities as black minorities mark them as a subclass in systems of stratification. This thwarts or inhibits their full integration and incorporation into the affairs of their host societies. More Africans than before continue to see the United States as the economic and cultural epicenter of their ambition to replicate and transform their lives. To date, more Africans than the total number that were brought involuntarily to the United States as slaves have settled in the country. Forming a small minority in the overall percentage of immigrants entering the country (3 percent), the Africans who are coming to the United States are changing the ethnic and racial composition of black identities. Today’s African immigrants are well-educated, upwardly mobile, and committed to finding new economic vistas to reflect their changing transnational and global incorporation. The elucidation of the transnational factors as well as the geopolitical systems influencing the dynamic aspects of African immigrant cultural communities in new locales and settings are important in explaining how labor market structures, cultural norms and beliefs, educa-

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tional systems, familial organizations, and immigration laws and policies converge to shed light on how immigrants create and accentuate their identities. At the same time, the international migration of Africans to the United States and the images that the immigrants manifest are significant to the degree that these identities become symbolic of the strategies that Africans utilize to facilitate and give agency to the restructuring of their respective societies and nationalities in the advent of global social incorporation and change.

PURPOSE AND FOCUS OF BOOK This book is about the social and cultural production and manifestations of the identities that African immigrants create in diasporic spaces following migration. The primary focus of this book is to document the structure, form, and content of African immigrant identities in transnational territories using the experiences of a group of Africans who have settled in the United States.9 A number of specific research questions guided this inquiry. These include, but are not limited, to the following broad questions. What identities do African immigrants construct and negotiate once they enter the global arena through the channels of international migration? Are there specific significant variations and continuities in the contents of African immigrant identities? How are Africans using immigration to reinvent, reconfigure, and inscribe new meanings to ideas of space, place, and social fields within global context? What are the specific processes and structures within the United States and Africa that intersect to depict the identities formed by African immigrants when they embark upon transnational migrations? As they group to form their transnational identities in the West, are there sociological narratives and themes (for example, trans-border Pan Africanism or new definitions of blackness) that emerge in the identities that African immigrants espouse? How are these identities articulated in global arenas against the backdrop of international migration? Are there specific genres of black African immigrant identities that are culturally oppositional and contradictory to black American ethnic identities and experiences? What are the structural implications and impacts of the identities that African immigrants abroad forge on the long-term future socioeconomic and political development of the continent? Finally, how are these impacts going to be played out and manifested in the continued emergence and continuity of Africa’s social and cultural transformations? The identities of these transAtlantic black African immigrants who form the focus of this study provides a focal stress for the discussion of how colonization, African continental identity, nationalism, and African cultural and social ethos all converge to depict the formation and nurturing of new black identities in the United

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States. The immigrant identities of these immigrants are embodiments of complex forms and genres of cultures and traditions that are lived concurrently in multiple domains in the United States and in Africa. Although the lives of these immigrants may cross multiple borderlands, the expectations and outcomes are the same: to use international migration to alter the economic and cultural circumstances of the relatives at home. In a sense, the immigrants who are described in this book are creating new “places and spaces” for themselves within the nexus of globalization and its attendant structured inequalities. The sociological issues emanating from the above research questions are broad, encompassing multiple, dynamic dimensions, and aspects of African immigrant identities as they are formed in transnational migratory domains. Aspects of African immigrant identities highlighted by this study are educational, employment, work, and entrepreneurial formations, political construction of notions of Pan Africanism, continental affiliations and groupings, transglobal identities and citizenship, gendered extrapolations underpinning the social constructions of the meanings of international migration, expressions of community and civic life, and finally the negotiation of racial and ethnic identities. The formations and manifestations of the material and nonmaterial cultural identities of African immigrants who are reconstituting the black African diaspora in new settings are significant in unmasking the sociological matrixes and panoplies undergirding the adaptive mechanisms utilized by the immigrants to create their own unique social domains. As these black immigrant identities continue to form in transnational settings, their social, cultural, economic, and political intersectionalities and interfaces assume historical significance in terms of how to gain some understandings of the role(s) of contemporary African migratory patterns in shaping notions of continental affiliation and membership, nationalism, and citizenship in particular, and more generally, global incorporation. International migration has opened new vistas of opportunities, experiences, and realities for African immigrants. These Africans shape and are shaped in turn by the new interactions and forms of engagements that they encounter in their host societies. The analytical framework of the book is to show how black African immigrant identities are formed to anchor the transnational cultural lives that African immigrants articulate and the associated meanings and rationalizations that undergird and give contexts as to how these identities, once created, are reinforced not only in the United States, but also in Africa. As they form their cultural communities and seek to find ways to engage in the affairs of their host society, these immigrants offer the opportunity to study how recent black immigrant identities are conceptualized, forged, and lived out in the United States. Unraveling the sociological underpinnings of the immigrant identities that these black newcomers to America establish is

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important for several reasons. First, it provides researchers with the lens to examine the broader and specific cultural traits that are exhibited by the immigrants and how these traits enforce or reinforce continuities in the making and formation of black identities. Second, a focus on the identity formations of the immigrants sheds light on the depiction of the internal diversities inherent in the manifestations of black diasporic cultures. Third, the emphasis on identity patterns of the new black immigrants speaks to how as a minority group, the immigrants painstakingly construct and contest the social and cultural spaces they form to alter and transform what it means to be black, foreign-born, and at the same time manifest an American ethos, values, and orientation. In forming their “American Dreams” or “African Dreams,” these immigrants demonstrate that the actualization of self-identification and the perspectives accompanying these definitions are not only rooted in values and belief systems that are functional and operative in African societies, but more importantly, it demonstrates the structural parallels between African and American cultural/normative systems. Fourth, the stress on black immigrant identities offers yet another opportunity to examine how the construction of identities are influenced by the interplays among racialized formations, immigrant adaptations, structural economic mobility, and segmented assimilation and or acculturation. Last, anchoring the identities that the black immigrants articulate has resonance in African social and cultural formulations because through the instruments of migration, broader social transformations are created and shared. The intricacies of these changes emanating from immigrant identities has specific intended and unintended ramifications in the repositioning of sociocultural, political, and economic development of Africa as a whole. In essence, the identities that the new immigrants forge are relayed back to Africa and given fresh meanings and contexts within the nexus of cultural hybridity and social changes in Africa. The cultural productions and transformations of their unique migratory identities are sociologically revealing. In the United States, these Africans are sometimes referred to as Ghanaian Americans, Nigerian Americans, Liberian Americans, Kenyan Americans, Cape Verdean Americans, Ethiopian Americans, and so on. In Europe, similar cultural productions of African immigrant identities and formations have emerged. Others are Ugandan British, Somali British, or Gambian British. At every level of global migration where Africans are involved, they are creating new worlds and manifesting specific identities within the new viable transnational spaces they are creating. As they leave Africa and settle in their new societies, African immigrant identities are resonating in the new migrant destinations. These structural as well as individualistic constructions and reconfigurations of African immigrant identities are transposed back home to Africa to recreate and enrich African systems of social and cultural productions. The

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transforming praxis that is accentuated in these settlements is borne out of migration and the quest by every class of Africans to renegotiate newer forms of identities. The manifestation of African immigrant cultural identities is being represented in global labor sites in the advanced countries by a growing cadre of well-educated and cosmopolitanized skilled professionals with tertiary institutional degrees who, in most cases, are relatively better educated than the citizens of their host societies. These identities have been shaped, to a large extent, by the colonial infrastructures (be they British, Belgian, or French, and to some extent, the postcolonial regimes) that laid the foundations for the establishment of strong and formidable systems of education that have continued to produce stellar graduates from tertiary institutions of learning all over the continent. For the African immigrants who form the subject of this inquiry, the social parameters of identities are structured in consonance with the need to preserve the multiple cultural sites that combine to form and affirm strongly held tribal beliefs, cultural heritages, and legacies. The formation of African immigrants’ identities in new cultural spaces are approached through the affirmation and fostering of collective bonds based on tribal, clan, ethnic, class, kinship, educational, colonial, or even village group associations to resist complete incorporation and total assimilation into the body polity of the host society. The social processes involved in binding together to shape the boundaries and parameters of immigrant cultural communities to contest incorporation offers an interesting sociological exposé of how immigrant groups use identities to resolve strains emanating from relocations to new social frontiers. In the case of the African immigrants now entering the United States, Britain, and Canada, the outcomes of these identities as they are manifested become central in depicting how multiple African cultural forms coexist in globally defined migratory terrains. An important question is how, as a group, African émigrés rely on shared African cultural and belief systems to maintain cultural exclusivities with predetermined outcomes to structure and hold on to aspects of their identities. The theme of African immigrant identity explored in this book provides insights into the complex transnational processes and influences involved in shaping the identities of the immigrants along multiple spectrums of social, economic, and cultural organizations. For migration scholars, this book reveals the narratives of the life stories and testimonies of a new generation of Africans who are entering the global migration arena. These testimonies and social accounts of migratory identities provide a primary context for elucidating how immigrants from the continent construct identities to anchor their now evolved transnational representations. At the same time, the study offers an insight into how black African immigrant identities, once created, are contested, including the durability of these identities, and their impact on inter– and intra–minority group relationships in an ever-changing American

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ethnic mosaic and cultural landscape. In essence, the book is written with two social facts in mind. The first is that identity is a complex and multifaceted process whose boundaries are ever shifting and dynamic in content. Second, identity formation is positioned on the assumption that people are free to choose how they relate to, and are related to in turn, by internal and external forces sometimes outside of the control of the individual or group. Identities are not simply constructed in a vacuum. An attempt is made to identify the factors that are influencing and shaping the formation of African immigrant identities. The approach to the unraveling of African immigrant identities will cover a broad spectrum of sites where identities are contested. These include the expressions of racial and ethnic, transnational, political, gendered, African and Pan African identities, and the implications that these forms of identities have on the societies and cultures of immigrant places of originations and destinations. For many Africans who are able to establish immigrant identities in migrant host societies, it bears mentioning that these identities, once formed, are nonlinear. Their identities become circulatory: lived, and experienced in their host societies, and at the same time transposed, acted out, shared, modified, and recreated back in Africa. When these identities are given African contents and meanings, the goal is often to use and appropriate these identities to restructure, redefine, and change the social, cultural, and economic landscape of the continent. In so doing, these immigrants become agencies of social and cultural changes, using the process of international migration as a strategic social movement designed to mobilize the collective resources of Africans to transform the present and future orderings and structural realignment of the normative and belief systems prevailing on the continent. This makes the topic of African immigrant identities an important subject worthy of scholastic attention and inquiry. And like other new immigrants now entering the United States, the African immigrants have to develop and find ways and social processes to insert their identities into the fabric of American society. As they do so, the Africans remain cognizant of the overt and covert subtleties of racial and ethnic identity formations and their categorizations in the United States. Nonetheless, these immigrants (collectively and individually) do not want to be bounded by a restrictive or exclusive definition as to how they should constitute their black identities. In the identities that they are manifesting in the United States, these immigrants reject racialized negative and subtle stigmas and definitions commonly associated with blackness in America. Understanding the processes whereby they are able to redefine their black identities and illuminating the forms, contents, and structures of identities are central, adding to the existing research scholarship on the formation and reconstitution of the black African diaspora in the United States.

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Overall, this book demonstrates that the identities that the African immigrants form often transcend the country-specific cultures and normative belief systems that African immigrants manifest. This book’s theme accentuates and is reflective of the growing recognition of the internal social and cultural diversities inherent in global and transnational black identities and ethnicities. It centers the transnational identities of the black immigrants within the nexus of the fusion of a multiplicity of value, belief, and normative systems (some African, others European or colonial, as well as American) that continue to shape and define the contents of African immigrant identities. The evolving transnational identities of African émigrés is an amalgamation of multiple identities that are formed, learned, and played out among the immigrants in multiple social transnational settings. One setting for identity expression in the host society is traced to the influences of the vast array of newfound identities that become available to the immigrants in the host society. This will include identities that the immigrants learn in their interactions with institutional processes and organizations in the host society. Examples of these institutions include work, education, media, family, legal, and community. The next forms of identities are those that are transplanted to the host societies and then transposed back to the countries and societies of immigrant origination. This form of identity is predicated on the premise that as a group, immigrants straddle and maintain allegiances to their respective home societies; in maintaining their links with their home societies, these immigrants come to display certain identities which cannot be pinpointed to any one specific cultural form(s). For the African immigrants who are entering the global area through migration, the plethora of identities that are constructed are often designed to connect them primarily to the global issues confronting the African continent as a whole. The consciousness and identities of African-ness are salient in how these immigrants position, reconfigure, and attribute meanings and rationalizations of their global migrations within the contexts of African social and cultural ethos. The negotiation and construction of black African immigrant identities in global social arenas are significant in the continued depictions of holistic black identities and their concretizations in Western diasporas.10 As they enter global arenas via the agency of international migration, African émigrés map out and negotiate visible identities and cultural manifestations to depict the panoplies of cultures characteristic of the region. In cities across the United States, Africans are establishing nursing homes, business establishments (import-export companies), law firms, and accounting enterprises, operating taxis in the top ten urbanized centers in America and other global capitals, setting up hair-braiding and cosmetic shops, and opening restaurants and eateries. Some are forging their immigrant identities in the United States military, on college and university

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campuses across the Western economies, in fields such as nursing, law, medicine and healthcare, pharmacy, engineering, computer science, and social work. These Africans depict a broad range of professional and nonprofessional occupational levels. They are united by a common objective: to use international migration as a strategy to lift themselves individually and collectively from the strains of abject poverty, economic morass, political strangulation, and a host of epidemiological and health-related concerns on a scale the world has, perhaps, never before experienced. The social and cultural depictions of the exiled identities of the African immigrants,11 in essence, is being constructed in piecemeal fashion to transform, broaden, contest, or resist entrenched images and perceptions oftentimes associated with Africa and its peoples. A core and integral part of this perception is that as a group, Africans are incapable of implementing policies and programs to effect meaningful social, cultural, economic, and political changes. From the perspective of the African immigrant, this perception is far from right due to the evolving discourses on how Africans can center and claim a meaningful place, status, and position in the global arena.

CREATING NEW IMMIGRANT IDENTITIES TO FOSTER SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGES A notable feature of the African immigrant diaspora is the role played by Africa’s diaspora populations abroad in the task of nation building and homeland development. This study affords an opportunity to illustrate this dimension of African immigrant identities. Agencies whereby these immigrants transform their homeland societies are cast within the overall spectrum of international migration and development.12 In the immigrant identities that African émigrés create can be found values such as a strong work ethic, personal and group responsibility, self-help, community action and mobilization to resolve problems and challenges, and deferred gratification. These values play a pivotal role in structuring an important component of the identities of the African migrants, that is, their sense of altruism and strong belief in shared sacrifices to better the economic fortunes of their relatives and societies at home. In a sense, every African immigrant is involved in the task of nation building. Through the immigrant identities that they construct, some of the African émigrés are able to reconceptualize the social and political meanings and characterizations or depictions of the nation-state in Africa as a site for the formation of national identity and social consciousness. A significant part of this consciousness is the role of individuals, organizations, and groups in the gigantic task of national and community development. For African émigrés, international migration has become an important mecha-

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nism and agency for facilitating broader and micro-level social changes. Whether it is using their newfound economic resources in the United States to provide financial assistance to their clan, ethnic or tribal group, village school or hospital with resources to launch specific community development projects, or whether they direct their remittances to immediate and extended relatives at home, the import remains the same: that is, to use migration to provide and infuse direct economic and cultural assistance at the community and intra-family levels. For several African immigrants, the global repositioning of their national or continental consciousness is pivotal in the structural and cultural realignment of what it means to be black in the age of globalization and the disintegration of borders. Whether they pursue secondary or postsecondary degrees, work multiple jobs, or send remittances home, African immigrants in the United States share the collective goal of repositioning themselves to garner the benefits emanating from their migratory experiences for the benefit of their respective home countries and societies. Like those they have left behind at home, both African immigrants and nonimmigrants alike collectively yearn for the day when the people of the continent will be able to achieve respectable economic standards of living. As they continue to find legal and illegal ways to enter the United States, some of the African immigrants are encountering difficulties at United States border and security entry points. Reasons for these difficulties include but are not limited to the following. First, there is a perception in the international community that, as a group, Africans are impoverished and destitute. To gain entry to the West, Africans will have to demonstrate that they have sufficient financial resources before a visa is issued. The fear in the West is that, once admitted, African immigrants will join the ranks of welfare recipients despite the strong educational credentials and family networks that several of them bring to their host societies. Second, consular and border agents are concerned that, if allowed to enter, African immigrants are going to overstay their visas. This perception stems from the belief in the West that social, economic, and political conditions are very poor in Africa. This means that African immigrants are not going to return home anytime soon. Third, there is a dearth of knowledge about African immigrants in the West. The lack of knowledge stems from the fact that many Westerners often fail to recognize the internal diversities and variations among the African immigrant population. Often, they are lumped together as Africans without any concerted effort to disaggregate their social, cultural, economic, and political differences. The prevailing pattern is to cast and portray these immigrants as helpless people, economic migrants, or refugees. This accounts for their marginalized status. To offset this marginality, many of the immigrants are beginning to form networks and to build coalitions with other immigrant minority groups, especially American-born

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blacks, Hispanics, and Caribbean immigrants. This intercultural coalition is significant because it enables the immigrants to advocate for better schools for their children, to support policies to provide affordable housing, and to explore ways to foster police–minority group relations. The immigrants introduce and add their diverse cultures to the mosaic of ethnic and racial diversities in the United States. The mosaic of identities and the migrant community enclaves that are created and duplicated across multiple social and cultural domains ultimately impacts the cultural contents and composition of the United States.13 At the same time, the new black African American immigrants are influenced by the myriad of cultures that they encounter upon their arrival, including that of African American cultures. The mixing and blending of these black identities is sociologically enriching because it speaks to the totality and vibrancy of the richness and depth of African cultural practices and institutions. For one thing, the presence of these immigrants expands the range of black identities that are constituted in the black global diaspora. Not every African émigré comes to the United States with strong human and labor capital achieved through meritorious education. As economic and political conditions continue to deteriorate and the governments have difficulties meeting the basic needs of their people, many Africans are now entering the West with poor educational attainment.14 For this group of African émigrés, the path to economic participation and inclusion is dire due to their lack of skills and low occupational status. Employed mainly in service, agriculture, food processing, and the hospitality sectors, these Africans become part of America’s lower class and urban minority population often found living in substandard housing and crime-prone communities. Their social and cultural identities are largely defined by their low occupational status. They have yet to transform their strong cultural endowment and capital in the form of cohesive family bonds into sustainable economic capital. Lack of strong social (human) capital endowment due to the undocumented status some of them share in common.15 Persistent unemployment is common among this group of African émigrés and often, many lack the social capital to offset the economic impact of prolonged unemployment or job loss. Multiple internal migrations are unique among this group. These migrations are implemented to access better economic opportunities in high-growth cities and states. Their frequent migration makes it difficult for them to develop cohesive bonds with community organizations and institutions. Over a quarter of these immigrants do not pursue postsecondary education. Work and savings dominates the identities of this group of Africans. Their economic goals are clear: to work and save enough money to repatriate home to start a small business venture. For those who are undocumented, there is a sense of urgency to repatriate their entire savings home to avoid losing their savings if they are arrested or

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deportation proceedings are filed against them by immigration authorities. They foster friendships and relationships with other minority immigrants with whom they share similar socioeconomic and class characteristics. Never intending to assimilate, these Africans learn enough about the host societies to be able to participate in selective spheres of host society activities. This acculturation may be limited to learning about employment and occupational issues of direct relevance to the immigrant. The African immigrant experiences in cross-border migrations continue to be global in form and structure. The background of these cross-border movements has been explained primarily from the push-pull theoretical genre. While this has brought an insightful and invigorating scholarship to the field of migration studies, the underpinnings and sociological efficacies of the immigrant identities of African immigrants are not well rationalized. In particular, the entry of African immigrants in the global arena and their affirmation of international migration as an economic strategy to better their lives are usually masked and concealed by their globalized immigrant identities and being lumped together with native-born blacks.

THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL STATEMENTS Social scientists agree that the movement of people from one locale to another in the form of internal or international migration accentuates the importance of identity formation and construction in migratory spaces. An increasing number of people (particularly from the developing nations) are crossing international borders to (developed countries, principally), to re-inscribe and renegotiate new forms of identities and social consciousness that are borderless and not bounded by specific cultural or geographical genres and forms. Researchers need to pay more attention and give primacy to the multiple processes involved in how immigrants establish transnational domains and carve places for themselves in foreign settings. The cultural production and manifestation of migrant identities as an integral part of transnational migratory domains is of scholastic value to the understanding of the layered and intricate social behavioral patterns that migrants continue to forge throughout the world.16 Social identity is socially constructed and given resonance or meaning within specific cultural genres and domains. African-based cultural identities continue to emerge and evolve. At its core is the understanding that African-centered values and worldview are vital in the new global transmigrations currently occurring in the Western world. African identities are particularly significant in the study of postcolonial nationalisms and transnationalisms as the African nations emerged from foreign domination to reclaim their identities and cultures in the twentieth century. For those

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interested in studying and illuminating the contents of the worldwide African diasporas, the systematic unraveling of African identities via the instruments of international migration and transnational movements offers yet another opportunity to widen the scope and scholastic understandings about the forces currently marking or defining the frontiers of newer African identities and experiences in the various sites of multicultural and transnational immigrant formations. Though the specificities underlying African transmigrant cultural identity forms are difficult to capture and represent due to the internal diversities and complexities inherent in African continental cultural forms, it is nonetheless significant to sketch the boundaries and parameters (or commonalities) of the identities that are unraveling as waves of Africans enter the domain of transnational migrations. The theoretical perspective underpinning the investigation into how African immigrants create and manifest identities is transnationalism. The term transnationalism is a loaded term and migration scholars have yet to embrace definitive measurement of this concept (Guarnizo and Smith, 1998; Mahler, 2002). The transnational perspective in migration was articulated by Basch et al. (1994), and Glick Schiller et al. (1992). Their concept of immigrant transnationalism focused on the idea that migrants transcend the nation-states by manifesting and creating social fields incorporating social, cultural, economic ties not only with the host societies, but also with the migrant-sending communities. For example, migrants, now and before, straddle between the cultures of their host society as well as the cultures of their home societies. Migrants are not bounded by specific cultural and social genres that are constrained by space and locality. Instead, migrants may form broad and encompassing social systems that seek to maintain them in two or multiple sites for social action. These cross-border ties and relationships are fostered by economic and cultural diffusion, globalization, dispersion of economic and cultural systems of production, and efficient modes of transportation and communication.17 According to Basch, the term may be used in referring to the multiple processes whereby immigrants are able to create and negotiate transmigrant roles, positions, and statuses that seek to connect them with their home countries as well as to the host societies. These complex networks and supranational institutions are formed expressly to anchor the immigrants to the values, cultures, and beliefs of their home countries even as they map out new trajectories of identities with their migrant host societies. According to Foner’s (2001) research on new immigrants in New York City, transnationalism describes how immigrants, then and now, are able to maintain familial, economic, cultural and political ties across international borders thereby making immigrant home and host societies a unitary or single social or cultural field. The assumption here is that when people

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move, they never abandon the ties that they have with their home countries; the social spaces of home and host societies are connected and treated as extensions of the same with minor and or major configurations and reconfigurations depending on contextual realities associated with the migratory experiences and processes. Foner showed that there are historical continuities in terms of how migrants conceive and rationalize transnational social fields and spaces. Drawing from the experiences of Russian Jews and Italians in New York, Foner found that these European immigrants maintained strong social, cultural, and economic ties with relatives in Europe and at the same time formed identities that incorporated them into the institutional structures of American society. These immigrants sent remittances and aid home; they created networks and associations (landsmanshaftn) to reflect their European heritage and legacies. In essence, these immigrants never left home; they straddled multiple social fields and worlds.18 Within the domain of intra- and inter-African migrations, the concept of maintaining dual or multiple cross-regional or national identities is actually not new among Africans. When they often migrate (whether to urban centers or across national borders) in Africa, migrants usually not only develop strong alliances with the migrant receiving societies but also continue maintaining relationships with their places of origination. For example, among the Akans of Ghana, the Hausas of northern Nigeria, the Igbo of Nigeria, and the Fulanis of Burkina Faso, elaborate relationships are formed and cultivated following migration to unfamiliar territories to connect these migrants first with the host society and second, with the migrant sending locales. African immigrants never sever ties with their respective homelands. They forge and maintain economic and cultural linkages and relationships with families and participate fully in the institutional life of their tribal, ethnic, clan, religious, alumni, or national groupings. These groupings and the identities they represent become the focal point for the propagation of African cultural and normative ideas and ideals in crossborder and global migrations. (An example of the propagation of African immigrant identities in global spheres is the coronation and installation of clan and tribal Akan subchiefs in London to serve as the spiritual and political leader of the Akan immigrants from Ghana who have settled in Great Britain. Another example is the celebration of diverse religious rituals among Nigerian Igbos and Yorubas in London, New York, and Houston.) The transnational networks and immigrant alliances and associations become a social capital contributing to fulfilling principally the economic as well as social-psychological (noneconomic) needs of the African immigrant families at home and abroad.19 To cement their sojourner and alien status in the new locals, immigrants from these areas will often learn about the cultural and social practices of the receiving societies while at the same time organizing their resources to

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pay yearly homage to the politico-social and cultural power brokers of the host societies. This practice is implemented to show not only unity and accord with the values and institutions of the host society, but importantly, to show magnanimity and homage to the new place they now call home. During festive religious and cultural rituals when homage is paid to the host societies, there is also a reaffirmation among the migrants in acknowledging the power domain of the host and a pledge not to disrupt the normative balance and institutional arrangements operative in the host society.20 Acting to disrupt the normative and institutional orders and balance of the host is interpreted as offensive. On the other hand, learning the norms and values of the host is considered appropriate because it shows integration and incorporation. Often, African migrants will set up mutual and benevolent societies to assist them in connecting to the host societies. These practices are complemented with the familial, ethnic, religious, and economic bonds that the migrants maintain with their respective home countries. Every year during religious occasions and holidays, many of these migrants will often travel home for visits during which they share their gifts and resources with family members. During these visits home, old ties are affirmed and new ones formed to represent the status of the visiting migrants. For these migrants, there has been a long tradition of continuity and the simultaneous maintenance of relationships and networks that are fostered in both the home and visiting societies.21 Bersselaar’s (2005) work on African migration in Igboland (Nigeria) adds to the literature on how historically, African migrants construct social fields in new settings to anchor their identities. Bersselaar’s findings showed that in intra- and inter-African migrations, hometown associations, ethnic unions, and cultural groups are formed to represent and reflect the social structure and institutional composition of life at home. These organizations are formed to enable the migrants to replicate localities and at the same time to recreate the affairs of home from a distance. These associations functioned as benevolent, mutual aid, and migrant self-help improvement organizations, looking after the interests of their members by assisting new migrants to settle, find employment, or find business opportunities (Bersselaar, 2005). Like the transnational associations that African immigrants form in the United States and everywhere they have migrated to, some of these networks also embark upon cultural development programs in the host society and at home by building schools, funding scholarship programs for deserving students, and embarking upon the construction of hospitals, post offices, roads, bridges, and market centers to support the economies of their tribal hometowns. These groups were also pivotal in the formation of labor unions to agitate for better working conditions. Their rank and file members also use the migrant networks and associations as agency to agi-

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tate for political inclusion and involvement in governance decision-making in both the host and migrant places of origination. Their approaches to socioeconomic development in their respective tribal homes were premised on the belief that self-help and empowerment came via the channels of community resource mobilization and an altruistic ethos which called for them to become stakeholders in the tasks of community development. This ethos is what Africans who have migrated to the West continue to foster by sharing their material economic assets with relatives and the community at large. This migrant identity is structured to incorporate migrants’ notion that they who are more economically fortunate ought to share with their less-fortunate relatives and the community in particular. Through this symbiotic relationship of economic interdependence, bonds of social and cultural solidarities are fostered to ensure group cohesiveness. Writing about the role of Ghanaian immigrant associations in Toronto (Canada), Owusu (2000:1165) noted that the immigrant ethnic, hometown, and national associations all play a vital role in the adaptation and settlement of immigrants. Serving as the fulcrum of immigrant social and cultural interactions at the community level, these organizations connect the migrants to the institutional fabric of the host society and at the same time focus the energies of the members toward home or the places of origination. These organizations, Owusu stated, serves as agencies for social control and assist migrants to resolve disputes and conflicts, including marital problems. They patronize and support the immigrants when there is bereavement of relatives at home and in the host society, and often supporting members to celebrate life-changing events such as marriage, birth of a child, and naming-of-children ceremonies. At the social level, these clubs may also connect their members to the home countries by organizing parties to celebrate national independence days as well as ethnic, tribal, and clan religious festivals. Offering financial and or economic assistance to promote the welfare of its members is also a core aspect of the functions of these secondary group associations. Within the performance structures of these associations are multiple predetermined expectations that converge to shape how African immigrants as a group maintain and produce cultural modalities (material and nonmaterial) to give meanings to international migration. The agencies that these associations create are core in understanding how collective resources and synergies are marshaled to solve problems emanating in a variety of social fields in the immigrant-receiving and -sending societies alike. Through these agencies and the immigrant enclaves they represent, intentions are formed about remittances, plans for returning home are articulated, coethnic cultural and economic productions are articulated, social borders and boundaries are demarcated, and solutions are found to mitigate structural and individual problems.22

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The literature on transnational immigrant identity posits that there are discernible driving forces behind the articulation and expression of identity. One of these forces is de-territorialization of cultural spaces. This term refers to the multiple processes whereby immigrants are able to establish and maintain their cultural institutions away from their places of origination. For the African immigrants in the United States, this term has significant theoretical meaning because it offers significant insights into how these immigrants are able to re-create their cultural and social institutions in another nation or setting in order not to lose touch with the culture of the home country. It is within the nexus of these transnational institutions and its affiliate structures that cultural extrapolations and interconnections related to identity formations are acted out between the migrant host and migrant home societies.23 The transnational cultural reproductions and manifestations of African immigrant identities are lived and actualized in multiple fields and social domains, including in particular economic and labor force participation, cultural formulations, including familial-based structures and systems, and the modeling of complex relationships that seeks to connect the immigrants to their respective countries of immigrant origination. The repertoire of experiences that are created and negotiated by the immigrants are also defined to include those identities that are specifically tuned to meet predetermined socially and culturally desirable goals and orientations that are largely framed and developed within the nexus of African expectations about the roles and places of migrants in community building. For African immigrants who have been fortunate to travel, live, and work in foreign lands, particularly in the advanced economies, the experiences garnered and the improvements in immigrant human capital brought about by the process of international migration are pivotal and beneficial in diverse ways (economic, social, political, and cultural) in Africa’s march toward the achievement of sustainable industrial growth to alleviate the myriad of problems confronting the region. The stocks of African émigrés who are entering the new global migration in the advanced economies are different from other immigrant groups in several ways. Although there are refugee and displaced groups among them, the majority bring a wealth of human capital resources to their respective host societies. The Africans are better educated, are highly skilled, and come to the United States and other Western countries with a strong work ethic and the drive to become economically successful. For immigrant receiving countries like the United States, for example, African immigrants’ ethos of hard work fits in with the merit-based cultural systems common to these societies. Their educational credentials often place them in competitive and skilled sectors of the American economy, public or private. But equally salient about these immigrants is their unfettered ambitions to alter the cultural images and depictions of Africa as a backward, dark, and unforgiving landscape mired in persistent diseases, wars, famine, and extreme poverty.

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By their presence, these immigrants demonstrate that the reconstruction of African and black identities via the channels of international migration are pivotal in renegotiating and repositioning Africa’s place and agenda in global affairs. For these immigrants, the multiple ways whereby they represent and create newer forms and genres of black cultural identities are significant not only for Africa, but also for their host societies. These Africans add to and enlarge the ethnic and racial tapestries of their host societies by contesting newer forms of black identities against the backdrop of the vestiges of entrenched racial hierarchies and ethnic categorizations and labels common to American society. As they continue to enter the United States in large numbers and form ethnic alliances with American-born blacks, these African immigrants carve out new identities and roles that enrich black cultural forms and structures in America. The new African Americans are able to engage in a multiracial and ethnic American society and its lore without having to sacrifice or compromise their African-based identities. African immigrants have never been more globalized and transnational in their formulations of new localities and communities where they redefine newer contexts of identities and normative belief systems. Whether they are involuntarily or forcefully removed and compelled to relocate as a result of wars, persistent violence, failing states and regimes, or intra- and inter-ethnic schisms, or whether their migrations are voluntary and caused by the pursuit of business, educational, economic, family or religious rationalizations, Africans forge and establish contacts and networks all over the world to manifest their increasingly global identities. Due to their colonized and often economically stunted and peripheralized statuses as well as their global cultural depictions as “helpless victims,” Africans are beginning to use transnational migration to change and recast their identities in the dynamics of globalized migrations. This study seeks to reposition the transnational immigrant identities of Africans as they are created and recreated in globalized social fields. The merging cadres of African immigrants who are migrating to the West continue to be represented by individuals and groups with high educational credentials who are plugged into the transnational communities of cultural ideas, citizenship, and globalized systems of economic production. Above all, these Africans are cosmopolitan in their identificational foci. Due to their strong educational and human capital stock, a majority of the immigrants from Africa are able to migrate and settle anywhere in the world with minimal social and cultural disadvantages. It is equally significant to note here that not all African immigrants are able to relocate in new social fields with minimal ease. For the growing number of unskilled, uneducated, and economic migrant refugees who use unconventional forms of migration to connect to globalize economic and labor market structures, significant strains in their adaptation and integration will continue to be stymied and problematic. Their identities will therefore be different from their skilled, professional, and educated counterparts.

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The formation and expression of African immigrant identities are often interlaced with how the immigrants define and rationalize Africa’s role and place in global affairs. The African immigrant consciousness is structured around one central theme: the need for the global community to recognize and appreciate the continued contributions of Africans to world cultures. From the African immigrant’s perspective, the identities that Africans seek to negotiate or create are poorly understood, often resulting in insensitivities (perceived or real) toward Africa and the issues confronting the region. African immigrant identities are broad, overlapping, and often intersecting in multiple social and cultural domains. When African immigrants enter the global domain via population mobility, their identities are often reflected by a strong consciousness of their multiple and complex cultural heritages, their hard work ethic, their commitment to education, family, social responsibility, a sense of collective altruism, and community-building. Upon entering transnational migratory spaces and localities, African émigrés tend to highlight and reflect the consciousness that it is through collective mobilization of resources that the nation-states can achieve selfdetermination and incorporation into the world systems. For African immigrants then, this identity and consciousness are best articulated by the imperative of Africa’s need to develop institutions and infrastructures to lay the foundation for sustained and measurable economic and political determination while at the same time recognizing the shared interdependency of human existence.

METHODOLOGICAL STATEMENT Data collection for this study commenced ten years ago with series of African immigrant surveys designed to collect a wealth of information about subSaharan African immigrant experiences in the principal sites and locations of African immigrant settlements in New York; Boston; Chicago; Philadelphia; Charlotte; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Houston; northern Virginia–Maryland; and Minneapolis–St. Paul. Other research sites included Toronto (Canada), London, and Birmingham (England).24 The use of the multi-site approach to gather data is designed to tap into the varied experiences of the respondents and at the same time to use the information collected to form some ideas about the interconnected realities that converge to shape and define the contents of African immigrant identities. While each of the fields or sites might be independent in terms of social organization and structure, the expectation was that local exigencies are equally significant in depicting how African immigrants construct identities.25 The data from England were gathered during 2005–2006 and 2009.26 The goal of collecting data from multiple research sites with significant African émigré populations was designed to develop a

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comprehensive data bank to document the varied migratory experiences of Africans in the Western advanced nations. At the primary level, surveys and intensive focus group (IFG) sessions were conducted with a nonrandom sample of African immigrants domiciled in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. (Since the data collection process started a decade ago, over 1,000 Africans have been surveyed.) The process of obtaining respondent consent was initiated via the immigrant local, tribal, alumni, and national associations. These networks are the sites for the cultural productions and reproductions of African immigrant identities worldwide. As such, they constitute important cogs in the day-to-day routines of the immigrants as they create new meanings to represent and symbolize place, locality, and cultural landscapes. The approach was to contact these organizations for their membership directories and use the registrations to inform prospective respondents about the survey. Considering the internal diversities represented by the African immigrant population, a major concern was how to ensure that immigrants from diverse countries representing the region will be included in the study. For the current study, the majority of the participants are from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone. Others included Liberia, Sudan, Cape Verde, Senegal, Sudan, and the Ivory Coast (these are the top immigrant-sending countries). Immigrants from these countries formed 85 percent of the respondents. Once contact information had been obtained from the various immigrant secretariats, letters and invitations were forwarded to nearly 600 potential respondents informing them about the purpose of the study. Three hundred and twenty (53 percent) of the prospective respondents indicated a willingness to participate in the study. Of this number, 260 were invited to participate in the mail and telephone survey. Immigrant respondents living in Minnesota were oversampled relative to other African immigrant respondents domiciled in other parts of the United States. This was due to proximity to the research site and the need to reduce cost. My proximity to Minneapolis–St. Paul allowed me to participate in several African immigrant–based cultural and social activities. I used these occasions (celebrations of African national independence celebrations, immigrant association meetings, and social gatherings in celebration of weddings, parties, and child-naming ceremonies) as interviewer-participant to conduct some interviews, and to organize focus group sessions.27 Pole and Morrison (2003:3) provided a comprehensive listing of the methodological usefulness of ethnographic and interviewer-participant approaches to data collection. Included among these are the focus on a discrete location(s), event(s), or settings; researcher’s preoccupation with the full range of social behavior within the location, event, or setting; and the use of a range of different research methods which may combine qualitative

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and quantitative approaches to understand a wide range of sociological and cultural behaviors from the perspectives of the actors or subjects. For this particular study, the use of the ethnographic methodology enabled the researcher to portray the lived realities and phenomenological meanings that are constructed by the subjects.28 The ethnographic process provided an account that recognized the subjective realities, contextualized meanings, and insider’s account that each of the study participants associated with their migratory experiences.29 Using the information provided by the immigrant association, respondents were identified to participate in focus group sessions. These were conducted in Minneapolis (Minnesota), Houston (Texas), Atlanta (Georgia), Toronto (Canada), and London and Birmingham (England). Each focus group comprised six to eight participants. Although the focus group participants were self-selected, every effort was made to ensure immigrant representations from as many countries as possible. Restricting the focus group participants to a maximum of eight was designed to elucidate the discussions with the immigrants and thereby enhance the possibility of covering a wide range of issues related to the migrant’s experiences. Each focus group session lasted approximately two hours. The face-to-face sessions were supplemented with telephone conversations with each of the participants to provide opportunities for the subjects to elaborate on specific themes in their own migratory experiences and to afford me the chance to probe further into specific areas of immigrant lives, particularly how transnational ties are formed and the broader identities that are manifested within these primary and secondary group associations. The focus group sessions were grouped under five thematic rubrics. These were the forms and manifestations of African immigrant identities, the role and importance of transnational linkages between the immigrant’s current place of residence or community and immigrant’s place of birth and how these linkages are created and fostered, and the forces constraining or inhibiting the cultural creations and articulation of African-based immigrant identities. The rest are the long-term replication and continuities in African immigrant identities in transnational localities, including the outcomes of these identities in the social and economic development of Africa as a whole, and finally, the formation of second-generation immigrant identities in transnational settings and their implications. These themes collectively depict the social and cultural landscapes that African émigrés forge “away from home” in migratory circuits. Within these landscapes are immigrant narratives, histories, identities, memories about place, location, and the constructions of the meanings of “home.” In organizing the focus group sessions around these phenomenological themes, the migratory experiences and the materiality of the immigrants’ world are created and given meanings. The focus group and ethnographic

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approach to data collection provided sociologically nuanced context to tap into the experiential realities defining the social fields and spaces that these migrants as actors have constructed to anchor and give meanings to their migrant identities. The focus group sessions as a form of fieldwork enabled the researcher to participate in the structured and unstructured activities and social behaviors of the immigrants, thereby broadening and opening up the subjective world of the participants to the researcher. The entire focus group process positioned the researcher to be able to respond to social behavior and acts as they occurred.30 The focus group sessions contextualized and captured the broader themes in the transnational migrations of the Africans while at the same time helping in articulating the trajectories that often converge to form the contents of African cultural identities. Where possible, efforts were made to allow the focus group study participants to speak freely and uninhibited about specific issues germane to the respective experiences. This ethnographic approach paved the way for collecting information that covered a plethora of data, allowing for specific unintended hypotheses and research questions to be formulated to guide the mapping of the contours of African immigrant identities.31 An open-ended survey approach (structured face-to-face interviews and mailed questionnaires) were used to allow for the probing of the multiple migratory contextual domains within which the migratory experiences are represented and manifested. The primary data collection yielded valuable insights into how African immigrants construct their transnational migrant fields in the advanced countries of the Western hemisphere. More importantly, the data highlights the complex vicissitudes (economic issues, cultural processes, political imperatives, and social transformations) that play to connect the immigrants to their native homelands while at the same time giving them collective voices in the shaping and making of policies designed to ameliorate the numerous problems facing Africans as a whole. The issues covered in the survey were designed to cover a broad range of immigrant themes, particularly the causes of African migrations to the West, internal and external exigencies underlying the motivations to migrate, the structuring and contents of immigrant identities and how they are manifested, Africa’s role and place in the global system, relationships with other minority groups, how the immigrants define and interpret their migrations, tackling the problem of the exodus of skilled and professional Africans to the West. While these issues guided the set of questions that were administered, efforts were made to ensure that respondents will be able to address any and all aspects of their migratory experiences as they are lived. At the secondary level, data on the African-born were compiled from the U.S. Census, the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data on immigrants legally admitted

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to the United States, the British Census, and Statistics Canada. All five data sources provided in-depth data profiles on the nationalities of their foreign-born populations, including basic socioeconomic characteristics (educational attainment levels, year of immigration, visa status, gender, marital status, family and household attributes, including composition and structure of household, income, residential preferences and settlements, internal migration, labor force participation, types and forms of residential dwellings, and so on). The information contained in these data sources are valuable research tools because they provide a portrait or composite of the immigrant or foreign-born population. As such, these data can be used in describing population attributes including socio-demographic and classificatory information. Cross-sectional and longitudinal trends in the immigrant stock represented in each of these data files can be ascertained and their import for migration studies highlighted.

STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION OF BOOK Each chapter is organized around different aspects of African immigrant identity formation and expression in the United States. Chapter 2 positions the identities of African immigrants in transnational migration by examining the nature of the migration of Africa’s skilled and professional classes within the nexus of the African brain drain. The chapter highlights the internal conditions in Africa promoting and spurring this movement. It also gives contexts to the factors operating in the host or receiving countries to cause and contribute to the brain drain and skills exchange between Africa, the United States, or other advanced economies. The chapter looks at the identities forged by a group of African immigrant doctors, pharmacists, nurses, and allied health professionals living in Houston, Minneapolis– St. Paul, London, and Birmingham (England). It discusses how these black immigrant professionals construct and position their professional identities within the nexus of multi-layered, immigrant-rich American and British societies. The chapter stresses how African immigrants rely on formal and informal institutions to anchor their identities and at the same time pursue social mobility and advancements in a foreign setting. Immigrants’ perspectives about how to reverse the migrations of African-trained doctors and other allied health professional workers are highlighted. The chapter argues that occupational and labor market variables are central in shaping how the professional and skilled immigrant classes of African immigrants manifest identities. At the same time, it shows that the processes involved in the international movements of skilled and professional African immigrants and the identities that they seek to negotiate are equally salient in shedding light on the reconstitution and reconfiguration of black identity forms in

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South-to-North cross-border migrations. African doctors and allied health practitioners continue to leave the continent in droves in search of better opportunities abroad. The processes involved in how these immigrants construct the transnational meanings associated with their professional, occupational, and foreign status within the nexus of the brain drain and the worldwide transfer and exchange of skills between developing and developed nations are mapped out. The interplay between international migration and the formation of transnational identities among African émigrés in the West is being played in the immigrant host societies and the immigrant countries of birth and origination. For a long time, migration studies have posited that assimilation to the host society’s normative and cultural systems was a desirable goal if immigrants are to achieve social mobility, incorporation, and advancement. For several African immigrants now entering the United States, a central question is how to become a part of the host society’s institutions and at the same time maintain linkages with their home countries. Chapter 3 investigates the institutional and structural processes (including migrant traits or attributes) whereby African immigrants construct and foster adaptation and assimilation. Specific examples are given to illustrate the transforming role of immigrant transnational institutional structures in confronting the problems emanating from the new identities that they seek to create and establish. The chapter highlights how African immigrants construct enduring transnational activities and social fields whose principal purpose is to link them to the immigrant-sending and -receiving societies. Chapter 4 analyzes the structural and individual components of how African immigrants establish and give meanings to their diaspora’s cultural enclaves and communities. The chapter recognizes that African immigrant identities are not monolithic. Specific forms and patterns of identities may be discernible within and among specific immigrant groups or cohorts based on places of origination, education, cultural experiences, and micro-level traits (family composition, networks of intra-family organizations, and social and psychological aspirations underpinning the migrants’ rationalizations of international migration). The chapter provides an account of the economic rationalizations that the immigrants form upon arriving in the United States. It also investigates immigrant home ownership as a form of economic and cultural inclusion and integration. Factors operating in both the home and destination societies affecting home ownership are discussed. Particular attention is given to how immigrants construct notions of citizenship and naturalization, including the political rationalizations of the contexts of African migrations to the United States. Specific initiatives and policies are suggested to bring better understanding to the continued formation and reconstitution of the African diaspora in the United States. Central to the chapter is an analysis of the social and cultural

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markers (for example, buying a home in the United States)32 of the transnational lives the immigrants form as part of their migratory experiences. The growing trend of multiple spatial “homes” and interconnectedness of localities among African immigrants underscores the imperative to understand how these immigrants structure and organize their lives in transnational domains.33 This discussion is important because it demonstrates how immigrants take advantage of technological and communicative flows and other media agencies to facilitate social changes at home. The chapter positions and identifies the intersectionalities of immigrant culture, conceptions of “home,” and global and internationalized economic imperatives in depicting how African immigrants, in particular, sketch the various and specific cartographies of their diaspora.34 As Basch et al. (1994) affirmed, using a transnational focus to understand how immigrants create and relate to multiple global spaces is significant because it brings an understanding to how structures operating in the host and migrant home societies converge to empower and sustain migrant enclave communities.35 Additionally, it affords the opportunity to highlight how these transnational ties are fostered and given specific meanings to reflect exigencies associated with straddling multiple cultural experiences first in the host country, and second, in the migrant places of origination. Despite the growth in the African immigrant population in the United States, there is a dearth of literature on the racial, ethnic, and class identities of second-generation African immigrant youths. The importance of how second and subsequent generations of immigrants articulate identities is significant in examining how immigrants forge inclusion in the labor force, how they organize and manage their communities, and the effects of these organizations on social mobility and social incorporation.36 The goal of chapter 5 is to fill this void by investigating the social and cultural factors that converge to shape the manifestation of identities among African immigrant youth. Questions and issues include but are not limited to the following. Are there specific forms of identities that are exhibited by secondgeneration African immigrant youth? How do these youth manifest racial and ethnic identities? What structural determinants explain the contents and categories of their identities? Are there external forces outside of the domain of the African immigrant cultural and diaspora communities exerting influences on the presentation and manifestation of second-generation immigrant youth identity outcomes? More specifically, how salient is gender in sketching the boundaries of immigrant youth identities? How do they confront and negotiate issues of black African and African American racializations within the broader spectrum of racial formations and ideologies in an American society that is becoming more plural and diverse?37 How central are coethnics, peer reference groups, and secondary groups in forming the identities of the second-generation African immigrant youths?38 Finally,

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are there any theoretical issues that can be gleaned from the representations of these identities for students of migration studies? Chapter 6 is about continuities in the formation of black African diaspora identities in the United States. Using a gendered perspective, this chapter is based on a narrative discourse between African immigrant women and American-born blacks on a wide range of issues including racialization of black identities, gendered relationships, the black diaspora, African and African American relationships, politics, and the future of worldwide black identities.39 The chapter highlights the ethnic and racial solidarities that the African women immigrants establish with their black American counterparts while at the same time preserving “outsider and foreign” status.40 The chapter gives contents to the specific genres of gendered coethnicities that are formed by black diasporic groups in the United States. At the same time, it affirms the view that the formation of ethnic and racial identities among black émigrés is shaped by the diverse experiences learned from the respective home countries prior to migration.41 The chapter provides insights into how gender, race, ethnicity, and class formations intersect to shape how transnational migrations influence the identities and consciousness of African immigrant women in particular.42 Finally, are there challenges and obstacles emanating from how the construction of ethnic and racial identities impact on relationships with domestic or native-born blacks?43 Chapter 7 draws out the major conclusions and policy implications of the study by highlighting the roles of transnational African migration in forming the identities that Africans construct upon leaving the continent to travel abroad, particularly to the United States. The chapter will address the short- and long-term implications of the structural and nonstructural consequences of the forming and unraveling of the African émigré communities across the United States.

NOTES 1. See Saskia Sassen. (1999). Guests and Aliens. New York: The New Press. 2. See Butler (2007) on the importance of the African diaspora in international migration. 3. See Ronaldo Munck (2009) and Toro-Morn and Alicea (2004). 4. See William Scott and Ruth Scott. (1989). Adaptation of Immigrants. Individual Differences and Determinants. Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press. 5. See Iain Chambers. (1994). Migrancy, Culture, and Identity. London and New York: Routledge. 6. See Halter (2007); Arthur (2000, 2008). 7. The purpose of the Hart-Cellar Act was to legalize the status of nonimmigrant professionals with skills deemed in short supply by American employers. Signed into law by President Johnson in 1965, the act allowed nonimmigrants

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with relatives legally domiciled in the United States at the time of the legislation to adjust their nonimmigrant status to permanent residence status. In abolishing the national origins quota system of immigration, this legislation paved the way for more applicants from Africa and other developing regions to apply for legal entry into the United States. 8. IRCA made it possible for thousands of Africans already in the country without legal status to become permanent residents. IRCA paved the way for Africa’s educated class to come to the United States and reunite with family members already in the country. Card and Lewis (2005), Hernandez-Leon and Zuniga (2000) have reported that IRCA made it possible for immigrants previously operating in the underground economies to move freely to destinations where they could take advantage of favorable economic conditions. 9. Although the focus is primarily on Africans in the United States, data from Britain and Canada on African residents in these countries are used to portray the global dimensions of African migrations to the West in general. 10. Nolin (2006) noted that migrant transnationalization and diasporas tends to leave a trail of collective memory about another place and time while creating new maps, maybe fresher perspectives and prisms for relating to the world. This statement, in a sense, depicts what many African émigrés are attempting to realize as they seek new ways to create fresh agencies to offset the myriad of problems they encounter at home. 11. See Espiritu’s (2005) detailed accounts of how immigrants generally create exiled identities to engage both their host and migrant-sending societies. Though this study focused on the exiled identities of American Filipino intellectuals in the United States, there are several parallels with African émigrés abroad who use their exiled status to meaningfully engage in social and political changes in their respective home countries. 12. See Giles Mohan (2002) on the importance of the diaspora-development nexus with specific reference to the developing countries. 13. See Brettell (2007) and Cordero-Guzman, Smith, and Grosfoguel’s (2001) accounts of how immigrants construct, define, and form multiple racial and ethnic identities across social, economic, and cultural boundaries in the United States. 14. Africans are crossing to Sahara Desert to get to the Mediterranean countries, the European Union, or subsequently to the United States as the economic conditions on the continent worsen and the full impact of the global recession forces already destitute people to look elsewhere for economic survival. These travelers have become migrant refugees searching and looking for an oasis of economic opportunity wherever they can find one. 15. Kossoudji and Cobb-Clark (2002) noted that as a group, undocumented immigrants do not fare well occupationally in terms of social mobility due to their illegal status compared with those with legal status. 16. See Basch et al. (1994), Gordon and Mark (1999), Wright (2004), and Koser (2003) for a detailed discussion of how transnational immigrants reconstruct meanings of space and place in global avenues. 17. See, for example, Kearney (1991, 1995), Goldring (1998), and Guarnizo (1998) for comprehensive analyses of transnational immigrant identities.

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18. The propagation of human capital resources, coupled with strong kin-based networks not only affect which Africans will migrate but potentially also influence the timing of the migration, destination choices, and even the type(s) of employment and potential earnings that will be available once the decision to migrate is formed. 19. This social capital is not confined to the African immigrant populations in South-North migrations. Valdez’s (2007) study of the effects of ethnic enclave solidarity on economic and labor force entrepreneurial activities among whites, Koreans, Mexicans, and blacks is illustrative of the importance of social capital and market opportunities in positioning the role(s) of ethnic enclaves in ethnic and minority enterprises formation. 20. Adopting a transnational focus for the present study is significant because such an approach recognizes the interconnectivities that migrants nurture between their respective places of origination and the settlement destination or the new host society. African migration is not unilinear and marked by a process whereby Africans leave the continent and settle in faraway destinations only to forget about home. A transnational perspective, as Nolin (2006:32) opined, provides a framework to explore both the causes and effects of migration, and how lives change throughout the migratory process, including the conditions that affect those who migrate and those who do not. 21. The role and place of migrant associations and institutions has long been a feature of organized and unorganized migratory flows and streams in African population mobility. Their seamless integration into the fabric of migrant town and urban associations in African migrations became more pronounced in the aftermath of European colonization as towns and cities in Africa become incorporated into global economic production and the spread of local and foreign capital investment resources. 22. For detailed discussions about the role of immigrant enclaves and coethnic organization, see Waldinger (2008), Portes and Bach (1985), Portes and Zhou (1993), Waters and Eschbach (1995), and Bonacich and Modell (1980). 23. For a discussion of how these transnational identities are created and appropriated in cultural and economic domains, see Basch, Schiller, and Blanc (1994), Mahler (2002), Foner’s (2001) research on immigrant transnationalism, and Cordero-Guzman, Smith, and Grosfoguel (2001). 24. In focusing on a multi-site approach to data collection, this study is able to broaden the population of immigrants who were studied. More importantly, the use of multi-site approach enables the research to explore the impact of specific community traits on the transnational identities that these immigrants are creating. Transnational community networks and interconnections among the immigrants are key components in the formation of migrant identities. 25. The multi-sited approach also yielded valuable ethnographic information about respondents’ subjective realities associated with experiences emanating from migration. Understanding migration from the perspectives and lives of the immigrants was a significant aspect of this study. For more importation on the subject of ethnographies and multi-sited research, see Castles (2007), Marcus (1995), Fitzgerald (2006), and Nannerz (2003).

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26. A nonrandom purpose sample of African immigrant rrespondents was selected from British West Midlands towns such as Leicester, Wolverhampton, Dudley, and Solihull near Birmingham in England. 27. Alejandro Portes, among other researchers, suggested the use of transnational communities as the basis for embarking upon research studies in migration. The stress on community is useful because it enables the research to investigate the multiple ways of transnational immigrant representations at various levels of community structure. For the current study, Nolin’s (2006) suggestion that a “social relations” approach be considered is a welcoming proposition. From Nolin’s perspective, using the social relations approach to transnational migration research is equally beneficial because it enables the research to connect the individual migrant to various sites of community and social action processes and interactions. In organizing the focus group sessions, this study is attempting to show the interconnectivity between individual migrants and the larger social structures. 28. See Christopher Pole and Marlene Morrison (2003). Ethnography for Education. Berkshire, England: Open University Press. 29. See Brewer, J. (2000). Ethnography. Buckingham, England: Open University Press. 30. See Wolcott, H. (1995). The Art of Fieldwork. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press. 31. The outcome of organizing the focus group sessions was that it yielded valuable ethnographic narratives which gave context to, and shaped the transnational migratory experiences of the respondents. It permitted the research to study the immigrants as actors who are involved in living out the realities and experiences of what it means to be an immigrant in host societies as well as in the migrants’ countries of origination. 32. See Owusu’s (1998) account of home ownership among African immigrants in Canada. 33. Wellmeier’s (1994) work with South American immigrants in the United States exemplifies the growing significance of how transnational migrants define multiple and new social spaces within the nexus of globalization and economic dispersion to redefine the cultural and social contexts of community life in migratory domains. 34. See Avtar Brah’s (1996) examination of how immigrants construct and negotiate identities in multiple social and cultural domains. 35. See also works by Nolin (2006) and Appadurai (1996) on immigrant community formations within the broader contexts of transnationalism and global economic development and incorporation. 36. See, for example, works by Lieberson and Waters (1988), Model (1993), Farley and Alba (2002), Light and Gold (2000), and Waldinger and Lichter (2003) for detailed discussions and examination of the intersections of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic and community-level traits on immigrant identity formation. 37. Waters (1999) suggests that among some black immigrants, there is a strong objection to being lumped together in the general category of African Americans. Several of these immigrants (she pointed out) prefer to identify with their countries of origination rather than identification with black America.

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38. Rogers (2001) found that regarding Afro-Caribbean identities, the formation of racial and ethnic consciousness is fluid, with immigrants manifesting identities ranging from a strong consciousness about African identities to an ambivalence in perception about racialized categorizations. 39. African immigrant women play an important role in transnational migration. Despite the rising number of African female migrants in the West, migration studies continue to marginalize their identities and issues, often aggregating them with their male counterparts, thus masking issues important to women’s role and place in economic, cultural, and political production of African immigrant identities in international migration. Like their female counterparts from Asia and Latin America, African women are compelled to come to the United States for economic reasons. See Arya and Roy’s (2006) account of the motivations behind the migration of Asian women. 40. A number of studies by Arthur (2009), Arya and Roy (2006), and Dodson (2000) have asserted that scholarly attention is needed to examine the continued feminization of migration and how women immigrants use migration to restructure their lives and seek economic empowerment. 41. See Bryce-LaPorte (1972) and Vickerman (1999). 42. This chapter recognizes that there are significant variances in the conceptualizations of the outcomes of international migration between men and women immigrants. For detailed discussions about the differences between male and female immigrants, see Agrawal (2006), Kelson and DeLaet (1999), Morrison, Schiff, and Sjoblom (2008), Gabaccia and Iacovetta (2002), and Piper and Roces (2003). 43. This question is significant in light of Okafor’s (2003) assertion that media images about domestic or native-born blacks by black immigrants may affect how black immigrants structure their relationships with domestic blacks.

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2 Situating Africa’s Brain Drain in Global Migrations

This chapter examines the social and economic contexts of the international migration of skilled and professional elites from Ghana, Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Liberia to the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The chapter gives content to and accentuates the narratives and discourses that the immigrants form and develop to anchor their places and roles in the global diffusion of skilled workers and professionals. The primary goal of this chapter is to center and position the persistency of the current outmigration of skilled Africans within the broader contexts of the deterioration of the politico-economic and cultural systems prevailing in several parts of Africa.1 The modalities and forms of entry into the global labor markets of the advanced countries are specified. Structural determinants operating in the immigrant-sending nations in Africa and the associated conditions in the immigrant-receiving countries are highlighted. A secondary goal is to provide a sociological sketch of the webs of social identities and cultural landscapes that are imagined or created by the immigrants in their new localities and social fields. Specific government policies to stem the tide of Africa’s brain drain are discussed. Data for this chapter were collected from immigrants employed in professional and occupational categories (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, radiologists, occupational therapists, educators and researchers employed in academic institutions, research scientists, engineers, chemists, lawyers, computer scientists, and accountants).

STRUCTURAL CAUSES OF AFRICA’S BRAIN DRAIN According to Castles (2000:63), the social history of industrialization is the history of international labor migration. The concentration of capital 35

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requires labor migration. After the Second World War and the economic boom that ensued, several of the Western European countries embarked upon liberal migration policies to woo labor from the peripheral and lessdeveloped countries to provide the necessary and cheaper labor needed to maximize industrial manufacturing capacities. Labor from Poland, the Caribbean, North Africa, and Asia thronged to the industrial West seeking employment opportunities in the West. With the exception of a few Africans who were brought from the Caribbean, the West Indies, and from Africa to Great Britain to work as low-skilled labor in British ports, as merchant sailors, in the army, or as servants and domestics, Africans as a group were kept out of the economic and industrial production processes in Europe. The postwar boom also created economic expansion in the colonial and postcolonial states of Africa. Capital investments, transnational capital, and economic expansion from Western Europe and the United States opened up economic opportunities in sectors such as agricultural commodities production and mining. This created work for Africans, setting in place large waves of rural to urban migration, the growth of cities, and improved infrastructures, schools, and hospitals. Light industrial manufacturing sites also developed in regional centers to process raw materials into finished or semi-finished goods for local consumption and for export. The economies of Africa were incorporated (albeit at an unequal level) with those of the West. By the end of the 1960s, nearly all of Africa had become an important destination for capitalist investment and industrial production.2 In the new global systems of economic and industrial production, African labor and migrants are fast becoming a visible aspect of the international movement of labor and skilled workers. The migration of skilled Africans to North America, Europe, and Asia has become a major facet of the new international labor migration and skills transfer among nations. Starting from the middle of the 1980s, the exodus of Africa’s skilled has yet to abate. Highly trained Africans in the arts and sciences are leaving the continent in droves in search of better economic and cultural opportunities and advancements. Often overshadowed by skilled and professional immigrant graduates from India, South Korea, and China (the principal pipeline for the flow of skilled professionals to the West), skilled African postgraduates are making their presence felt all across the world, particularly in the Western countries. The migration of Africa’s skilled and professional class has become the epicenter of national and international discourse about the short- and long-term implications of these epiphenomena on national development. Africa’s graduates have been trained at an exorbitant cost to taxpayers at home. National fiscal support for tertiary institutions has tripled in West Africa, East Africa, and the southern African countries, including South Africa. Massive state subventions to colleges and universities are beginning to show results in terms of the increased number of

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students who are admitted yearly to pursue advanced degrees. In addition, private organizations, including churches from the West, continue to build and open new institutions of higher learning in the region. Technologyenhanced learning capabilities, coupled with the growth and extension of university education by Western-based institutions of higher learning that continue to open satellite campuses in major urban centers of culture and learning abroad, have provided Africans with access to higher education without having to leave home. The degrees awarded to these students will ultimately open doors and opportunities for them in the West to join the ranks of Africa’s well-educated and professional cadre which continues to seek better opportunities abroad. This migration has manifold consequences for both the immigrantsending and -receiving countries. For the sending countries, the perpetual migration and remigration of the skilled in the West deplete the number of skilled professional workers who are sorely needed by their home countries to staff major sectors such as the healthcare, engineering, manufacturing, industrial, and technology sectors of their own economies. Of the immigrantsending nations in Africa, the impact of this exodus is being felt in both the rural and urban areas. The exodus of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other allied health professionals can be seen in the long wait for healthcare services across the entire spectrum of administrative jurisdiction. The exodus of engineers and industrialists continues to stall much needed industrial and manufacturing projects initiated by local governments and international assistance organizations.3 Dubbed as the “saga of the brain drain,” the international migration of Africa’s skilled is part of the global transfer and exchange of well-educated persons. The process is also linked with the international mobility of unskilled workers and labor, typically from the developing and emerging regions of the world to the more affluent countries of the West. Trained and educated at the expense of the hard-earned resources of their governments, the outmigration of the skilled and professional class continues to impact on the delivery of important services such as health and medical care for the region’s burgeoning urban population, as well as the rural areas where healthcare and allied medical infrastructures are yet to be developed fully. Compounding this are problems emanating from the lack of skilled technological experts to direct and supervise the continent’s infrastructural networks for developing and managing efficient roads and transportation systems, the construction of bridges, and much needed skilled personnel to oversee the implementation and staffing of both secondary and tertiary educational institutions across the continent. The migration of the highly skilled continues to stunt economic and industrial growth, and to delay the prospects of sustainable nation building and reconstruction in Africa. It is paradoxical that some of Africa’s best and brightest are living and

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working in the West while their central governments negotiate bilateral and multilateral economic and cultural assistance to assist the continent meet its obligations in key sectors such as healthcare. While the governments of Africa often register their staunch oppositions to the migration of their highly educated and skilled classes, the migrant-receiving countries in the West in particular, by contrast, maintain provisions in their immigration laws to allow the skilled foreign-born to stay. As Castles (2000) pointed out, even the unskilled in the developing countries feel pressured to leave because their governments increasingly have come to rely on the remittances and the capital investments that migrants send to the migrant source of origination. Encouraging mass migration of the unskilled eases employment pressures on fragile regimes. Migration of the unskilled may also be a way to manage political agitations and tensions brought upon by poor standards of living.

INFLUENCES OF EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS ON AFRICA’S BRAIN DRAIN Modeling the influences of internal structural conditions on the migration of Africans to the advanced economies and societies must be rationalized as multidimensional, complex, and varied. Forces operating within and outside of Africa converge to define the temporal and shifting nature of African migrations.4 While a number of scholarships on the subject have modeled explanations of African migrations to the West on structural variables (colonization, worldwide inequalities, globalization, internal economic dislocations, internal displacements, cultural and social fragmentations, rise of the failed nation-states, ecological fragilities and environmental destruction, and demand for skilled and unskilled workers in the West, just to mention a few),5 there is a growing recognition among scholars of African migration that education and cultural literacy are poignant factors in modeling the determinants of African migration. Africans have always placed a premium on education. During the colonial period, stress was placed on the training and education of natives by the colonialists to assume roles in government organizations and institutions. In furtherance of this objective, educational institutions catering to the needs of African societies were set up by the colonial administrators. The postcolonial period saw the expansion of educational infrastructures throughout the continent. For the newly independent countries, providing education for their citizens was identified as a way to raise the standards of living of the people, but also to train young men and women to assume leadership roles in the continent’s march toward economic and cultural development. Access to jobs, high incomes, and a higher standard of living were all structured on the belief that edu-

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cation provides the agency for people to attain social mobility. Education was seen as the best preferred means for lifting the peoples of the continent from economic rut. Today many of the African countries continue to push for cultural systems that are merit-based. With development in the systems of education came complex forms of division of labor and role specializations. Education became the medium by which Africa sought to become part of the global community. It started and implemented educational and cultural programs to link students of the continent to the major sites and regions of global and international education. Later, as more and more Africans assumed roles and responsibilities in the public and private sectors, the need for advanced education began to be felt. Africans were sponsored by their governments to the more advanced countries to pursue higher education in all facets of academic learning. The educated and skilled Africans constitute an important asset to their respective countries. They are some of Africa’s best and brightest. Above all, when they do migrate, they assume risks and uncertainties that otherwise they will not undertake. But with these risks also come benefits emanating from the migratory process. Migration has brought about significant increases in the life chances of these African immigrants. Their incomes have increased relative to what they earned prior to migration. Living and working in the United States enables most of the immigrants to support extended families through regular remittances. Many of the immigrants often contribute to the socioeconomic and cultural development of their hometowns and villages by supporting scholarship programs for students; building roads, bridges, schools, libraries, and recreational centers; and digging wells to provide safe drinking water for poor rural and village communities. Some buy generators to provide much-needed electricity for their hometowns. In a sense, their migration serves as the rising tide that continues to lift up the spirits and lighten the burdens of hundreds of thousands of people, some of whom they know, many of whom they do not know or have no contacts with. This sense of cultural altruism is unparalleled, but not uncommon among immigrant enclave communities worldwide. Africans are carving niches, and defining new occupational and professional identities in transnational migration. Their mobility is no longer limited geographically and spatially by borders. The pace of African crossborder movement is revealing. It shows a continent and a people who are utilizing migration to redefine the nation-states and their borders. Once they have crossed transnational territories, they never abandon home even though they happen to live very far away. Literature on the subject has focused on the stream, volume, composition, and the implications or consequences emanating from the migratory movements of Africa’s skilled and professional class. Research questions have been formulated to address the

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specific economic and noneconomic motivations underpinning the rationalizations African immigrants devise to explain their migration to global labor market centers. Equally complex are the processes involved in shaping international migration from Southern-to-Northern countries. There is not a single independent theoretical paradigm to explain the processes involved in African transnational migrations. It can be surmised that factors operating simultaneously in migrant places of origination (joblessness, poverty, civil unrest, economic stagnation) and points of destination (demand for workers, higher wages, aging population) are only a few of the forces that continue to shape the transfer or exchange of skilled and unskilled labor between peripheral (developing) and core (developed) countries. This process is part of the larger economic and social changes that have spread across the world and thereby promoted waves of geographic and spatial mobility of people to global centers of commerce and economic production. Driven transnationally by the impetus of economic and industrial dispersion, this dynamic process is affecting every corner of the globe. Always yearning for better standards of living and confronting the numbing poverty and deprivations unique to the region, many Africans have come to the realization that it is only through the internationalization of their lives via the agency of migration that they, too, can create better standards of living for themselves and become incorporated into the global economic and cultural systems of production. For many African immigrants entering international labor markets and centers in search of employment opportunities and higher standards of living, the principal mechanism for gaining access is education via the acquisition of educational credentials. For skilled and unskilled Africans alike, international migration has become the vehicle for forging transnational lives in globalized community structures and systems. But not much is known about the processes and contexts whereby Africans join and become part of global trends such as international migration. The forces of globalization and advancements in technology continue to bridge the economic, social, and cultural gaps between Africa and the rest of the world. Previous models explaining migratory trends to the West in general almost completely ignored Africa’s place in the social and cultural changes brought to host societies by immigrants. In North America, emphases on immigrant groups have positioned and documented the role of Western Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Asians, and more recently, Hispanics. In Western Europe, historical and current trends in migration studies have emphasized how waves of immigrants from relatively poorer regions in the East and South flocked to Western European nations in search of better economic opportunities. Citizens from countries once colonized by the Western European powers often went to the metropolitan centers of former colonizers, often seeking greener pastures and better standards of living.

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In the rural regions of Africa where living conditions are often worse than in the urban centers, the flight of the professional class has left many without some of the basic infrastructural services. Declines in food and agricultural production, including crumbling marketing, retailing, and distribution infrastructures has affected family incomes necessitating the imperative to move away from the rural areas of Africa. Due to their already impoverished status and condition, these areas have yet to attract well-educated professionals. Even where they are offered high salaries to draw them to rural centers, these professionals simply use the opportunity to serve for a brief period of time before finding better working conditions in the urban centers or fleeing the country to go abroad. For the immigrantreceiving nations, there is added value to cultural and economic development from having skilled and professional foreign-born immigrants in their labor forces. Immigrants enrich workplace diversity and add to the ethnic and racial composition of their nations. As highly skilled workers, these immigrants pay taxes at state, federal, and local levels and thereby play an important role in supporting economic and cultural development of their host societies. To date, there is no concerted and unified understanding among policy makers and migration theorists as to how developing countries can stem the tide of the loss of their well-educated labor force. Effort to understand the multifaceted nature of the causes and consequences of the “brain drain” for emerging countries have yet to yield definitive findings regarding how the developing countries should approach this contentious issue. While some in the developing countries have recommended the imposition of taxes, surcharges, and the bonding of those citizens educated with taxpayer’s money, few countries actually have an established apparatus to implement such measures.6 Bonded students find ways to obviate the administrative encumbrances associated with the bonding fee that their relatives are required to deposit as surety that they will return home. A recent proposal is the recommendation that the beneficiaries of the brain drain (that is, the immigrantreceiving nations of the West) pay a fee to the immigrant-sending countries to compensate them for the cost of training doctors, nurses, scientists, and engineers who later end up leaving to find work in the West where the terms of employment are relatively better than in Africa.7 The traditional push-pull theories of international migration do not offer a complete explanation of this migratory trend. Several of the African countries, notably Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa, have all embarked upon ambitious measures to boost the salaries and working conditions of their home-trained doctors and other professional graduates. Aimed at the retaining of such professionals, these measures include providing housing, transportation, higher salaries, bonuses, and fringe benefits to entice the highly skilled to stay home and not

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migrate abroad. These measures so far have had limited or no impact at all in stemming the tide of outmigration of Africa’s elite and professional classes. The failures on the part of the central governments of Africa to retain these professionals are not merely a function of working conditions and meager salaries and benefits. Rather, there are systemic and macrostructural factors that hamper the retention of the professional and elite classes. Included in these are social, cultural, political, and economic issues and concerns. Such factors include corruption, the absence of rule of law culture, political cronyism, and lack of infrastructural investments aimed at raising the overall quality of life and standards of living. Better roads, improvements in housing, efficient systems of transportation, enhanced access to improved cultural opportunities (the arts and entertainment) all bring added value and economies of scale to the enhancement of human capital utilization and resource management. Low wages, while a major cause pushing graduates to look for jobs overseas, are not, however, the sole explanation for the decision to migrate. While they may exacerbate the generalized contexts in which people have to live and work, lower wages pale in comparison to the massive structural impediments and oftentimes the climate of political uncertainties and the gradual erosion of democratic-based institutions in many parts of the continent. As an institution, education may create its own subcultural tendencies in terms of the imbibing of certain values and normative adherences that its benefactors acquire during the process and the quest for knowledge and information. Understanding of the value-added benefits of education has yet to be systematically incorporated into formulations of the motivational reasons or factors triggering migration. In emerging nations, one of the benefits of education is that it opens up opportunities and new realities of how we perceive the world, including its challenges, promises, aspirations, and opportunities. For those who seek higher educational credentials, the process connects them to certain ideas and ideals, perhaps affording them fresh vistas and prisms through which to situate or bring meaning to their lives. In significant terms, the process of acquiring education may also redefine old perspectives and frameworks by giving them resonance and actualization in new environments. Alternatively, entrenched beliefs and ways of acting, thinking, and feeling may also be altered in light of new directions gained via education. Education opens up the world of ideas and opportunities for advancement. This is what human capital theorists in migration studies often refer to when they discuss the underlying motivations behind the decision to migrate. According to human capital theorists, migration is viewed as an economic calculation designed to enhance and maximize the full potential of the migrant, particularly using migrants’ educational attainments, skill level, and employability to earn higher wages and thereby improve one’s standard of living.8

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This framework posits that highly skilled workers are going to gravitate to employment and to economic and industrial centers where they stand the chance of securing jobs relatively better than the ones they would have if they had not migrated. Education, a human capital asset, brings high returns to those who are able to look beyond the borders of Africa to practice their vocations. The processes involved in the shaping of Africa’s brain drain are also inexorably tied to the global interdependency in education between developed and developing countries. The developed or advanced countries become sites for the articulation of higher educational objectives by advanced degree-seeking candidates from the developing nations. This interdependency is an appendage of the colonial affiliation and heritage that many of the countries of Africa share with the colonial powers. Following the end of World War II and with the rise of the newly independent nation-states, universities in Britain and France (two European powers that had colonized the bulk of Africa), opened up their institutions of higher learning to train a new cadre of African intellectuals to assume leadership roles in the march toward political self-determination and economic autonomy. Africa’s best and brightest who had shown promise were sponsored en masse to travel abroad to pursue higher education.9 In the United States, the promotion of black civil rights, affirmative action, and the renewed interest in the cultural, political, economic, and, more recently, military affairs have opened up bilateral and multilateral agreements aimed at bringing to full capacity the human and natural potential and prospects of the continent into the global culture. For students from the continent’s Anglophone subgroup who want to pursue advanced degrees, fluency in English becomes a deciding factor. Sharing a common language with the host society facilitates and makes the cultural process of education attainable. For those from the Anglophone areas of the continent, the United States is still an option for those who wish to study at tertiary institutions, including English-speaking Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. Fluency in French also opens the door to pursue cultural attainment goals in both Europe and North America. For these students, the draw is to tertiary institutions located in France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Canada. Irrespective of where they choose to go to pursue advanced degrees, students often come into contact with Western societies where they learn and acquaint themselves with new roles, expectations, and challenges. Some students may return home to Africa to live and work. Upon their return home, these graduates contribute their quota to the economic and cultural development of their respective countries. This reverse flow and repatriation of skill and talent is significant because it affords African countries the opportunities to use their own local citizens to address the many problems they often have to confront. Studies examining how many

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of these returnees stay for protracted periods or permanently are scanty. Anecdotal evidence suggests that even when they return to Africa, these graduates continuously circulate by moving internally within the continent searching for optimal employment and income. The oscillation of skilled labor has the potential to lure these students back to the West or to the countries where they had obtained their degrees, either to live temporarily or permanently. For these skilled professional migrants, the global incorporation of labor and certification of standards has come to mean that degrees obtained in Africa can be transferred anywhere in the advanced economies where salaries and remunerations are higher relative to what one can earn working in Africa. Many of the students from Africa who were sponsored by their home governments to pursue postgraduate education outside Africa have never returned home.10 The prospects of finding gainful employment are enhanced by the credentials acquired in the host societies. Being able to find temporary or permanent employment improves the odds of staying and not returning home to Africa. The educational systems in the immigrantreceiving countries are structured to incorporate practical experiences upon the completion of tertiary education. Many of the African students take advantage of this to hone their skills by acquiring on-the-job training skills. The skills that are acquired position them for entry into employment markets all over the world although the majority of these students prefer to stay, live, and work in the advanced nations. Africa’s loss of skill and talent becomes the gain of the already advanced nations. Africa’s governments and national universities continue to invest scarce resources into providing tertiary education for their citizens only to see students leave upon graduation. This is a net loss in human resources to the African immigrant-sending nations. Considering the direct and indirect cost of replacing these skilled graduates, it goes without saying that the African countries will not be able to recoup their losses. For those students who were granted scholarships and grants to pursue advanced studies, the losses may never be recouped. For students who fund their education by taking out student loans, there is pressure to pay back the loans upon graduation. To meet this challenge, many of these students are going to look beyond Africa, to countries where they can earn better wages and salaries in order to pay back their loans. This means they have to migrate to countries in the West where they expect to capitalize on their skills and educational credentials. African countries cannot compete with labor markets abroad, particularly those in the United States, Britain, and Canada, the preferred destinations of many skilled and professional Africans. For educated Africans with advanced degrees, education serves the manifest function of linking them to global market job centers where their skills and human resources are highly valued. The degrees and credentials

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that students obtain are considered by the recipients to be worth more abroad than in Africa. Many students rationalize that African governments and economies cannot provide them with the jobs, competitive incomes, and fringe benefits that they merit based upon their credentials.11 This is a major catalyst for leaving Africa. For students who are able to conclude tertiary education in Africa, the world is seen as one megastructure of economic opportunities to be tapped. The global linkages that are created for these graduates are immense. They can stay in Africa and apply for jobs all over the world. Using the new technologies facilitated by the Internet, graduates are able to establish connections with institutions of higher learning where they stand the chance of being afforded opportunities to pursue advanced degrees sometimes at little or no cost if they are able to secure research and teaching assistantships, including fellowships and grants that will often waive tuition and provide a livable stipend. Technological diffusion makes it relatively easier for graduates desirous of pursuing advanced degrees to access and navigate admission and curricular issues pertaining to their chosen field of study. Some may even establish correspondence and contacts with specific professors and faculty with similar areas of specialization. Technology and faster modes of communication are the vehicles by which skill transfers and labor exchanges are facilitated. At Internet cafés throughout the continent, young men and women who have ambitions to travel abroad spend hours researching prospective schools and colleges. The forces of modernity (industrialization, increased role specialization, and complex systems of division of labor), including growth in technological dispersions and know-how, continue to transform the social structures of the African nation-states. This, in turn, spurs internal and international migration.12 The nation-states of Africa continue to rely on the advanced countries in the Western hemisphere for postgraduate education. The cost involved in establishing post-graduate programs in Africa, coupled with the lack of comprehensive infrastructures to sustain those programs, have created favorable conditions for Africa’s elite and educated class to look beyond the confines of the continent for post-graduate education. Ghana, South Africa, and Nigeria have all had some success in sustaining post-graduate training programs in the arts and sciences, including doctoral and postdoctoral facilities (these countries are included in the top migrant-exporting countries of Africa). But the capacities for these programs are limited once again by technical, financial, and human resources. Related to this is the inability of private and public employment agencies to absorb graduates into the labor force. As Kwok and Leland (1982) aptly pointed out, some developing countries lack the institutional mechanisms to implement integrated programs to match their skilled and educated population with gainful employment. This means that for some of the graduates coming out of the

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tertiary institutions of higher learning, job placements and opportunities often point them to the West. Once they have been trained, these skilled and highly educated graduates become part of the international educated labor pool whose aspirations and goals lie outside of their respective homelands in the developing countries. The lack of institutional capacity to absorb their home-trained graduates is a major cause of South-to-North migrations. These graduates may identify more with their educated and class counterparts in the West than they do with the general rank-andfile of the African population. Post-graduate credentials create needs and aspirations that are rationalized in global market labor centers where the systems of remuneration are better in terms of wages and compensation in the peripheral, underdeveloped economies of Africa. For the highly skilled graduates from Africa, place utility and the maximization of benefits feature prominently in the calculation to migrate.13 Borjas (1989) captured this broadly when he theorized about the costbenefit of population mobility based upon the need for migrants to utilize their human capital investment to the fullest by moving to destinations where these aspirations have an optimum outcome(s). The competitive nature of the employment sectors in the migrant destination countries are often not seen as structural barriers to employment by prospective skilled African immigrants. Rather, the prospective migrant articulation is that the prospects of earning higher incomes and favorable terms of employment are better in the advanced countries than in the developing countries of Africa. Prospective African immigrants frame the decision to migrate by assessing the anticipated and long-term economic and cultural benefits that may accrue to them if they embark upon the journey abroad.14 This rationalization serves as a primary source of motivation to engage in transnational migration. For many skilled and educated Africans, going abroad to work is considered inevitable if one is to achieve social mobility. International migration therefore becomes the strategy to cope with the low levels of industrial, economic, and social productions in Africa. The migration of the skilled professional classes in Africa cannot be separated from the overall migration currently taking place all over Africa. Irrespective of their educational and class statuses, many Africans yearn for economic and cultural opportunities which cannot be provided by their governments. African dreams are framed in reference to the American dream as many educated Africans (including the uneducated) find their dreams unattainable within their national borders. Stymied economic conditions, continuing poverty, massive unemployment and under-employment, and political instability continue to push many Africans to look beyond the continent for better opportunities. As more and more Africans acquire secondary and tertiary education, many come to see migration as the most viable option if they are to become economically successful. The drive among

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skilled and unskilled Africans alike to engage in international migration is premised on the entrenched cultural expectation that only those who are able to travel and work abroad can cater for the economic needs of their families. As increasing numbers of families come to rely on the remittances that relatives abroad regularly send home, the pressure to migrate is intensified. Migration has created its own sets of values and expectations that can only be fulfilled beyond the borders of the African countries. For both the skilled and unskilled alike, this cultural expectation creates a frenzy to migrate. For the unskilled, the rationalizations are that if they are able to get to the United States, Canada, or Britain legally or illegally, they can obtain work (even if menial) so that they too can support their relatives at home by sending back remittances. These remittances link the immigrants to their families at home, creating domains of trust, shared family responsibilities, and mutual goals. They also broaden the social networks of extended family units in transnational labor and employment sites while shoring up the economic base of the family as a unit of economic production. In essence, remittances connect the African familial household to the global points of migrant destination, thereby assisting in raising the living standards of families. For both skilled and unskilled Africans, the push to leave is always framed in terms of the economic benefits that will accrue to the family as a whole. To this end, it is not uncommon to find families harnessing their resources to support family members who want to embark upon the journey to the West in particular. Family-sponsored migration has become a major dimension in the migration of Africans to the major employment and labor centers of the world. For those Africans without the necessary credentials, opportunities to enter the labor markets of America were plentiful. Some migrated to Mexico to take advantage of the bracero program. This program was put in place by the United States to attract day labor to work in the agribusiness sector, particularly in electoral-rich and high-population states such as Florida, Texas, and California. Though this program was phased out in 1964, it had an unintended consequence by fanning the flames of illegal migration to the agricultural belt states in the southeast and southwest. A similar program embarked upon by the U.S. government, the guest-workers program, also opened the doors for some Africans to enter the country. A direct impact of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was that it allowed agricultural establishments to replenish their stock of guest workers depending upon labor shortages in that sector of the economy. In allowing agro-based establishments to basically import labor from the Southern Hemisphere countries, the U.S. government was, in essence, following what other European countries were also doing, that is, opening the door for agro-business to import and bring labor to the country. Thousands of Africans came in under this provision as well.15

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THE MIGRATION OF AFRICAN DOCTORS AND ALLIED HEALTH PROFESSIONALS TO THE WEST International migration has become a major epiphenomenon in Africa today. The sheer volume and scope of this migration is unprecedented. Africa’s professional and skilled classes are packing their bags and leaving the continent in droves. The current migration of the well-educated is one of the major social and cultural transformations shaping the future of the region. The migration of skilled and educated labor is not confined only to Africans with internationally marketable skills. African and Asian professionals are competing in all areas of professional and skilled jobs in the United States in particular. They are the two groups often encountered at universities with graduate programs. For these two immigrant groups, postgraduate education is seen as career and social-mobility-enhancing as well as a means of attaining legal status in the United States upon the completion of one’s education. For Africans entering the United States, many know how to compete in merit-based systems. While in Africa, many of these immigrants had to endure a rigorous educational system based on the British or French models of education. Space and resources in secondary and tertiary institutions in Africa are very much limited to a few who are able to pass a plethora of competitive national exams for the opportunity to pursue higher education. The lack of access to university and tertiary education has created a fierce competition among student entrants.16 By the time they arrive in the United States or the West in general, these immigrants are already well attuned to the rigors of education. Their credentials mark them as highly privileged considering that the bulk of the African continent, particularly the rural areas, still lags behind the urban centers in terms of the quality and access to education. Even in the cities, there are numerous pockets of poverty and poor economic conditions, and the mission of public education is still provided under very trying and challenging environments (for example, school children attending school in make-shift structures) which most Westerners would find degrading, if not appalling. Yet it is in these conditions that Africans are able to educate themselves and to join the caravan of international migration to the world’s advanced economies. The unskilled have always used migration to forge economic inclusion in order to achieve higher standards of living relative to what they are accustomed to in Africa. This process is one of the major social, structural, postcolonial changes currently occurring in Africa today. As their economic and political conditions deteriorate or worsen, thousands and thousands of Africans have resorted to international migration as a means to fend for themselves and their families. This mass movement of Africa’s skilled population has yet to become an utmost priority consideration for African

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governments. The issues involved in this process, as Ong et al. (1992) rightly stated, are complex, often ranging from how countries embark upon policies to maintain the economic standard of living of their population, to countries asserting the need to protect their national sovereignty and security rights. For African governments, available data documenting the size, composition, and directional flows of workers to global employment centers are unavailable, or where available, are fraught with errors. The need for each country to collect and maintain a centralized database on migration is of immense significance in the formulation of programs and policies to confront the tide of the brain drain. One of the sectors of African society hardest hit by the brain drain of skilled and professional workers is the medical and allied healthcare service. At the cusp of political independence, several of the African countries, particularly Ghana and Nigeria, launched ambitious programs to train personnel for the health and medical sector. Nurses training colleges were established in the large urban, administrative, and regional centers to train a new cadre of nurses and healthcare professionals to staff the new polyclinics and medical posts, and to cater for the growing health needs of their populations. Students were also sponsored to travel abroad to study and train in every aspect of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and other allied areas of health. The ambitious nature of this manpower training scheme was intended to provide the nation-states of Africa with the human resources to staff vital social and economic institutions. The African leaders recognized that one of the pathways to development was to ensure that their citizens are well trained, particularly in the sciences. The imperative to harness human resources led to the formulation of policies to sponsor some of their citizens to travel abroad to pursue advanced education. This was a major preoccupation of the postcolonial African governments. By all accounts, the investments have had limited success in providing the majority of the African countries with the required skilled and professional workers they need to launch an effective and sustained economic leap toward self-sufficiency and productive capacity. The majority of Africans arriving in the United States come not knowing what kinds of employment prospects they will be facing. The first step in the adjustment process for African immigrants is to undergo further education (postgraduate education for most) in their respective fields of specialization. Preferred fields of study are carefully chosen by the immigrants to ensure employment marketability upon the completion of their studies. Business, computer science, engineering, nursing, medicine, teaching, law, accountancy, and industrial and health technologies are the preferred fields of study. A majority (82 percent) of Africans who go to the United States arrive with student visas. As such, their first contact with America is through the educational system. Upon graduation and completion of their studies, over 90

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percent of the Africans will engage in some form of practical training to gain experience in their fields of study. The period of practical training following graduation can last for a year or longer. However, some of the graduates find employers who will sponsor them for permanent residence status. This is the proven pathway for educated Africans to legalize their status and later apply for naturalization status in the United States. The acculturation process among the African immigrants is facilitated by intricate and elaborate systems and networks offering support for immigrants to adjust to life in their new country. For those Africans who enter Canada and Britain to pursue advanced education, employment laws allow for foreign students to work for designated periods following their graduation. Depending on the qualifications and skills level of the students, there are favorable immigration laws in both countries to permit these foreign-born students gain legal residences. For the developed countries, this is one of several cultural and legal programs put in place to draw skilled personnel from all over the world irrespective of places of birth. This form of incorporation and entry into global spheres of employment continues to serve African immigrants well in the Western advanced nations. For the immigrant-sending countries of Africa, this is a serious form of human resource depletion.17

CIRCULATION OF ELITES: PROFILES OF AFRICAN IMMIGRANT DOCTORS AND ALLIED HEALTHCARE WORKERS Castles (2000:80–92) identified a number of reasons responsible for the migration of skilled and unskilled immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Latin America to the epicenters of Western European and American economic and cultural production systems. Among these reasons are: the growing disparities in economic, social, and demographic conditions between Southern and Northern (and Eastern and Western) countries; increased links between less-developed and developed countries through trade, aid, foreign capital investments, and the continuing interdependence between migrant-sending and -receiving countries. The rapid growth of megacities and overurbanization; including poor to nonexistent opportunities for housing; inefficient infrastructural services; bleak employment prospects for graduates; global dispersion of mass media technologies; the restructuring of the world’s economies; growth in the formal and informal sectors (with high demands for skilled and unskilled labor, particularly in the advanced countries); and the increased differentiation of labor by age, gender, class, and occupational distinctions are related factors as well. As indicated in the previous chapter, the migration of Africans to the West must be explained within the nexus of the intersections of internal factors operating in Africa (example, poverty) as well as external factors dictated principally by the economic needs of the

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advanced countries (skilled labor shortages, aging population, pressures to maintain global competitive edge in science and technology, motivation on the part of businesses to enhance profitability by cutting back on expensive cost of labor which creates the need for a cheaper work force).18 The above factors combine to structure the discussion of African elite migration and circulation in the major employment centers of the world. Of the 115 African immigrant doctors and allied medical personnel who were surveyed, 87 percent had left Africa within the last fifteen years to come to the United States. Of the 87 percent who entered the country within the past decade and half, 40 percent had lived and worked outside of Africa prior to their migration. Saudi Arabia, Britain, Canada, and the former Soviet Republics in Eastern Europe were the preferred destinations. Within Africa, there were significant intra-regional and cross-border migrations among the doctors and allied healthcare professionals.19 A third of the respondents had practiced medicine and healthcare upon the completion of their coursework in countries other than their places of birth within Africa prior to leaving to go to the United States. Among nurses and health technicians, preferred destinations within Africa were Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Zambia, Uganda, Libya, Swaziland, Lesotho, and Botswana.20 The average length of stay in a foreign country was six years. The circulation of the medical doctors and allied healthcare practitioners was based on placespecific attributes of the countries of intended destination. When African medical and healthcare personnel move within Africa, the migration is largely influenced by language proficiency, salary and related working conditions, and general living conditions at the intended place of migration. Healthcare personnel in the Anglophone colonies migrate within the former British colonial countries while the Francophone trained doctors and health practitioners circulated within the former French-speaking colonies. Only 5 percent of the doctors and other healthcare professionals had lived in a different country where they did not speak the national or the official language of business. The opportunity to earn higher salary with fringe benefits was cited by 87 percent of the healthcare personnel as the motivation for moving. Sixty-five percent had cited fringe benefits, housing, transportation, and access to quality education for their children as the primary motivations for moving. Living conditions and standards of living at the intended country of destination was cited by nearly 92 percent of the medical personnel as a determinant for leaving to work in another African country. Access to cultural and educational facilities, including public perception of foreign-born workers and immigration policies, were all related to choices of destination countries. A notable feature among some of the healthcare professionals is chain or stepwise migration. Nearly 40 percent had engaged in international migration twice before migrating to the United States, Canada, and Brit-

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ain. Another 38 percent had migrated three or more times before settling in the West. The primary reasons given for this transnational migration were to secure work experience, to save money, and to hone professional skills before undertaking the journey to the West. A common practice among medical doctors is to apply for occupational work experience with hospital and clinics in the United States, Canada, and Britain in order to acquire more practical experience and undertake refresher courses. Of those who had entered Britain and Canada, nearly two-thirds had migrated to the United States. Working conditions, salaries, fringe benefits, and opportunities for advancement were identified as the main reasons for leaving Canada or Britain to go the United States. The presence of family and kin members was also a significant factor predicting migration to the United States. Of the 65 percent who reported having relatives in the United States, nearly 82 percent had migrated from Canada and Britain to join their relatives in America. Many enter the United States under H-1B visa provisions. The H-1B visa provision was set up by Congress to allow foreign-born students in the country gain practical work experience, if their services are needed by American employers. African medical personnel entering the United Kingdom do so under that country’s skilled and professional immigrant category. Those in specialty occupations (nursing, computer science, law, medicine, architecture, pharmacy, business administration, social sciences) and skilled professions who have attained advanced degrees are typically given preference for the H-1B visa. The foreign-born worker can petition the employing organization to petition for a permanent resident or green card for him or her if the organization wants their services after the expiration of the H-1B visa. For those African-trained medical and healthcare professionals who enter on the H-1B visa, 92 percent will change their status to permanent residency and 40 percent eventually become American citizens after a waiting period of five years. Of the 80 percent of health sector professionals who indicated that they are married, nearly all have sponsored their immediate family members in Africa to reunite with them in the United States. The prevalence and extent of international migration among Africa’s medical and healthcare professionals is revealed in the responses the study participants gave to the survey item question, “Do you know of any associates and classmates you went to medical, pharmacy, or nursing school with who are currently not living and working in Africa?” Nearly 70 percent of the doctors indicated that two-thirds of those who graduated with them have left Africa and are currently working abroad, particularly in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai. The average number of years these doctors spent working in Africa following the completion of their studies, and before migrating, was five years.

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Another 15 percent stated that their colleagues from medical school are practicing medicine in former Soviet Republic countries. Similar findings were reported among the pharmacists and nurses. Among the pharmacists, 74 percent indicated that nearly 67 percent of their graduating cohorts have left Africa and are working abroad. Among the nursing respondents, 90 percent indicated that about 80 percent of their peers from nursing college have left Africa. Among the pharmacists and nurses, the average number of years served prior to migration was seven. Among the radiologists in the study, 95 percent reported that their cohorts from college have migrated and are living and working elsewhere other than in Africa. The average number of years worked before embarking upon migration to the West is three years, the shortest among all the medical and healthcare immigrant professionals surveyed. Of the total number of medical artists and illustrators in the sample, 97 percent reported that their graduating cohorts have all left Africa after working there for less than four years following their graduation. For all groups of medical and healthcare personnel, 95 percent indicated that they left Africa after they had completed paying their educational loans or serving out the full term(s) of their bonds for those who were required to work for the government or bonding agencies for pre-determined lengths of time. The political perspectives of the immigrants pre-migration were noted as a salient factor behind the motivation to migrate. Nearly 93 percent of the professionals decried the climate of instability, political uncertainties, and the generalized atmosphere of African politics as a major reason to leave. A principal factor causing Africans to migrate abroad, Africa’s political culture and institutions have become focal points for violent confrontations and civil unrests often resulting in ethnic and intra-regional violence and population displacements. The continued erosion of political institutions and the lack of democratic governing structures means that the resources that otherwise would be earmarked for economic development are often channeled to support and wage inter- and intra-ethnic wars and conflicts. These uncertainties create a climate wherein there is trepidation about what the future holds. Such conflicts are usually accompanied by violations of human rights committed against opposition members by government supporters. For those who have the resources, leaving to live abroad is the preferred option. “We had to flee to Ghana during the Liberian crises. Many of the nurses fled to South Africa to seek temporary sojourn in the hope of returning. But the conflict persisted for too long. Eventually, some of them found their way to the United States and Britain. This was Africa’s loss,” one Liberian doctor stated. The impact of this crisis compelled many Liberian medical and healthcare professionals to leave the country. According to this immigrant, “It may take the country more than ten years to train doctors and nurses to replace those

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who had left the country.” The majority of the medical personnel (87 percent) perceive that their standards of living are relatively better than those of the majority of Africans, who are uneducated and often have to eke out an existence on paltry wages of less than three dollars a day. Though both skilled and unskilled Africans alike are fleeing in droves, international migration among Africa’s elite and professional classes are often planned with pre-determined objective expectations about what to anticipate upon arrival. Although both groups are driven to seek global incorporation via migration, the channels and processes of international migration are not the same for the two groups. For those with poor educational credentials, the migratory process is often characterized by frequent unemployment, difficulties obtaining work permits and legal authorization to work, low pay, labor-related abuses, and staying ahead of immigration enforcement. These groups of African migrants are less likely than the educated class of immigrant professionals to travel home on a yearly basis due to the high costs involved. For those without postsecondary credentials, status incorporation into the host society is usually weak and the prospects of obtaining citizenship slim. Their adaptation and adjustment is facilitated by the transnational networks and the numerous immigrant associations that African immigrants establish to cater to their economic, psychological, and social needs. Transnationalism has become a way of life for the professional and skilled African immigrants. Their ability to move to and fro between the host and home countries is facilitated by their frequent ownership of homes in multiple locations. A growing trend among the professional class is to pursue entrepreneurial activities in their respective home societies. About 20 percent of the study participants have established business ventures that are managed by relatives. It is not uncommon for African pharmacists domiciled in the West to own and operate a general purpose pharmacy in an urban center of Africa. Privately funded clinics owned by African doctors practicing medicine abroad have proliferated in urban Africa. Some of these clinics operate as nonprofit establishments using medical supplies donated by charitable and hospital organizations in the West. A Nigerian doctor who participated in the study has established a nonprofit clinic in his village hometown where he provides the only access to rural healthcare for people who otherwise would have to travel to the nearest urban center located eighty miles away. Operated as a nongovernmental organization (NGO), this rural clinic brings medical and health specialists in the summer months who volunteer their services at this rural health post providing basic healthcare for the village. Some of the African doctors (52 percent) organize and support medical relief and assistance programs for various communities in Africa as their contribution to the health needs of the region. A third of the respondents are in the process of working with private

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organizations in the United States, Britain, and Canada to establish free clinics and mobile medical services to remote and underserved districts where medical facilities are lacking. For the professional class of migrants, access to information about international migration is readily available. These professionals are more likely than their nonprofessional counterparts to establish professional networks within which information about job prospects in the West are disseminated. Unlike the unskilled, the professionals are less likely to encounter difficulties applying for and securing travel documents. Their potential contributions to the host societies can be readily ascertained by visa and consular officers on the basis of their educational credentials. They also stand a lesser chance of becoming a public charge or economic burden on the host society’s welfare system since their educational credentials predispose them to favorable employment, even if it means they have to have their qualifications re-certified or verified. When they are able to secure employment, they are often provided with fringe benefits, a rarity for immigrants who only have secondary educational credentials. This group of African émigrés also tends to move freely within the advanced industrial economies, sometimes for professional or work-related visits and sometimes to work elsewhere for a brief period of time. While abroad, they may stay with fellow schoolmates who have also migrated abroad. Their lifestyles tend to reflect a transnational identity where they move back and forth between their host society and other countries, including home, often using the bonds and networks that they have established in school and at their work sites to cross international borders. Most of them do not shed their home country or ethnic identities. Rather, these identities are reconfigured and given new meanings in transnational spaces and contexts by merging old identities with the new ones they establish abroad. The pre-migration statuses of these professionals included in the study positions them to take advantage of economic and cultural opportunities outside of Africa. The degrees and diplomas they earn at tertiary institutions in Africa puts them at the top of the educated class hierarchy in Africa. These degrees open opportunities for most of them to become incorporated into the global marketplace. Despite having been educated by their home governments, these graduates do not have any obligation to remain in Africa except where they are required to undergo national service programs whereby they work for government and public organizations for one year to offset the cost of their education. By all accounts, though many of these immigrants came from poor family backgrounds, their educational credentials enhance the prospects for forming new aspirations which can only be fulfilled through international migration. Nearly 70 percent of the doctors and allied healthcare professionals surveyed perceived that their skills were being underutilized prior to their migration. More than one half had intended to stay and work

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permanently in Africa, but this proved impossible due to the constraints imposed on them by the fact that while the need for access to healthcare is enormous, the resources earmarked by African central governments are woeful. This, as many of the professionals indicated, meant that they were not able to carry out their professional responsibilities to their fullest potential. For many, this may create the impetus to leave. The economic, social, and cultural strains and stresses caused by underdevelopment and poverty make it difficult for professionals to live out their career aspirations. This was the case among those medical personnel who were assigned for service in the urban and rural areas of Africa by their home governments. Uneven distribution of economic and cultural development infrastructures was cited as a common concern by those professionals who were assigned to work at government-funded hospitals and clinics. In a social and cultural environment that is characterized by lack of basic amenities such as water, electricity, schools, and communication facilities, many professionals feel compelled to look outside Africa for better conditions of service and higher salaries. “Most of the doctors, nurses, and pharmacists working at the clinic were all living from hand to mouth,” one Ghanaian doctor stated. “The terms of employment for the rural-based doctors, their urban counterparts included, were appalling,” a Nigerian doctor confirmed. “I left because of poor working conditions, including the fact that sometimes we were not paid on schedule by the government. We always had to scramble for basic medical and health supplies. The work environment was not good. Most of the staff left and went abroad,” another Nigerian doctor indicated. Referring to the structural and bureaucratic hurdles encountered by African professionals in their day-to-day tasks, an Ivorian radiologist stressed that “African governments want you to work for almost nothing. Even when it comes time for them to pay your salary, they tell you there is no money and that you have to wait. We had to stage strikes and go on public demonstrations almost every six weeks or so to agitate for our duly earned pay. This is often not good for worker morale.” In recounting the reasons why he and other professional radiologists left the Ivory Coast, this immigrant radiologist attributed the causes of the brain drain to the ineptitude and mismanagement of resources by African governments. He further attested that “all the radiologists who once worked with me have now left the Ivory Coast. I am not surprised that many of them have left the country. Several of them went to France and Canada where they are doing very well. Most of them have built beautiful homes in Abidjan so that they can have their own places to stay when they go home on vacations and holidays. If they had stayed in the Ivory Coast, none of them would have been able to accomplish this feat.” The doctors and allied health professionals attributed their migration to the United States and Britain to a number of causes. First was the problem

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of a poor healthcare infrastructure (inefficient hospitals and clinics, poor and nonexistent equipment, inadequate supplies, and poor management and supervision). This was mentioned by 80 percent of the study participants. Another 75 percent cited problems with low pay, poor housing, inadequate transportation, bureaucratic ineptness, and the lack of a coordinated approach in the delivery of healthcare services as the primary motivation for leaving. The lack of public investment in the healthcare sector was referenced by nearly 67 percent of the immigrant professionals as a reason for leaving. The lack of adequate infrastructural investment in the healthcare sector is compounded by “the poor oversight, waste, outright thievery, and lack of accountability,” according to a Senegalese immigrant now working in Toronto, Canada. “Foreign aid, grants, and loans received from the West are directed to clinics and hospitals located in districts represented by politicians who want to gain patronage and favor with the electorate. Equipments meant for public hospitals are diverted to the private clinics patronized by the upper class and powerful government officials,” the Senegalese concluded. Doctors and allied healthcare workers who were stationed in rural and remote areas away from regional and urban centers reported the most work-related frustrations as the main cause for leaving. Some mentioned the lack of pipe-borne water, electricity, adequate schools for their children, and epidemiological issues (poor sanitation, unsafe working conditions, and problems with malaria) as the prime reasons for departing. For example, a third of the doctors and allied healthcare specialists noted that the housing provided for them by the government as part of the conditions of employment did not have regular supplies of electricity and water. A similar number indicated that they had no means of communication with professional peers because telephone lines connecting their homes with urban centers had broken down and in some cases, repairs had taken years, with some yet to be repaired. In general, these professionals are reflecting widespread problems related to the low levels of social, economic, and cultural development in most African countries. The perception was that while their education had prepared them to become middle- if not upper-class citizens at home in Africa, most of them continue to work in conditions characterized by deprivations, poverty, and social miseries. Two-thirds of the professional immigrants indicated that the decision to leave Africa and come to the West was a difficult one, and often a source of consternation and ambivalence. The ambivalence was attributed to the perception held by the healthcare professionals that their services were much needed in Africa to offer healthcare to the masses. However, the socioeconomic and cultural environment made it difficult to practice medicine and provide healthcare. Failure of governments to provide a robust plan to resuscitate the failing economies of the countries of Africa was cited as the primary

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motivation to leave. There is a scarcity of everything. Social and cultural life is stymied by the economic rut confronting many of the countries. Unable to meet the basic needs of its people, Africa’s elites and educated classes have resorted to international migration to alleviate the grinding poverty commonplace in the region. The focus group sessions with the African immigrant doctors and related healthcare professionals provided in-depth information about how the convergence of education and globalization has created conditions that have become conducive and attractive for African-trained professionals to migrate to the West. For the African doctors and related healthcare professionals, the results of the survey revealed that nearly 76 percent of them had been trained at home in Africa prior to their migration. Of the remaining 24 percent, their medical training started at medical institutions in their home countries but was completed abroad. The inability of their central governments to provide employment for college and university graduates aggravates the problem, providing the impetus for unemployed graduates to migrate. Throughout Africa, the proliferation of tertiary institutions of learning has not been matched by an increase in public- and private-sector employment for graduates. This has resulted in graduate under-employment and under-utilization of professional skills. For many graduates with training in medicine and health-related credentials, the government sector is the primary employer. Availability of civil service jobs has not kept pace with the number of graduates leaving the tertiary institutions every year. The pressure on the part of the government to provide jobs for healthcare graduates has been so severe that it has created an unintended problem of duplication and redundancy. Graduates are assigned for civil service employment with hospitals and clinics whether their services are needed or not. Furthermore, these assignments are often made without any deliberate consideration given to capacity, infrastructural resources, and effective outcomes. This has heightened the problem of redundancy and underemployment. Many of the graduates may spend years working in underpaid positions. The frustration compels most to contemplate going abroad to look for better compensated work. Often, these professionals encounter little difficulties applying for a visa to visit or attend conferences in the West. While abroad, they network and make contacts with medical establishments and teaching hospitals to establish an affiliation. This is usually the first step toward finding a job in the West. Nearly 40 percent of the medical personnel who were studied had come to the United States on a visitor’s visa and overstayed. Switching from a visitor to an H-1B visa was relatively easy for medical professionals. Many of the African medical personnel are able to find hospitals and clinics that are located in underserved, mainly nonmetropolitan communities which are in need of medical officers and

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other healthcare specialists. Once they are able to find temporary employment with these hospitals and clinics, their employees often proceed with the immigration papers to enable them to stay permanently in the country. Another track followed by a third of the African-trained doctors, nurses, and healthcare specialists to enter the United States or Britain is to apply for a leave of absence from employers at home in order to pursue specialist training in the West. Often, these refresher courses and trainings are held at teaching hospitals and clinics. Upon completion of their studies or training, these professionals frequently end up staying for practical experiences, which is a legally recognized aspect of American and British immigration laws. After the practical or refresher course training, the medical and healthcare students often stay by applying for an H-1B visa. For the next six years, these professionals can work legally in the United States, are able to go home for visits, and are allowed to sponsor their relatives to join them. Some of the professionals surveyed had searched for jobs in the United States and Britain directly from Africa. This process can be tedious and cumbersome for those who opt to follow this track of finding employment in the West. More often than not, these professionals are able to rely on and use information provided to them by friends, professional associates, and family members. The search for employment in the medical and healthrelated fields is facilitated by the Internet and faster means of communication. Information about job prospects abroad is often posted on bulletin boards at clinics and hospitals in Africa by recruiters who are located in the West. Nearly 10 percent of the medical and health professionals in the study were able to find employment prior to their departure from Africa using the services of recruiters. That the vast majority of these jobs were temporary did not dissuade these workers from applying because of the belief that half-time pay in the West is more than two years’ pay working in Africa. For these professionals, the opportunity to obtain work in the West is also rationalized as a future boost for the education of their children and spouse, if any. The migration will facilitate better cultural opportunities for children. For the spouse, this means the prospects of obtaining better employment and working conditions. The added value that the opportunity to migrate and live and work in the West brings to the migrant’s household is enormous. Extended family members may even encourage well-educated siblings to leave Africa and go abroad. Their opportunity to go live and work in the United States (or the West) also means that in the future, other family members can be sponsored to move abroad. Family-based migrations are the predominant form of African incorporation into global structures. In households where migration is considered a dominant activity for achieving economic success, family members may contribute resources to ensure that selected family members with the requisite skills are enabled to travel abroad. The more

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family members working abroad, the better the relative economic status of the family at home compared to families that do not have members living and working abroad. Money is often remitted home to supplement family incomes. Remittances may also be directed toward meeting the family’s financial obligations, including paying the school fees of children of schoolgoing age, supporting elderly parents and grandparents, or even setting up a cottage business to provide employment for other family members. Remittances may also be used in buying land or building a home, or be set aside as savings. Migration abroad is therefore a strategy utilized by family members to optimize their economic status while making it possible for other family members to migrate in the future. It is also conceived as a rational income-maximizing agency for connecting to global labor market sites and establishing a transnational migrant relationship with multiple advanced and underdeveloped societies simultaneously. Many in Africa see this as the most viable approach for achieving economic mobility and improving their lives. Once they have settled abroad, the Africans are going to utilize complex and intricate systems of networks based on kinship, ethnicity, clan, or place of national origination to share information between the host and home societies and at the same time to foster bonds of cooperation among themselves. These networks may be the conduit for securing working papers, employment, and support for coping with the alienating effects of migration to America and to the West in general.21 More importantly, these familial and nonfamilial transnational migrant and household networks mediate between individuals, groups, and the broader processes of international migration as well as the global economy. The African-trained medical and healthcare professional immigrants in the study do not feel pressured to employ their job skills in a foreign and culturally different setting away from home. Several indicated that the quality of their training and competence level prepared them for work abroad. The opportunities offered to work in well-equipped hospitals and clinics featured prominently in the mindset of the immigrants. Equally significant for the immigrant professionals are the understanding and expectation that they will be well compensated in the West and that their future employment prospects will be evaluated mainly according to their merit rather than subjective criteria which had characterized their employment in Africa’s civil service or health sector. Despite their relatively higher incomes, nearly onehalf of the immigrant professionals (47 percent) indicated that they intend to repatriate back home when economic and political conditions improve. Nostalgic feelings about home are common among the medical doctors. All of them still do identify with Africa and anticipate that sooner rather than later they can return home to work. This explains the reason why many of the medical and healthcare professionals continue to maintain strong cultural and economic links with their respective home societies. The pri-

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mary reason given for repatriation is to set up a private medical practice. This finding holds only for the medical doctors and the pharmacists interviewed. Over 70 percent of the nurses and other paramedical workers in the sample indicated that they have no such intentions to repatriate. Irrespective of their repatriation plans, the majority of the respondents affirmed that efforts must be made by the central governments of Africa to create and put in place the necessary infrastructural services to woo back their medical and healthcare professional personnel who are currently working abroad. There was unanimity among the study participants that the pressing economic and political problems facing the continent are aggravated by the lack of political and civil culture, including the lack of institutions to nurture the rule of law and accountability. But by far, the most consternation on the part of the immigrants is about the waste and mismanagement of Africa’s resources and the persisting or entrenched corruption. There was near unanimity (96 percent) among the survey participants that “Africans have not been served well by their governments.” Nearly 98 percent of the healthcare personnel indicated that continued conflicts, civil wars, political corruption, and lack of rule of law and institutions to sustain and promote democratic principles and ideals has stymied Africa’s potential resulting in the vast majority of citizens living under conditions that are economically and politically oppressive and unsustainable.

AGE, GENDER, AND OCCUPATIONAL COMPOSITION OF AFRICA’S BRAIN DRAIN The age composition of Africa’s population shows a continent that has a relatively young population. With a current estimated population of over 700 million growing at an annual rate of between 2 to 3 percent per annum, Africa has the highest birth rates in any of the developing regions of the world. Over 55 percent of the population is under 30 years old. The youth momentum built into the African population is a function of high fertility rates, including large family sizes, and declining infant mortality rates. Declines in infant mortality rates have yet to be translated into the need for families to have fewer children. Norms and customs regulating fertility behavior tend to be pro-natal, with a large family size considered culturally desirable as children are incorporated into the systems of economic and cultural production (particularly in rural agricultural communities and in a growing number of cases, in the urban production systems where children assist relatives with hawking, marketing, and trading activities). By its own estimation, the African Union (AU) projects that the population of the region will reach 1.5 billion by 2025. The United Nations (UN) population division projects the continent’s population will reach one billion within

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the next twenty years. This population growth will have to be matched by a vigorous increase in infrastructural developments, particularly in the areas of housing, education, healthcare, energy, and food, if standards of living are to be increased. The failure of the governments of Africa to implement an aggressive agenda aimed at solving the myriad economic and political problems may mean that Africans will continue to look beyond Africa for economic advancement. This may potentially stall the future economic development of the region. Census, immigration, and field survey data allow in-depth examination of the age and gender structure and composition of Africa’s immigrant skilled and professional class. The impact of the brain drain is revealed, in part, by examining trends in the age composition of Africa’s skilled immigrants. African immigrants enter the arena of international migration when most of them are in the prime of their occupational and/or educational careers. Reviewing the age data for the first tier immigrant-sending countries (Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Senegal, Cape Verde, and Kenya) revealed that over 87 percent of Africa’s skilled migrants who entered the United States are between 25 and 50 years old, with an average migrant age of 35 years old. Of the age group 25 to 34 years old, 74 percent had completed baccalaureate degrees. Only 15 percent had completed postgraduate education at the time of their migration to the United States. Similar results can be gleaned from the official immigration data of African immigrants legally admitted to Britain, Canada, Australia, and the United States. Nearly 80 percent (78.8 percent) of skilled African immigrants in the 35 to 45 age category had left the continent, dwindling to 57 percent for the skilled immigrants who left Africa when they were 46 years old and above. Official immigration data on African migrations to the West reveals that most of them leave before the age of 30, indicating that they stay in Africa to work briefly following the completion of their baccalaureate training before embarking upon the journey to the United States and other Western destinations. At age 50 and beyond, the African immigrant stock of new arrivals to the West dwindles considerably except among the growing number of parents who enter the United States to join their children who have acquired naturalization. This age group of African immigrants consists of mainly senior civil servants, educators, scientists, government officials, senior military personnel, and private entrepreneurs who migrate to the West after acquiring considerable public and private sector employment experience. Unlike their relatively younger cohorts who are 35 years old, this group of skilled and professional immigrants tends to emigrate with their immediate family, including at times children of school age. Among this group, traveling to the United States in particular was not their first contact with the West. In their various professional roles, many had opportunities to travel to the West to attend refresher courses to hone their skills,

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to participate in trade and cultural talks, and to represent their respective countries at international bilateral and multilateral seminars and symposia. In their official and unofficial employment in certain sectors of Africa’s economy and cultural societies, these well-educated professionals come into contact with a broad segment of African society which provides them with the necessary contacts and opportunities to launch their own migratory journeys which rely on a vast network of families and associates who have already settled in the West. Of the retired healthcare professionals (forming 3 percent of the survey respondents), 60 percent had worked in six different countries, excluding the United States. This class of immigrant healthcare professionals tends to carry out medical contract work for short durations (average six weeks) mainly in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Yemen) and selected African countries (South Africa, Ghana, Botswana, and Tanzania). Of those who had retired and are residing in the United States, 15 percent are currently working with nonprofit medical and health organizations in Latin America and Africa. Two percent of the retired healthcare professionals volunteer with medical and healthcare organizations with headquarters in the United States and Canada to provide shipments of medical supplies to designated African countries. Significant shifts have occurred in the gendering of African migrations to the West and other global centers of economic activities. According to official (census, immigration) and unofficial (survey and focus group) data, African women are making significant gains in international migration. To date, the pace of African migration continues to favor males although the gap is closing rapidly. African immigrant men comprise 52 percent of all African South-to-North migration. With respect to South-to-South migrations, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that the gender differences or gaps in migration have reached parity and in some cases, African women have surpassed their male counterparts, in particular when it comes to intraAfrican migrations for the sole purpose of engaging in commercial trading at market centers. Like their male counterparts, the African immigrant professional and skilled women who are entering the United States and the West in general tend to be young (the average age is 32). A majority of Africa’s skilled and well-educated immigrant classes tends to migrate shortly after completing tertiary education in the arts and sciences, including medicine, pharmacy, agriculture, business, law, and nursing. The survey and focus group data revealed that the majority (65 percent) of the African skilled and educated immigrant women entered the United States when they were between 25 and 45 years old. The average number of years they worked in Africa before embarking upon international migration is five years following graduation from tertiary educational institutions. For African governments, this means that they are not able to gain much

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from the investments they have made in providing high-quality education for their citizens who attend their universities as many of the graduates are going to leave the continent eventually to search for jobs abroad. This constitutes a drain on the human and fiscal resources of the nation-states. This drain may be felt in the lack of expertise to staff vital sectors such as healthcare, engineering, and computer sciences. As these graduates continue to leave, the African nations have no choice but to rely on foreign expatriates to serve in various capacities, including healthcare, medicine, and engineering. Rural hospitals, clinics, and schools meanwhile, are often unable to attract skilled personnel to provide services for the people, thus aggravating already precarious economic and social living conditions. Nearly 80 percent (78.8 percent) of these women entered the United States on their own. Only 10 percent came into the country to reunite with male partners or relatives. The remaining 10 percent came as refugees. Data from Statistics Canada and the British Home Office on African immigrants in Canada and Britain suggests that over one half (52 percent) of African émigré women entered primarily for postgraduate education. The majority of the women legally coming into these countries (55 percent) pursue nursing, medicine, pharmacy, business, and engineering, with only 20 percent pursuing advanced studies in the creative arts and the humanities. But by far, the majority of these women prefer to work in medicine and related healthcare fields and business professions. Included in the cadre of African immigrant women who are currently working in the United States are semi-professional and equally well-educated female workers. These include social workers, gerontologists, licensed home-nursing assistants, homecare specialists, and elderly institutional day-care specialists. Some of these women have been educated in Western Europe, Canada, and Australia. A few (such as the social workers) have been trained in Africa. For this group of professional and semi-professional immigrant women, the motivation for coming to the United States to work includes better employment conditions in terms of higher salaries and wages, the availability of jobs, and the favorable visa regulations allowing foreign-born persons whose skills are needed to apply for legal residence if they are sponsored by an employer. In the case of the licensed home-nursing practitioners, some had been recruited while living in Africa. The ranks of these immigrants include women principally from Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, as well as Kenya. Their entry into these subfields of employment has been facilitated by their fluency in English and strong British-influenced educational credentials. African women have joined the caravan of skilled and educated Africans who are seeking greener pastures in the West. For centuries, African women have engaged in circulatory movements, often crossing national and international barriers to pursue economic activities to maximize their

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earnings and raise their living standards, to educate themselves, and to reunite with family members. For African women, migration is the way to connect to the broader economic forces brought upon by global dispersion of capital and investments. It is also a way to tap into the reservoir of foreign exchange earnings which migrants earn overseas and remit home. For those African women with the prerequisite skills, education, and professional training, the solution to poverty and economic malaise is to seek greener pastures elsewhere, preferably in the West. Though the literature on African migration to the West suggests that the stream of migrants is predominantly male, African women in particular and women from the developing countries in general continue to bridge the gender gap in international migration.22 Increased access to information flows and exchanges between immigrant-sending and -receiving destinations, increased schooling for girls, and the growth in women-specific jobs in the industrialized countries are among a few of the reasons for the rise in the cross-border migrations of African women. For many of Africa’s women, opportunities to compete shoulder-toshoulder with their male counterparts in all aspects of education did not become a reality until the advent of mass primary and secondary school education. The goal was to produce a literate population that would provide an abundant supply of skilled and semi-skilled workers for both the public and private sectors. Massive public education programs following political independence were seen as a way to train a cadre of Africans who would then fill important jobs. The opening up of secondary and tertiary institutions brought more women into the educational systems. These institutions trained African women to become nurses, public health practitioners, teachers, civil servants, journalists, doctors, engineers, and lawyers. For African women who have secondary or post-secondary educational credentials, migration offers the best opportunity to achieve social mobility (Arthur, 2009). For most educated African women, the returns from their education position them to earn higher wages in the developed countries than they will receive if they stay in Africa. It is significant that for some African women, the decision to migrate may be cultural rather than economic. Some African women are motivated to migrate in order to flee from patriarchal or patrilineal domination. All too often, migration for this purpose is to establish a new life away from family-perpetrated forms of violence and abuse. Due to their migrations to international labor market and cultural destinations across the world, African women in general are forging new identities and redefining gender relations in their new locales (Arthur, 2009). Among African women who come to the West involuntarily due to displacements from war and civil disorders, the process of acculturation and integration is challenging and daunting. Reconstituting their lives and

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those of their children, for the most part, is made difficult due to their lack of marketable or transferable human and cultural capital traits (for example, quality education or work-related experiences). Some have had to abandon their homes, including whatever sums of money they have managed to save from working, in their flight or escape to relatively safer havens. For those who are able to reach refugee camps, more challenges await. These include lack of education for children, poor medical resources to assist the elderly and frail, inadequate sanitary conditions, and psychological traumas associated with violence. Many face being raped. For those who are separated from loved ones and family members, this may heighten the traumas associated with the loss of family members, violence, anxiety, and frustration. But once they are able to find a safe haven in the West, many of the refugees are able to reconstitute their lives. The proven pathways for reclaiming and rebuilding shattered lives in the United States and elsewhere typically include a strong work ethic, a commitment to education and self-improvement, and a recasting of new meanings from their forced flight. A few of the refugee women included in the study have been able to achieve middle-class professional status in the United States, Britain, and Canada. This was accomplished through education. For this group of women in particular, access to community colleges and vocational-technical trade schools has made a significant difference in altering their life chances and putting them on the pathway to social mobility in the West. The processes involved in forging a professional status have not come easily for these women. Despite the gains that many continue to make, there are structural hurdles in the areas of finding quality and affordable housing for themselves and their children. Due to their marginalized and feminized status as foreign-black women, some of them have to contest and negotiate racial and ethnic identity politics in the mainstream society. While these structural impediments are recognized as significant challenges to full incorporation, the persistent encountering of racism and discrimination does not thwart the ambitions of refugee professional women. A general belief is that these structural impediments can be overcome and their impact or consequences minimized through sheer determination and hard work. For many of these women, therefore, the process of minimizing their minority racialized status include the formation of strong kinship and familial bonds including the formation of larger social networks to provide support and at the same time direct the women to areas of economic and social opportunities, particularly those related to finding employment, housing, and quality schools for their children’s education. The occupational statuses of Africa’s skilled and professional class of immigrants revealed some interesting findings. Nearly 74 percent were employed by the public sector prior to the migration to the West. Another 15 percent were employed in the private sector prior to their departure

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to the United States, Britain, or Canada. Nine percent of the immigrants worked with international charitable foundations. The rest did not report any previous employment. The skilled and professional Africans worked in diverse jobs such as engineers, physicians, scientists, teachers, nurses, computer technicians and technologists, pharmacists, land surveyors, musicologists, linguists, agronomists, and architects. Two countries (Nigeria and Ghana) were more likely than their counterparts from other parts of Africa to send their doctors, nurses, engineers, and computer scientists to the United States, Canada, and Britain. Immigrants from South Africa were likely to become teachers, social workers, and nurses. Since 2000, cadres of young South Africans have started entering the United States, Canada, and Britain to pursue advanced education. The trend started in the early 1990s and is a direct outcome of the post-apartheid era of national reconstruction and the training of black South Africans to assume leadership roles in both the public and private sectors in that country. Differences can be found in terms of how male and female African professional immigrants access information related to occupational and employment opportunities. The women immigrants relied on social networks consisting of close female relatives and schoolmates who had already settled in the United States and other Western countries. Information about job and occupational issues was disseminated within these kin group networks. Nearly 65 percent of the women found their current employment through information given to them by other females working in similar occupational and employment sectors. Among professional immigrant women who sought employment in female-based occupational sectors, a common practice was to rely on other women as sources of employment information. This finding may be influenced by the gendered typing of segments of the job market and how men and women differentially access information related to employment decisions. Women also tended to rely on co-ethnics as sources of information for employment. Often the resources and information given by the women immigrant networks were used only to gather information about pay, benefits, and opportunities within the organization for promotion and advancement. The qualifications (human capital) of the women had a greater effect on the likelihood of being hired for the job. Although the male immigrant professionals also relied on social networks and relatives abroad, their reliance on and utilization of familial and social network channels for accessing information about employment prospects were lower than among their female counterparts. Only 45 percent of them had used social networks and familial groups to access employment information. The male immigrants tended to augment the social networks and kin group assistance by seeking employment information from secondary group organizations such as professional bodies and trade associations. Additionally, they tended to

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seek employment opportunities in sectors where males outnumber their female counterparts. For the male immigrants, membership and networking within their professional and trade associations were more pivotal in assisting them in locating and finding employment compared to the role played by kin group and co-ethnic entities. For both sexes, access to various occupational and employment sectors was facilitated by strong educational credentials without which the majority of them would not have been able to secure employment.

POLICIES TO PROMOTE POPULATION RETENTION AND AFRICAN IMMIGRANT REPATRIATION One of the challenges confronting the African nation-states is how to design and implement programs and incentives to lure back the medical and allied health professionals who have migrated abroad. As indicated, the primary reasons for the mass exodus of African medical and healthcare professionals are low salaries, poor working conditions, governmental lack of adequate investments in healthcare, under-utilization of personnel, and bureaucratic inefficiencies and ineptness, including corruption and mismanagement. The survey probed into the subjective and objective appraisals of how the respondents perceive current programs to stop the growing intensity and volume of migration among the skilled and professional classes. Overall, the responses revealed that African governments are poorly equipped and lack the macro-structural resources to fully implement and arrest the causes of international migration among the skilled, educated, and professional classes. This situation is aggravated by the lack of comprehensive strategic planning to implement poverty-reduction programs to raise the living standards of Africans.23 Reversing the stream of outmigration is indeed daunting. The imbalance between educational investments and the availability of jobs makes it difficult, if not impossible for many of Africa’s graduates to derive maximum benefits and gains from their education on the continent. For the central governments of Africa, an important question is whether or not to continue supporting investments in higher education considering the prohibitive cost and the reality that over 70 percent of the graduates from tertiary institutions are going to migrate upon their graduation. The expansion in higher education in African countries has come at the expense of primary and secondary education, public housing, healthcare, transportation and road networks, and agriculture (the backbone of their economies). The demand for higher education continues to increase as advanced degrees become a core requisite for hiring in both the public and private sectors. Throughout many of the African countries today, prospective tertiary stu-

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dents select their fields and discipline of study in such a way to position them for future migration to the West. The result is that students may not choose areas of study that corresponds to the manpower and human resource needs of their respective countries. These students are playing to a larger international audience and employers in the advanced economies. To become globally incorporated into the global economic production system is the proven path to economic survival in Africa today. The net effect is that African governments continue to fund educational programs from which it derives limited added value. Unless alternatives are created by the African governments within the local and indigenous economic systems, outmigration will continue to dominate the long-term economic landscape of the African nations. Having an advanced degree guarantees relatively better wages and salaries than secondary, vocational-technical credentials. The result is many Africans continue to shun intermediate vocational-technical educational institutions, thereby diverting meager resources to the tertiary sector. For rural and remote area dwellers, infrastructures for the delivery of robust primary and elementary educational systems are virtually absent. Where they are available, the quality of instruction and accompanying resources are poor. For the African governments, a central issue becomes whether they should focus their limited resources on the delivery of quality primary, elementary, and secondary school education to provide the basic literacy skills the majority of Africans need to work functionally in semiskilled and skilled jobs. Mid-level educated workers are essential prerequisites for industrial and technical take-off in Africa. The problem encountered by African governments is that while there has been a proliferation of secondary vocational-technical institutions catering to a mid-tier cadre of workers, the labor and employment aspirations of their graduates have been difficult to fulfill due to lack of jobs. Like their counterparts who have obtained tertiary credentials, the mismatch between educational aspirations and opportunities and future job prospects is often the trigger for international migration. This, as the study participants affirmed, is the principal reason fueling the outmigration of Africa’s vocational-technical educated class. A related issue is the incorporation of those with primary and elementary educational credentials into Africa’s workforce. While the quality of the instruction offered by these educational institutions are showing improvements, a problem for African nations is that transition to secondary level is fraught with structural problems, particularly the stress on over-testing resulting in the selection of a small proportion of students who make it to the next level. For those who fail to pass the numerous standardized examinations students are required to take, there are no avenues left for gainful employment except menial jobs where the conditions of employment are poor and

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wages continue to be low. For graduates of these institutions, intra-regional African migration often becomes the most viable option of finding work. Not well-educated and lacking the educational credentials to be competitive, graduates from these institutions often end up in Africa’s sprawling urban centers, frequently being chronically unemployed. Some of them traverse the continent in search of jobs in the cocoa-producing areas, mineral centers, and oil-producing areas for better economic opportunities. Some others eventually end up, after protracted stepwise and chain migrations, in the advanced economies of the West where they are able to find work in construction, agriculture and food processing, landscape, and janitorial and hospitality services. The governments of Africa are faced with a paradox. When resources are invested in secondary vocational-technical institutions, graduates of these institutions may find work, but the wages are meager. Many circulate within Africa looking for work and opportunities to leave to come to the West. Similarly, when resources are invested in tertiary institutions, the graduates leave because salaries are low and working conditions are poor. Many tertiary graduates are faced with unemployment and underemployment. For many, the result is migration out of Africa. In both scenarios, the governments of Africa are not getting value for the investments in secondary and tertiary institutions of learning. Most, if not all of the African countries, have yet to resolve this paradox. The immigrants were unanimous in their beliefs that the first hurdle the central governments of Africa must overcome is the formulation and implementation of the much-needed population retention program to prevent more skilled professionals and the educated classes from leaving. This is a gigantic task and as the respondents confirmed, this problem remains intractable due to the myriad of socioeconomic and political problems confronting the central governments. The perception among Africans is that there are far more urgent concerns to address. While this is not the official stance of the governments of the region, it nonetheless speaks volumes because of their inability to reverse the economic malaise and morass currently affecting their citizens. What the findings suggest is that while the immigrant-sending countries have formulated policies to stem the tide of the brain drain, these programs often lack both implementation and a wide range of incentive options to woo back the skilled and professional classes. The central governments of Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Liberia, and more recently Kenya have all announced some measures (even if minimal) to stem the tide of the brain drain. At their core, these strategies consist of offering financial and infrastructural incentives to provide encouragement to professional and skilled citizens abroad to return. Often these incentives are not based on a comprehensive analysis of information about who the skilled and professional immigrants are. To this end, a majority of the respondents surveyed maintained that it is imperative for their national governments to

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develop and compile a listing, database, and census of those professionals who have left home. This will assist national economic development planners with information about the skilled professionals, the countries where they are domiciled, their forms of employment, their time-frame for returning home, and the resources or assistance they might need following their voluntary repatriation. Of equal importance is information about the kinds of businesses they are willing to set up and how these businesses, once formed, can expect assistance from the government. The absence of vital information thwarts any efforts on the part of their central governments to launch a systematic and comprehensive approach to reintegrate returnees into society. Nearly 80 percent of the skilled immigrants responding to the survey indicated their intentions to return if their central governments are able to provide assistance for those returnees interested in establishing their own businesses. For those returnees interested in pursuing careers with the government or the civil service, a clear understanding of work issues, including compensation, benefits, tax policies, housing, transportation, and a host of other issues related to the work process will have to be ascertained before the decision to repatriate is implemented. This, as the majority of the professional and skilled immigrants cited, will minimize the frequent bureaucratic frustrations emanating from ineptness, corruption, and patronage characteristic of Africa’s public sector. Higher educational credentials are an important social and human capital asset which directly affects the size and flow or migration of Africa’s skilled professionals to global labor centers in advanced countries. Recognizing that they have professional skills that are portable in transnational spaces, many of Africa’s tertiary graduates continue to look outside of the region for work. The source nations of African migration (Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Cape Verde, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia) recognize the deleterious impact of the loss of their best and brightest to the advanced economies of the world. Despite this recognition, the development and implementation of robust policies to stem the tide of the brain drain have yet to gain momentum among the immigrant-sending countries of the continent. Systematic and sustained policies to ameliorate the problem of the brain drain is competing with other major social and economic issues which the governments of these countries must tackle. This means that even where these countries are able to formulate policies to stem the tide of the brain drain, these policies are often plagued by the lack of fiscal resources, including personnel, to implement them at the central level. Coupled with this is the problem of how to create robust institutional infrastructures to enable and facilitate the implementation of policies. As described by one African immigrant, “African central governments are quick to devise policies to stem the tide of the brain drain. But none of them have the resources

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(political, economic, and social) to fully implement policies to ensure the viabilities of population retention programs.” The results, as another immigrant asserted, “are half-hearted approaches and piece-meal efforts to tackle an enduring problem.” Drawing on the experiences of Asian countries (Malaysia, Singapore, India, South Korea, and Taiwan), many of the immigrants (57 percent) advocated for the strengthening of state-sponsored programs to liberalize tax laws or provide tax holidays for five years for returnees who repatriate their assets for the purpose of setting up businesses. These programs are designed to provide impetus to the private sector by providing incentives for the establishment of small businesses. The governments of Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, and South Africa have developed and put in place proposals to implement these initiatives and protocols. However, these programs are poorly incentivized and lacking well-rationalized goals and assessment or evaluation of outcomes. Many returnees consider them mismanaged or rife with corruption. The majority of the healthcare professionals (84 percent) also support the critical need for the African governments to promote the formation of institutions to safeguard against and tackle unbridled economic and political corruption, including intra- and interethnic, tribal, and clan conflicts, to curb the frequent civil unrests in Africa. These civil disturbances, several of the professional immigrants noted, stall Africa’s march toward economic and political progress. The return of Africa’s skilled professionals may hinge on how the central governments are able to institute and develop some understandings about how their citizens fare abroad. Currently, interactions between the home governments and their diaspora communities have yet to be grounded in any meaningful and well-articulated goals and rationalizations designed to achieve maximum outcome. These interactions have usually assumed political dimensions rather than emphasis being placed on the development and nurturing of robust economic and entrepreneurial relationships designed to channel diaspora resources and investments into key sectors of economic and industrial development. To harness the resources of their diaspora communities that have formed abroad, the central governments of Africa must find creative ways to engage these communities in the task of nation-building. This entails formation of poverty-reduction programs to assist in raising the overall living standards of African workers and their families. It also means empowering the private sectors through liberalized incentives to create jobs that provide livable wages and benefits for workers. This impetus will limit the motivation to migrate to the West. There is need for such an approach to be comprehensive and entail the complete incorporation of rural areas into national development schemes and programs. The goal is to retain rural population by halting the drift of the youth and school leavers to the urban areas in search of nonexistent jobs.

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Providing long-term tax credits and infrastructural support for African immigrant diaspora communities and institutions that are willing to invest money in key sectors of Africa’s economy will have to be promoted vigorously. To eradicate or lessen corruption and political patronage, administrative and bureaucratic roadblocks often encountered by the investment community have to be minimized toward achieving efficiency. The revitalization of the agricultural sector with massive assistance to farmers would encourage Africa’s rural youth population to take to agriculture as an economically viable form of employment. Creating the necessary agricultural infrastructure includes providing quality feeder and trunk roads to connect areas of food production with marketing and distribution centers, and providing farmers with clinics, adequate compensation for commodity prices, access to high-yielding seeds, weed and pest controls, and the extension of services in areas of soil morphologies and impact of environmental degradation on crop yield and output. Currently throughout the continent, these services are almost absent. Where they are available, they tend to be poorly financed, managed, and integrated into food production systems. A community-based rather than a nationally directed approach to the identification, design, and management of capital investment programs must be encouraged as a vehicle to minimize the frequent politicization of community projects by central governments in Africa to score points and patronage with voting constituents. This might be difficult to accomplish in light of the entrenched intersections and mixing of tribal, clan, and ethnic and other affiliated organizations in political decision-making. The clash between the need for African regimes to balance community needs and to base the location of economic and investment projects using economic rationality rather than political expediency must be brought under control. The goal is to ensure economic and industrial development projects are located in the economically appropriate communities where the venture is needed, rather than adopting economic policies based solely on appeasing political constituents. For the long-term, programs to control the loss of skilled and unskilled Africans who are leaving the continent should be anchored in a sustained approach that emphasizes the need to improve upon the overall labor and human resource capital of all Africans. This requires massive investments in every sector of social and economic production and is accompanied by a critical need to identify and incorporate immigrant capital resources into the processes of economic and industrial development. An open and transparent government structure whereby stakeholders in development are all held to strict regulations and accountability regarding the disbursement of funds earmarked for development projects and schemes must be undertaken. Efforts to attract skilled as well as unskilled African immigrants to return home should incorporate outcomes that are measurable, including the develop-

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ment of targeted timelines for their design, implementation, and periodic assessments. Attempts must be undertaken to curb economic wastages usually brought about by overlapping goals and duplication of resources. Encouragement must be given to returnees to set up NGOs in consultations with interested stakeholders. The governmental role in the activities of NGOs, no matter how limited, must be structured to allow for the incorporation of the economies-of-scale advantages that central governments often bring to economic and social development schemes. However, such relationships must be structured on shared interests to achieve a healthy balance of effort and partnership between public and private sector coordination. For the skilled African immigrant class, the work environment and conditions associated with employment were primary considerations for leaving. Work in the civil service is fraught with bureaucratic problems. Central is the lack of adequate compensation and prospects for promotion. Nearly 87 percent of the respondents in the survey stated that the bureaucratic problems facing Africa’s civil service or public sector is the prime reason accounting for the government’s inability to recruit highly qualified workers. For public servants assigned to work in remote and rural areas, the conditions of service (poor housing, lack of water, electricity, and recreational facilities) are often worse than for those assigned to regional capital districts. For those with children, finding appropriate schools in these locations in which to educate their children is problematic as schools in the remote areas are poorly staffed. The majority of skilled professionals try as much as possible to avoid rural and remote districts. Some of the respondents indicated that the process of assigning graduates to serve in rural and remote districts is rife with political patronage and corruption. Bribes continue to be the norm rather than the exception. Offering bribes to government officials in charge of assigning graduates for service in rural and remote communities has become part of the culture. For those graduates without any social clout or network of support, being assigned to these places may dampen the professional growth and development of the assignees. As the results from the focus sessions confirmed, this often leads to frustration. Examples were given by the respondents who were affected by these conditions. References were made by participants in the study who had gone for months at a time without receiving any remuneration. Roads connecting some of their rural districts to regional centers of commerce were impassable during the rainy season as makeshift bridges were washed away by tropical torrents. Some of the graduates had to resort to work stoppages and strike actions before receiving their compensation. These conditions feed into the graduates’ perceptions and beliefs that it is only through migration that they can alter their social and economic circumstances. As these problems and issues have persisted, so has the saga of the African brain drain. Skilled and well-educated Africans will continue to seek out

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better opportunities for themselves and their families far away from home. The intentions of these skilled workers are clear: to seek global incorporation using their acquired skills and social capital garnered through advanced educational training. Their entry into the global marketplace of work and employment is being shaped, in part, by worldwide demand for skilled workers, particularly in the United States, Britain, Canada, and other advanced nations where immigration laws continue to favor those with skills that can be transferable to an international domain where goods and services are traded. For the African governments, recognition that there is a brain drain problem is a significant development since previously, governments have not owned up to the existence of skill losses among their population. While efforts are being implemented to arrest this problem, the short-term impact of the skill losses on the provision of vital services for Africa’s mass population are significant. In the long term, policies designed to retain a skilled population must be accompanied by a vigorous and comprehensive program of economic development and industrialization to raise the living standards of Africans. The formation and institutionalization of civil and democratic culture will also go a long way in creating the atmosphere within which people of all educational and skills levels can go about the conduct of their day-to-day affairs without fear and threat of personal and group insecurity. The migrations of Africa’s skilled and educated classes who are circulating in global economic domains are, for the most part, culturally better endowed than their unskilled counterparts. For several of these migrants, poverty may not be the primary motivation for migration. These skilled immigrants challenge the classical interpretation whereby international migration is conceptualized as a free agent, choice-driven behavior engaged in to capitalize on the perceived advantages certain places and destinations have to offer.24 For the African immigrants who were studied, the causes of their migration cannot be easily reduced to the numbing poverties that are characteristic of the continent of Africa. Certainly, grinding poverty and deprivation play a role in the mass migration of Africans to the West. But of equal significance are other intervening factors such as colonization, foreign domination, globalization, socioeconomic linkages and incorporated economic systems, transnational networks, and standardization and transferability of educational credentials in unraveling the reasons or motivations behind Africa’s brain drain saga.25

NOTES 1. Two approaches shed light on the continuing mass exodus of Africa’s skilled population to the West. The first can be classified as the internal or local exigencies operating in Africa itself which cause the push and outmigration of Africa’s profes-

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sional and skilled class. The second factor can be classified under the general rubric of sociolegal mechanisms and immigration policies responsible for the transfer and exchange of skilled labor between Africa and the advanced economies of the world. 2. See Castles (2000), Sassen-Koob (1985), Phizacklea (1985), and Castles et al. (1984). 3. See Spellman’s (2008) discussion of Africa’s brain drain using Ghana as an example. 4. According to Stephen Castles (2000:28), the unemployed masses, including the educated in the developing countries, form a latent surplus population or reserve army which can be imported into the developed countries according to the labor and employment needs of the advanced countries. 5. In modeling the international migrations of Africans to destinations outside the continent, it is difficult to separate the social and cultural reasons from the economic and political reasons motivating Africans to leave home in significant numbers. A survey of the scholarship of African migrations reported by Apraku (1991), Takougang (1995), Arthur (2000, 2008), Falola and Afolabi (2007), Zegeye (1989), and Zeleza (2004), Adepoju (1984), Gordon (1998), Konadu-Agyemang and Arthur (2006) has suggested a multivariable approach to unraveling the conditions associated with population mobility in Africa. However, as immigration laws are tightened in the West and restrictions placed on who is admissible, Africans with educational skills and credentials stand to gain from the globalization of skilled labor coming to the West. 6. During the 1970s and 1980s, Ghana had a policy which stated that students who are sponsored by the government to go abroad for advanced education must be bonded by the state. The bond is in the form of a fee which must be paid by the student and their family. This fee is surrendered to the payer upon return. 7. This proposal was initiated by delegates attending a conference on Africa’s brain drain problem at the Institute for Social and Statistical Research at the University of Ghana, Legon, in 2007. 8. See, for example, Stock (1995), Massey (1994, 1995), Takyi (2002), Gordon (1998), Opoku-Dapaah (1993), Dodoo and Takyi (2002), and Konadu-Agyemang and Tayki (2001). 9. Gordon (1998) wrote that France gave its former colonies in Africa favored nation status and formed agreements with such African states as Senegal, Mauritania, and Mali to promote labor migration. By the 1980s, over 120,000 Africans were in France alone. Britain maintained a restrictive policy of immigration from her former colonies in Africa. However, the postindependence era opened the doors for massive migration from British sub-Saharan Africa. 10. Apraku (1991) asserts that the continued migration of Africa’s skilled and professional classes is a stumbling block in Africa’s march toward the attainment of economic development. Migration, he contends, is costing African governments and taxpayers resources that are already scarce. 11. See Harris and Todaro (1970), Todaro (1969, 1976). Wage and income differentials between Africa and the rest of the world are a major cause of the migration of skilled and educated Africans. 12. See Zelinsky’s (1983, 1993, 1971) model of demographic change and the mobility transition as societies undergo social, cultural, and economic changes and

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transformations. Migration and population mobility are seen as by-products of modernization. See also Skeldon (1990) and Pryor (1975). 13. See Dodoo, Francis Nii-Amoo, Baffour Takyi, and Jesse Mann. (2006). On the Brain Drain of Africans to America: Some Methodological Observations. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. Volume 5(3): 155–62. 14. See Milne (1991), Sjaastad (1962), Molho (1986), and DaVanzo (1980) for an elaborate discussion on the neoclassical human capital approaches in migration theories. 15. For discussion of the bracero and guest workers program in the United States and Europe, see Briggs (1986) and Cohen (1987). 16. For example, nearly ten students have to compete for each available space available for students applying to enter Ghana’s three premier universities, the University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and the University of Cape Coast. 17. The human resource depletion resulting from the migration of Africa’s welleducated is immense. A study by Anya, Ihekweazu, and Anosike (2007) showed that at a minimum, over 40 percent of Nigerian medical students educated by the Nigerian government have left the country, notably living in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. 18. See, for example, Castles (2000), Tapinos (1990), Zolberg (1989), Castles and Kosack (1973), and Portes and Borocz (1989) among others, for a comprehensive account of the factors shaping South-to-North migrations. 19. See Adepoju’s (1984, 2000) discussions about internal and international population and labor mobility in Africa and their relationship with the settlement of African immigrants in the West. 20. These countries were cited by 65 percent of the study participants as preferred destinations in Africa due to the comparative advantage they hold in healthcare over other countries in Africa. 21. For a detailed discussion on the roles of kinship and family ties in promoting transnational migration, see Bach and Carroll-Sequin (1986), Reichert and Massey (1980), Massey (1987), DeJong, Root, and Abad (1986), Harbison (1981), and Escobar et al. (1987). 22. See Barot et al. (1999), Segura and Zavella (2007), and Morrison et al. (2008) for a detailed discussion about the determinants of women’s migration. 23. This is further compounded by the huge indebtedness of African countries, including the cost of servicing the massive foreign debts owed to the advanced donor countries. 24. See, for example, Portes and Rumbaut (1996) and Sassen-Koob (1988) who have suggested a fresher perspective on the explanation of why people move. 25. See Castles and Miller (1993), Findlay (1992), Nash (1994), Mabogunje (1970), Gulati (1993), and Garson (1992).

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3 Transnational African Immigrant Lives and Identities

It has been more than two decades since Portes and Bach (1985) viewed migration as a process that is characterized by the formation of immigrant networks. These networks were set up to reinforce and anchor the social relationships of the immigrants across transglobal locations and to promote relationships with members of the migrant host societies.1 Transnational migrant social networks include those that are personal (for example, family members, households, friends, and associates) as well as impersonal (for example, immigrant associations, professional groupings, alumni, employment agencies, and religious and civic groupings). As Boyd (1989) contended, transnational immigrant networks are pivotal in influencing the migratory decision-making process at both the macro- and micro-levels.2 Additionally, they become critical in shaping the form, density, settlement, adaptation, and integration of the immigrants in the new social spaces that migrants construct and negotiate. These social networks are also important for understanding how immigrant decisions regarding repatriation and or citizenship are formed. For African immigrants entering transnational migratory domains, it is useful to delineate the processes involved in the structuring of these transnational networks and how they account for the immigrant identities that Africans establish in foreign domains. It is important to address the fundamental questions about the formation of African transnational immigrant identities. How do African immigrant transnational networks facilitate the integration of African immigrants into the affairs of their host societies and at the same time connect them to their respective countries of origin? Are there specific social and cultural markers that identify or form the embodiment of transnational African immigrant networks? What are the influences 79

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of these transnational African immigrant networks on migrant labor force participation and cultural integration? What are the implications of these transnational processes for understanding African migrations to the United States in particular, and to other advanced countries in general? What are the effects on identity formations of the temporary or long-term separation of African immigrants from their respective homelands? How durable are these transnational immigrant identities in redefining Africa’s place in global affairs? Life in the African diaspora usually revolves around and is centered on the social and cultural happenings at home in Africa. The transnational spaces created by the African immigrants in the West are merely mechanisms and agencies for articulating and rationalizing the contents of the transnational cultural diaspora communities. Incorporation and integration into the body polity of the host culture is very significant for the African émigrés. After all, it is in the host societies that social, cultural, and economic resources are mobilized by the migrants to structure their relationships with their home societies. This process may entail migrants’ redefinitions and reappraisals about home as well as the enlargement of migrants’ spatial or geographic location to include multiple transnational sites or localities.3 The host society is the locus for centering the affairs of the homeland while at the same time forging and positioning African immigrant identities within the broader social, economic, political, and cultural processes of the United States and elsewhere. The boundaries of their immigrant communities are identifiable by the cultural and religious rituals, customs, lore, and traditions that most of the immigrants import to the host locations to anchor their identities. As Fred Clothey (2006) stated, the boundaries of several of these diaspora immigrant communities is what gives the immigrant communities not only a sense of identity, but also a sense of cultural community, a place and territory to find meaning, and to confront or deal with alienation, marginality, and depersonalization.4 For the African immigrant, the structural mechanisms designed to support the survival and continuity of their cultural communities may include religious festivals, familial-based celebrations of births, deaths, marriages, and clantribal-national and continental affiliatory groupings and activities designed the elevate their collective and shared heritages.

STRUCTURAL BACKGROUND OF AFRICAN IMMIGRANT DIASPORA TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS IN THE UNITED STATES The establishment and construction of transnational African immigrant identities has been influenced, in large measure, by specific immigration laws in

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the United States, in particular the landmark legislation known as the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986.5 This legislation enabled hundreds of thousands of undocumented Africans in the United States to legalize their status. This legislation promoted family reunification, enabling thousands of African immigrants to sponsor relatives from Africa to come to the United States. It gave impetus to and boosted the formation of the African immigrant diaspora communities across the country. For the fiscal years 2006–2008 alone, 318,048 Africans were admitted as legal permanent residents (LPRs) into the United States.6 These Africans formed nearly 10 percent of the total LPRs who were given legal status. The bulk of Africans given LPR status were from Liberia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia, South Africa, and the Sudan (figures 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4). As more and more Africans were allowed to enter the country, this created a critical mass of African communities in several communities across the United States in urban centers such as New York, Charlotte, Atlanta, Houston, and Boston, to mention a few. This gave more visibility to the immigrant communities and assisted in the formation and flourishing of African cultural institutions to serve as the bedrock and foundation for viable and sustainable African immigrant cultural communities. The establishment of African immigrant-based cultural organizations and institutions diversified the African immigrant population of the United States as different groups of immigrants coalesced around the themes of shared origins and continental cross-affiliations often resulting in the creation of Pan African identities and ideals. In addition to IRCA, a number of structural changes in United States immigration laws facilitated the entry of African immigrants into American social life. Primary among these were the skill preference category. The skills

Figure 3.1. Ethiopian and Liberian Immigrants Legally Admitted to the United States: 1999–2008

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Figure 3.2. Nigerian and Ghanaian Immigrants Legally Admitted to the United States: 1999–2008

preference category sets aside visas for foreign-born U.S.-educated graduate and undergraduate students in the arts and sciences who have completed professional and nonprofessional education to stay in the country to acquire practical training in their chosen fields of study. During the period of their practical training, employers may petition the Labor Department to issue a labor and work certificate to allow foreign-born personnel to remain permanently in the United States if they possess skills or training in fields of study for which there is a documented shortage of qualified American workers. The labor certification program has benefitted hundreds of thousands of Africans who are pursuing academic programs in business, nursing, medicine, computer science, arts, and the humanities.

Figure 3.3. South African and Kenyan Immigrants Legally Admitted to the United States: 1999–2008

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Figure 3.4. Somalian and Sudanese Immigrants Legally Admitted to the United States: 1999–2008

Nonimmigrants from Africa are currently arriving in the United States at an unprecedented level. Between 1999 and 2008, more than 4 million Africans (4,154,563) entered the country as nonimmigrants. A nonimmigrant is defined as an alien who is not an immigrant and is admitted in one of the nonimmigrant alien classes of admission. Nonimmigrants may have a temporary status as visitors or short-term residents for a specific purpose.7 Forming part of the 175 million nonimmigrants who entered the country in 2008 alone, a large share of the nonimmigrant Africans ultimately become LPRs by adjusting their status. Students in particular readjust their status upon completion of their studies so that they can continue to live and work in the United States. The change in legal status from nonimmigrant to immigrant marks continuity in the formation of African immigrant identities in the United States. Depending upon their class of legal admissibility, some of these Africans may become naturalized citizens within five years. The Immigration Quota Law of 1921 (amended in 1924) set in motion policies to allow immediate relatives of United States citizens to enter the country. In defining family reunification as the linchpin of American immigration policy, the quota laws assisted those Africans (particularly those who were married to United States citizens) to qualify under the first preference category to become permanent residents. The abolition of the national origins and quota system and its replacement with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 further strengthened the visa applications of those Africans who had relatives who were United States citizens or legal permanent residents. Again, it brought legal status to those Africans married to American citizens. The visas granting them legal status were

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Figure 3.5. African Immigrants Legally Admitted to the United States: 1999–2008

unrestricted and thus outside of the numerical limitations of the 20,000 quota set aside for each country. In 2004 alone, 406,000 foreign-born persons of all nationalities were duly admitted into the country and given legal status for being immediate relatives of United States citizens.8 The number of Africans admitted during the same period was 62,623. In 2008, over 100,000 (105,915) Africans were granted permanent residence status. This amounted to an increase of more than 100 percent from the number admitted in 2004 (figure 3.5). The formation of African immigrant identities in the United States was facilitated by the Immigration Act of 1990. This act was significant for Africa as a whole because it sought to increase lawful immigration from countries that historically are underrepresented in lawful admissions to the United States. Known as the Diversity Visa Lottery Program (DVLP), this legislation increased the worldwide immigration ceiling to a cap of 675,000 per year with further provision that the cap can be increased in any given year if there are unused visas from the family-sponsored and employmentbased categories.9 For those Africans who do not qualify to gain lawful admission to the United States via the skills category or family reunification provisions in immigration law, the DVLP provided yet another opportunity to become part of the African diaspora presence in the United States. The program requires that every diversity applicant should have at least a high school education or its equivalent, have two years of work experience in an occupation requiring two years of training, and be a native of a country that has a low rate of immigration to the United States.10 All citizens from the countries of Africa qualify under the DVLP. The lottery system is conducted annually and is a random selection of applicants from the DVLP countries,

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that is, low immigration rate countries.11 Between 1997 and 2004, a total of 374,664 immigrants were admitted under the DVLP. Of this, 141,603 or 37 percent came from Africa. This surpasses the number of immigrants admitted under the DVLP from Asia, South and Central America, Oceania, and the Caribbean during 1997 and 2004. Only Europe sent more immigrants to the United States under the DVLP program than Africa (160,189 or 42 percent) for the same period.12 Among some African immigrants, the beginning of the formation of a transnational identity starts with the acquisition of refugee status. Hundreds of thousands of Africans seek refugee and asylum status in the United States every year. Only a small percentage (less than 5 percent) is allowed into the country. The African refugee-sending countries are Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. The bulk of the continent’s refugees are from the Horn of Africa where decades of conflicts and wars have economically devastated once-thriving nations. The Horn of Africa became a highly contested geopolitical region at the epoch of the Cold War between East and West. The Western powers took sides in local schisms and supplied ammunition to warring factions and unpopular regimes. The end of the Cold War also saw the rise of warlords and clan-based intra- and inter-tribal conflicts in Somalia, Ethiopia, Congo Democratic Republic (DRC), the Sudan, and more recently, Liberia and Sierra Leone, which brought civil society to a standstill and eroded political and economic order. Hundreds of thousands of people became internally displaced and uprooted. For Somali and Ethiopian refugees, the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980 was a watershed in their migration to the United States.13 This act made it possible for African, Indo-Chinese, and Cuban refugees to flock to the shores of the United States seeking protection from war, conflicts, and political persecution.14 The process involved in integrating their refugee identities into the body politic of American society has been daunting and fraught with trepidation and uncertainties. Common problems in the adaptation process for many African refugees who have gained lawful permanent residence include language deficiencies, lingering psychological traumas of violence and war, family dislocation, institutionalized discrimination, cultural shock, religious tension in the form of adapting their Islamic faith to American expectations, and unwillingness on their part to integrate into American society. For others, the major issues affecting African refugee identities are the endemic discrimination in housing, healthcare, and law enforcement. Some confine their identities to marginalized status, alienation, and helplessness, coupled with the pressure to exclude outsiders (social workers, government officials) from their social networks. Frequently relying on other refugees for economic, social, and cultural support, some of Africa’s refugees align and confine themselves to religious enclaves which function

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as their main social support and network systems. These religious enclaves are usually formed along clan lines and are virtually closed societies, with outsiders and non-Muslims kept out.15 The aftermath of 9/11 changed how the predominantly Muslim refugees structure their religious, ethnic, and racial identities in the United States. Many of them are leery and cautious about anti-Muslim fervor in the country and have therefore constructed the boundaries of their interactions by limiting contacts with only those who are close friends, relatives, and associates they can trust.16 Coming from war-ravaged societies where civil society did not exist, many of the continent’s refugees that have settled primarily in New York, Atlanta, Minneapolis–St. Paul, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., distrust government agencies and would rather rely on clan and family support than engage with official bureaucracies such as the United States Office of Refugee Resettlement (USORR) or the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Though they provide economic and psychological support for refugee families, these social networks are unable to tackle broader structural issues such as providing employment, education, and health services for their members.17 The field survey and focus group sessions highlighted the long-term problems confronting African refugees in the United States. Refugees find themselves unable to access the labor market due to institutionalized discrimination, the lack of certifiable credentials, and poor educational credentials. There is an intense interest in the well-being of and concern for family members left behind. Psychologically, the aftermath of forced migration and statelessness still dominates the day-to-day discourses of the refugee community. Most would like to repatriate, particularly those from Somalia and Ethiopia, but at the same time, they consider America a safe haven from their war-torn and failed states in Africa. The loss of national identity and detachment from a sense of belonging takes a heavy toll on how these African immigrants structure identities. Their identification is not with the United States. Neither it is with the countries, cultures, and societies in Africa that they have left behind. Some African refugees in the United States find themselves in a state of limbo, attempting to straddle both African and American societies, yet not completely developing a sense of attachment and bonding with one or the other. The main forms of employment for these refugees include meat packaging, driving taxis, becoming parking ramp attendants, or operating an African ethnic store catering to the refugee community. Chronic male unemployment and underemployment is pervasive, and in most refugee households in which there is a male head of household, total family income is less $16,000 or 20 percent below the official poverty line. Nearly half of the men between the ages of 45–55 were unemployed at the time of this study, while adolescent unemployment was about 20 percent. Though

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eligible to receive financial support from social service and welfare agencies, many families are reluctant to tap into the system due to lingering mistrust and an unwillingness to divulge personal information to unfamiliar public agents or agencies.

TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS AS PROPAGATORS OF AFRICAN IMMIGRANT CULTURAL IDENTITIES The transnational African immigrant networks are cultural sites for the social construction and manifestation of African-based identities. The cultural forms and identity expressions that are manifested are symbolic of African cultural and normative practices and institutional organization. The identities that are forged in the African migrant transnational domains are highly diverse, constantly evolving, and rich in every genre of African cultural and social production. The transnational networks have become symbolic manifestations of the black African presence in international migration. The networks redirect and focus on the energies of the different nations constituting Africa while at the same time helping to shape and sharply define the contours of African social systems. As Gilroy (1993) aptly opined, the formation and re-formation of the African transnational diaspora networks in international migration is symbolic of the notion that cultures and nation-states are not entirely homogeneous, bounded, or monolithic. Gilroy’s contention (also affirmed by Cohen, 1995), speaks to the idea that the diasporas (in general) and how they are constituted position diaspora population groups on the world socioeconomic and political scenes by strengthening the international stature of the immigrant-origination nation-states.18 For some African émigrés, the separation from home lasts a long time. Long separation from close family members and friends may affect the identities of these immigrants as some of them may have to contend with a permanent settlement in the host societies. Memories of the home left behind may undergo significant transformations sometimes beyond the recognition of the immigrants. This often results in the creation of a culture of permanent exile identities among some of the immigrants. As a group, African immigrants foster a form of symbiotic transnationalism.19 This suggests that the immigrants participate equally in fostering ties to the United States and to Africa, neither completely immersing themselves in one culture nor the other. For immigrants from Africa, there is a rapid transformation of identities brought upon by the effects of globalization and the forces of transnationalism. Through these transformations, new agencies are created to facilitate the formation or construction of new social relationships which are then embedded in home and local communities

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across Africa. The new realities brought about by international migration (in part), have contributed to the transplanting and affirmation of African cultures and identities in multiple sources of immigrant locations and destinations in the United States and in other western locales. The immigrants depend on the values and norms they learn in the United States to inform and structure the contents of their relationships with their home countries. While they may prefer to maintain a wholly African identity, some of the immigrants come to recognize that social, cultural, and economic conditions in their home countries may inhibit their full incorporation and participation in home affairs. They may maintain American identities only to the extent that it enables them to maintain a presence and a voice in African affairs. American cultural ethos serves as a facilitator, providing an empowering link between the émigrés and their home societies. For example, they may purchase a home in the United States and at the same time build a home in Africa. Building a home is a symbolic affirmation on the part of the émigrés that they have not severed ties with the homeland. Straddling between transnational boundaries renders temporary or permanent repatriation difficult to configure. Nonetheless, the data from the focus group sessions suggested that continued socioeconomic and political uncertainties at home may frustrate plans to repatriate. Some of the immigrants will therefore stay in the United States as long as possible, making only occasional visits to Africa. What emerged from the analyses is that the economic and cultural resources African immigrants harness in the United States are funneled home to set up various business enterprises to produce food, to operate transportation systems, to build flats and condominiums, hospitals, and schools, or to open Internet cafés. Collectively, these immigrants are changing the landscapes of Africa in ways that their national governments have not been able to. Nor has the annual total global aid of five billion dollars been able to achieve this feat. Maintaining the transnational immigrant identity serves as the conduit and the agency for effecting these macro-structural changes in Africa. An emerging theme in the identities of the African émigrés is the proliferation of diaspora philanthropy and assistance channeled directly to local communities and institutions all across the African continent. The centers of African migrations to the United States (Lagos, Accra, Dakar, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Monrovia, Freetown, and Kampala) are now interconnected with the globalized forces induced by migration. Physical distance between Western metropolises and the epicenters of economic and cultural production of Africa is no longer a barrier. The idea of fostering transnational ties with the immigrant’s home country is not a new idea in migration studies. At the height of European migration to the United States during the nineteenth century, some of the European groups continued to maintain their involvement in the affairs of

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their home countries. These earlier immigrants created institutions in the host society to connect and anchor them to the traditions, cultures, and institutions of their respective countries. Even when most became American citizens, interests in the homeland and its affairs were never completely severed or abandoned.20 In the African context, maintaining ties to the homeland following migration is a historical legacy. Whether they migrate from the rural to urban areas or engage in cross-border temporary or permanent movements, Africans create their own version of trans-migrant circuits for the dissemination of information between the places of migrant settlements and their homelands. African migrants form secret societies, mutual and benevolent associations, religious and tribal social circles, and hometown associations to provide economic, cultural, psychological, and social support for their members. Their principal function is to ensure that the migrants do not sever ties with their cultural roots. The expectation is that the alienating and impersonal effects of living away from one’s hometown can be mitigated by the formation of strong cohesive bonds with fellow townsmen and -women to harness and leverage economic and social opportunities while preserving the migrant’s culture and identity. For the Africans who are entering the United States, the need to create social and economic capital to buttress and strengthen their identities is considered paramount in light of the historical treatments and experiences of people of African descent. As racial and ethnic minorities, African immigrants as a group recognize that their foreign and black status means that they are going to experience economic and cultural problems as they negotiate entry into the social affairs of the host society. For some of the African émigrés, having a minority or subordinate status may mean limited access to social and economic opportunities. After all, many of them have read about or are familiar with black Americans’ push during the civil rights era to agitate for better access to resources and opportunities. The immigrants remain aware of the racialized and subordinate status of their American-born black counterparts who for decades have experienced both legal and customary discriminations at the hands of superordinate and powerful groups. As they define trajectories to represent their immigrant identities, the Africans use their cultural advantage of community and collective destiny to filter out (as well as minimize) the negative and deleterious effects of structured racism and discrimination on peoples of black descent in the United States. Mechanisms utilized by the immigrants to filter out and to confront marginality and discrimination are reliance on self-improvement, the marshaling of intra-African community resources, bounded loyalties, and the fostering of tightly woven solidarity with kin group members who live in different social settings around the world. Having these multiple networks may assist the immigrants in better managing the psychological and cultural pains associated with

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persistent racialization and entrenched marginalization of black identities and experiences in the United States at large. The structuring of transnational ties and the affiliations and ties inherent in the African migrant transnational networks are often rationalized in terms of collective self-improvements and group altruism, as opposed to the individualist ethos and belief system that is characteristic of American and Western European cultures. A clearly negotiated and well-defined system of reciprocity and exchange buttresses these transnational creations and the identities that they manifest. Structured roles and expectations of the specific forms of migrant identity expressions are effectively communicated and circulated within the transnational networks and immigrant-based cultural associations. By their collective and altruistic nature, most African cultural formations and genres easily lend themselves to transnational adaptations and configurations. At every fabric of immigrant transnational life and experience, there is a sense of community, belongingness, and shared essences and meanings of the role(s) that social institutions should play in people’s lives. When African immigrants travel abroad, they expect that these shared essences will form the institutional framework and social processes whereby interconnections and identification with home are given resonance and occupy a central place in the day-to-day lives of the immigrants. When the immigrants form their identities and straddle multiple cultural domains, they do so with the multiple interests of not abandoning their ancestral homes and not becoming completely absorbed into the affairs of their host societies. This fluid form of identity and adaptation positions the African immigrant in multiple social spaces and contexts without the need to sacrifice his or her inherited cultural legacies and traditions completely.

PARADIGMS AND TYPOLOGIES OF AFRICAN IMMIGRANT TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITIES The forms, types, constitution, roles, and social organization of transnational associations in African migration cannot be overlooked. Imbedded in the organization of these associations are transnational myriads of African identities that are important for understanding the formation and re-formation of the African diaspora in Western cultures. Some of these organizations reflect the familial structures of African cultural systems; others reflect Afrocentric principles and normative structures, while yet others reflect colonial and anti-colonial vestiges, and Third World minority identities. More importantly, some of the transnational collective groupings are geared toward the development and transformation of Africa’s image as a forgotten region of the world.21

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Among African immigrants, identity formation and the multiple ways it is reproduced in negotiated spaces form a significant part of affirming the existential processes that define the contents of normative and cultural philosophies about human social life and organization. At the broadest level of theoretical and paradigmatic constructions, four principal types of African immigrant identities are discernible in transnational migration configurations. The first is the familial-based and kin group identity relationship. The second is the tribal, clan, lineage, or hometown and village society immigrant relationship. Third are the intra-national, Pan African– continental identity relationships that the immigrants establish. The final is the transnational immigrant community, alumni-based, and educational development associations. The identities that are manifested and represented in these formations often intersect due to the fluidity and continuum of African immigrant identities, their highly vibrant and hybrid forms, and the sheer complexities in their structural and individual contents. These paradigms of immigrant identities are reflective of a region of the world and a people often forgotten in the past or dismissed due to the myriad of issues and problems confronting the continent. What these identities reveal is that as a group, African immigrants in the United States continue to project identities that are not linear in form. Their identities continue to reflect the imperative to institutionalize and incorporate African cultural systems in how they manifest identities. They aim to transcend the nation-states and geopolitical patterns of their respective countries by latching on to diverse and multiple forms of identities that ultimately seek to incorporate African and American identities. The goal is to deconstruct the negative stereotypes and the entrenched poor perceptions and images that have come to be associated with Africa and people of African descent and heritage. The immigrants’ sense of self is articulated by the new values, norms, and belief systems that they learn while living abroad. These values and norms are eventually incorporated and applied in African contexts. These immigrants are creating new public lives in new social fields and common spheres to link themselves with their nation-states at home.22

FAMILIAL-BASED AND KIN-GROUP TRANSNATIONAL AFRICAN MIGRANT NETWORKS Family organization, structure, and relationships are important components of immigrant identity formations and cultural production. The family as a social institution is an agency of cultural transmission, socialization, social control, and reproduction, and particularly in the case of Afro-Caribbean families, an institution of economic production and distribution of goods and services.23 It confers on its members ascribed and

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achieved statuses. For African immigrants in the West, the family and kin group relations serve as the agency within which migration decision-making is formed, implemented, and sustained. Families may combine and marshal their resources to sponsor specific members to embark upon the journey to foreign lands. Once at the site of migrant destination, family members will continue to harness their collective resources to ensure the success of their members. Success of one member is success for all. This is demonstrated by the sharing of the material and nonmaterial benefits that accrue to individual migrants. The migration of Africans to the West in general affords researchers the opportunity to investigate the structure and organization of African families. Specific research questions of significance to how African families function in transnational domains include but are not limited to the following issues. How are African immigrant families (parents, grandparents, children, siblings, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and in-laws) and other blood relatives able to structure and organize their family relationships when they are separated by the physical and structural distances or barriers brought upon by cross-border or transnational migration? Familial-based relationships are structured to reflect common kin group and consanguine relationships. These relationships may bring together family members who are living in the United States, Africa, and elsewhere. For many Africans, familial migrations are not new phenomena. Before, during, and after colonial rule, Africans have always crossed internal and international borders and boundaries on the continent for purposes of trade and commerce. Others often cross national borders to find work in the mines, agricultural plantations, industrial centers, and regional capitals. For example, the opening of the railway networks in South Africa brought hundreds of thousands of young men from the hinterland of southern Africa looking for work in the mines near Johannesburg. In Ghana, the cocoa belt in the southern tier of the country also attracted African families as far away as Niger, Liberia, Gabon, Senegal, and other distant locations on the continent. Some of these migrants were families that migrated in groups, often searching for the optimal economic and commercial opportunities to find work and earn an income. These were the pioneers of transnational African migration. They circulated in the West African region often bringing with them their familial, clam, ethnic, and religious associations to anchor their normative and belief systems. The bifurcated networks of transnational and multiple families that were formed often maintained contacts with the towns and countries of origination, never severing ties with them. Transnational migratory living is built into African cultural life. Once they find themselves in transnational migratory spaces, Africans replicate their cultural institutions by affirming kinship as the essence and center of their transplanted lives. Migration and

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absence does not end familial obligations and relationships—it strengthens bonds and ties within the nexus of interlocking family relationships characterized by the marshaling of resources to optimize and ensure familial economic and social well-being. Multiple families related by blood or marriage may join their resources to offer material and emotional support to their members often channeling information about employment, housing, and career opportunities.24 Fictive kin members play an important role in the social organization of the transnational families. They are accorded a central place in the socialization and social control of immigrant children, including taking care of the elderly and the vulnerable. Fictive kin members take part in all family activities and responsibilities irrespective of where they reside. They help cement family bonds and their place in familial structure is no different from those that are formed along consanguine ties. They have evolved as natural extensions of the family unit often assisting family members to bridge intergenerational relationships. Fictive kin members constitute an important cog in the transnational migration of Africans to the West. Some provide newly arrived immigrants with places to stay, introduce migrants to prospective employers, and provide valuable information about how to navigate immigration issues. In so doing, they help keep the focus of arriving immigrants on shared familial goals and expectations. Brought together by blood or marriage relationships, the members constituting these migrant transnational networks share the bonds of international migration. As Chamberlain (2006:63) stated, “Afro-Caribbean families are micro societies of their own, with their own histories and cultures, creating their own dynamics and ethos, continuities and raptures, constantly evolving to accommodate growth and change—of individual family members and of the family as a unit.” It is within these transnational familial network systems that social, cultural, economic, and political identities depicting normative and belief patterns are propagated, shared, and given meanings or content. Family life is inclusive and characterized by a communitarian ethos and value system in which individual and group goals are merged and bounded by inextricably strong and shared bonds from which social identities are framed, forged, and given specific cultural and normative contents. Through these shared lineage and kinship bonds are woven intricate and complex forms of consanguine and marital relationships that are grounded and underpinned in altruism and collective enterprise. This altruism and spirit of collective enterprise plays a transforming role in the social and economic production of goods and services. At the same time, it contributed to and promoted shared cultural identities and normative affirmations upon which resources can be marshaled for the familial commonweal. These attributes are exported and brought to the various sites of the constructions and formations of the African diaspora.25

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The identities that transnational African diaspora family groups create following migration to their host society destinations sharply contradicts colonial and postcolonial depictions of African and black families in general as loosely structured and fragmented, powerless, rife with illegitimate and bastardly children of no particular genetic origin, lacking any moral compass, devoid of the basic and rudimentary principles of economic rationality, and out of step with the Euro-American, Victorian, and Christian normative belief systems concerning family and marriage relationships.26 Colonial and postcolonial economic and social production systems viewed the strong kinship and lineage systems of familial organization inept and inimical to the social, economic, and cultural progress of the nation-states. This deliberate and oft conscious display of lack of understanding of African and black social structure meant that the white superordinate groups unleashed a vitriolic and sustained campaign to pass laws and policies to break down the very essence and foundation of African family life and culture.27 On the contrary, African and black families are resilient, productive, and capable of economic and cultural self-determination. The boundaries and transnational social fields (as Nina Glick Schiller describes them) of these kin-group networks are very tight. Relationships are viewed as primary, cohesive, and close-knit. The resourcefulness and inherent vitality of these familial networks was affirmed by one respondent who stated: “Family is sanctuary. If I decide to leave the United States today and go to Australia, the U.K., or the Middle East, I will have relatives who will welcome me and provide for me; some on a temporary basis, others on a long-term basis. The reasons for moving are considered secondary. The primary reason is that one is considered family and not a stranger.” Shared solidarities and interests promote loyalty and a sense of belonging. Members tend to coordinate a wide range of familial activities and keep other members apprised of the activities of other family members irrespective of where they are located. The transnational ties that the family networks foster are geared toward one principle goal: harnessing and maximizing the economic fortunes of the family. This is accomplished by financial contributions that members make toward meeting familial expenses such as birth of a child, funeral cost, and assisting family members at home to meet their day-to-day economic needs such as money for food, clothing, or caring for the elderly, and possibly funds toward maintaining or building a family home. The transnational network is the principal conduit whereby family members are sponsored to come to the United States or to other Western locations where other family members are domiciled. The network functions like a corporate entity. According to Chamberlain (2006), Afro-Caribbean transnational families contain within them transnational imaginations. In these imaginations, short- and long-term goals are rationalized to incorpo-

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rate qualified family members into the global economy via migration, work, family reunification, and education. Family members at home in Africa eligible for sponsorship to migrate are carefully chosen by family members to maximize the economic interests and social status of the extended family unit. One of the central tenets of this form of transnational network is the recognition that not all of its members are going to be able to find work or seek further education in transnational settings. Some relatives are therefore expected to stay behind and not migrate. These caretakers of home affairs are reputable persons of trust and moral probity. The non-movers play a vital role in family social and economic production. First, they may serve as cultural liaisons between the home country and the various transnational locations where other family members live. Second, they supervise family resources and the remittances that are forwarded home. Third, if the family operates a business venture, they may be called upon to manage any business operations, whether they are family-owned taxis, small consumer retailing shops, or rental properties. Fourth, they make sure that elderly relatives’ and children’s needs are taken care of with the monies received from abroad. If there is a death or birth in the family, those who stay home may be chosen to organize the rituals, often communicating with those living abroad about options available to the family. They also relay information about family matters to other relatives living abroad. This service is important because it enables the immigrants to remain grounded and connected with home affairs. When relatives visit home, these stay-at-home relatives are often rewarded with Western-made goods for their services. Though domiciled abroad, the foreign-based family members have a voice in family decision-making and their views are often incorporated and solicited in all matters of family life. These relationships are created and fostered in transnational settings to enable immigrant family members, wherever they are located, adjust to life in a foreign place. At the same time, they are structured to incorporate members who are left behind at home.28 The strong solidarity and affinities that are forged among the group are intended to protect the economic status of the family members and ensure its long-term viability. These affinities promote group goals, particularly international migration, by sharing the associated costs and benefits of sponsorship of their members who travel abroad. As facilitators of international migration, these familial groups have become an important cog in the allocation of family economic resources both in the immigrant country of origination as well as in the immigrant destination points or in the host societies.29 Hierarchically structured roles and statuses are evident in these kinbased relational networks. Typically, more seasoned immigrants, irrespective of gender, class, and educational backgrounds, are frequently selected to lead these groups. Immigrants who have lived abroad the longest are chosen to exercise informal social control over young and recently settled

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immigrants. For those leaders chosen to enforce group norms, shared goals and family expectations drive the decision-making process. Often when decisions are made, the aim is to appeal to the altruistic and collective spirit of the group rather than using sanctions or threats to ensure compliance and conformity to group goals. This responsibility is often discharged by assigning rewards and incentives to those members who are in good standing. As one immigrant indicated, “Being in good standing is most often reserved for those family members who communicate frequently with other family members, make regular financial contributions to support relatives at home or immigrants who have recently arrived, including those who are attending school.” For these families, the transnational linkages that are formed as a result of international migration are designed to tackle structural problems such as economic deprivations and poverty, first among those who have made the journeys to the United States or other Western locations, and second, among those left behind at home. For many immigrant families, the economic needs of family members at home are the main drive motivating the decision to travel and live abroad. Migration becomes a family affair. Individual family members articulate their migratory plans within the nexus of tightly woven family relationships. With time several members of the extended family may join this migratory stream. Going abroad is a way to be linked and connected to global labor markets. Once such a link is established with labor markets via employment, family-based mutual aid schemes are implemented to connect other family members to the economic and cultural advantages offered by the opportunity of work. For African immigrant families who have been successful in organizing and placing their families in transnational labor market sites, the economic benefits are particularly significant as more family members become able to join in wage-earning economic activities away from home to enhance total family income. A core aspect of the familial transnational immigrant networks that are formed by Africans in the United States is information-channeling. To ensure that family members stay connected with labor market trends, immigrants often share information about job openings and hiring, and sectors of employment favorable for foreigners seeking jobs as well as obtaining information about wages, work permits, and social security cards. The networks may also share knowledge about state-specific attributes where immigrants stand to derive maximum economic advantages. For some of the families, the information about labor market trends may necessitate the need to migrate to labor sites where family members stand the chance of optimizing their incomes and work prospects. To derive maximum benefits from migration, families often engage in secondary or multiple internal migrations. The willingness to move and to disperse to vibrant labor market

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sites continues to serve African émigrés well in the United States. Moving to destinations with vibrant economies ensures that family members are able to weather unsteady and fluctuating economic downturns and cycles. It also ensures continuity in employment. Being out of work for protracted periods of time is considered inimical to the building of long-term kingroup economic prosperity and social mobility. Long-term unemployment may also alter the flow of resources and remittances to relatives living in the United States and elsewhere, including relatives left behind at home. If members have to relocate to forestall economic downturns, other families within the group network may be called upon to make financial contributions to support their relatives. Kin-group members may move to destinations where other siblings or extended family members are already settled or move to new places where there are no family members present. In both cases, family members are able to tap into the networks and resources other members may provide. If there are no networks of families already established at the intended place of relocation, this may afford the migrant families an opportunity to establish a new base. It is remarkable how the absence of family networks in the intended place of relocation does not alter plans to move. Families believe that with time, they can re-create another economic base to expand the number of family members who will be sponsored to migrate to these new sites. This creative adaptation has served African immigrants well by enabling them to maintain steady employment and at the same time to expand their scope of economic and cultural production. Family members who are self-employed may also use the networks to provide employment for other members and by and large, these networks have become the principal channel for the formation of small ethnic enterprises. The bonds of affinity that are fostered within such networks also promote coethnic immigrant ownership of businesses catering to the needs of the larger African immigrant communities.30 The family members may operate a savings scheme or a credit rotating scheme where adult members make weekly, biweekly, or monthly contributions. From the money that is accrued, remittances are sent to support extended family members at home or to assist members living in the United States or elsewhere to pay rent or school fees, or to meet other financial obligations. It is also from this pot of money that family members being sponsored for overseas travel are given financial support to enable them qualify for a visa to enter the United States or other Western countries. Collecting money to set aside to help support other kin is an important facet of African immigrant identity. This form of collective self-help and empowerment also enables members who suffer job losses or experience other problems such as ill health, difficulties with rent or mortgage payments, or legal issues to have a safety net to tap. For the members, the commitment to contribute signifies the shared sacrifices and sense of altruism that is

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premised on the belief that it is through collective enterprise and mutual support that group and individual goals are accomplished or fostered. Pressure on family members to make their contributions may be enforced informally. Those who do not live up to their obligations are seldom censured or threatened. Rarely will the offending member be ostracized or shunned. Members who are in a position to make contributions but refuse to do so may incur the displeasure of extended family members at home in Africa. As one immigrant indicated, “You do not want your relatives at home always to be talking about you. That may breed ill feelings with the potential of causing elderly matriarchs, patriarchs or even revered ancestors to withhold their spiritual blessings and guidance. Most people in my family do not want this to happen to them.” From the perspectives of these immigrants, living in the United States or in the West is an opportunity to change or to alter the social and economic positions of their families at home and ameliorate the abject poverty characteristic of African families, nuclear or extended. Many family members therefore consider the need to make regular financial contributions a duty, an obligation which they know serves to shore up the economic standing of the entire family unit. Immigrant families believe that with time, nonpaying members may come to recognize the error of their ways and reciprocate by contributing their share. This minimizes the use of threats and sanctions on family members who refuse to make significant financial contributions commensurate with their income and social status abroad. The wisdom and sagacity of matriarchs and patriarchs are incorporated into the articulation of familial ideas and ideals. Through these cherished and venerated elders, continuities in family social, cultural, and economic histories are handed down to children and the young. Familial norms are taught by the elderly and grandparents thereby strengthening genealogical links and interchanges between old and young while at the same time shoring up the stability of the entire family unit. These elders stress and instill in all members familial consensus and shared accords with the goal of keeping conflicts and schisms to a minimum while harnessing group thought to broaden the scope and depth of familial social and economic production systems. The decisions of these elderly citizens are incorporated into the migration decision-making when it comes to the selection process and the sponsorship of prospective family members to travel abroad. They command the ears and attention of the family members who are residing abroad and increasingly, are tapped to travel abroad to assist in a wide range of social and cultural rituals, including the rearing and socialization of grandchildren, having child-naming ceremonies, assisting in organizing marriage ceremonies, and observing funerals and memorials of deceased relatives. The African elderly has become a visible presence in the global formation of the black African diaspora.

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Africa’s families are becoming bands of migrants crossing international borders and boundaries to reposition themselves to take advantage of globalization and economic and cultural empowerment. What emerged from the interviews was that several African migrant families have long established the tradition of foreign or international travel. Once families start embarking upon international travels, structural mechanisms are put in place to ensure the continuity of these mass circulation and migratory behavior.31 Institutionally, family norms and histories are formed to reflect this migratory ethos. Successive generations tap into this resource of migratory behavior by managing it effectively to improve their social status and their human capital resources. Shared stories about cross-border migrations undertaken by other family members are beautifully woven into family lore and folkways. For the young growing up, these stories about aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, and in-laws who have undertaken the journey to foreign lands are transmitted via the instruments of socialization and social control. The lives of family members who have migrated abroad are used as teaching tools to encourage and teach the young that they too, barring any unforeseen circumstances and with good behavior and hard work, will join this caravan. The global reach of some of these families, the study found, is astonishing. No place, destination, or location is considered to be off limits when it comes to African migration. Every place or destination is seen as offering better hopes for the future than Africa is able to provide. The comparative advantages of migrant places and destinations are weighed against one another with the goal of finding the optimal location or destination to maximize the economic, cultural, and psychological opportunities and resources of the family unit. Place utility and their added advantages are pivotal in structuring the choice destinations because they eventually determine the viability of families regarding access to much-needed economic and cultural opportunities.

TRIBAL, ETHNIC, AND CLAN TRANSNATIONAL AFRICAN IMMIGRANT HOMETOWN NETWORKS The migrant hometown or village is a site of social and cultural production. It is the site from which migrant identities are shaped and re-created in the migrant destinations and localities.32 As Bersselaar (2005) aptly noted, the village (hometown) is a diasporic public space and sphere. Like those that form along familial and kinship lines, the African immigrant networks that form along tribal, clan, lineage, hometown, or village lines are important links between the immigrants and their respective home societies. Membership is affirmed by language, ethnicity, family lineage, or place of birth. Another marker of membership is family surname. The social and cultural

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boundaries of these associations and networks are not as tight and cohesive as those that form around consanguine or blood ties. Nonetheless, their functions are similar: anchoring the cultural and economic identities of their members, ensuring cultural interconnections aimed at bridging the distance between the immigrants and home, and serving as information clearing houses for the dissemination of employment and access to resources. In essence, some of them serve as diaspora philanthropies by assisting in the socioeconomic and cultural development of their home communities and at the same time connecting these communities with the global marketplace of goods and services. Through them, some of the material comforts of global capitalism trickle down to a growing number of rural and urban Africans who no longer rely on their governments to meet their basic needs.33 Some of these networks may function as village/rural/town, school, and health development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), combining the resources of their members to assist in the development and provision of vital social and economic facilities and resources for their townsfolk. This may include providing funds to assist towns to dig wells to provide water for their citizens, to build schools, including providing textbooks, school uniforms, and recreational and sporting goods (soccer and basketball), or to ship home medical supplies for resource-strapped village hospitals and clinics. In this regard, the transnational networks function as town development councils, investing money in selected areas of local economic or cultural development activities. This form of collective economic and cultural assistance is based on the need for the immigrants to maintain an active interest in the affairs of their homelands. In so doing, they are able to solidify their shared bonds with their local communities and at the same time foster links with their family members and co-clan and tribal affiliations. Financial and material contributions are seen as “giving back” to the community and taking part in community development and/or nation-building. These transnational networks may have a stake in the development of their respective home communities. Survey and focus group data indicate that some of the immigrants plan to repatriate home in the future when social and economic conditions there improve. This explains the desire on the part of the immigrants to build their dream homes in their hometowns as well as in the provincial and regional capital centers of commerce, culture, and the arts (Arthur, 2000). Branches of these hometown-based associations are replicated all over the world, particularly in the Western countries where there is a likelihood of finding many immigrants of African ancestry living in the same cities or towns. Though these hometown associations have yet to become supra-global bodies, it is important to point out that their objectives are the same: to promote the social, cultural, and economic interests of their

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respective communities and foster united and dynamic links between the citizens living in foreign lands and those living at home in Africa. At times, their interests may intersect, such as when these organizations combine their transnational economic resources to influence and shape political and economic policies in their respective communities. For example, they may combine their resources by making contributions to organized political parties and candidates who are supportive of their communities. This is a form of lobbying to agitate for access and to ensure that hometowns and communities are not left out by African central governments in the distribution of economic and social development programs. They may also function as a political bloc to press for resources (better roads, clinics, schools, and other infrastructures). Religious and cultural festivals unique to the particular tribal, clan, or ethnic networks are often celebrated in transnational settings. These festivities are intended to foster solidarity and bonds among the participants and at the same time to cement them to the cultural traditions of home. They provide an opportunity to remain grounded in cultural expectations and to demonstrate that even though they have left and are far away from home, they still remain an integral part of community and social life in their respective hometowns. Intra-tribal, lineage, and ethnic relationships may provide the members with resources to meet economic goals. This includes access to funds for setting up a small business at home, loans for airfare, assisting kin group members acquire land, or building a home. There are frequent gatherings at members’ homes on weekends and during holidays. Like other immigrant associations and networks, social gatherings provide the forum for exchanging and sharing experiences related to migration stories, sharing and trading job-related information, celebrating childnaming rituals, organizing baptisms, birthdays, and schools graduations, and consoling members who are bereaved. Irrespective of the occasion, these gatherings are always of a festive nature, with a plentiful mix of African and American foods, music, and celebratory trappings. Children are beautifully dressed in traditional attires. Such occasions are set aside for recognizing and honoring the continuities of life and the traditional celebrations follow the patterns of similar celebrations at home in Africa. As Bersselaar (2005) found, these social groupings and networks were institutional mechanisms put in place to enable towns and communities to connect with their “sons abroad” in a diasporic public sphere that was not in itself geographically defined, but existed through reference to the village.34 Intra- and inter-household management is woven into the transnational identities of African immigrants. Familial reciprocities in terms of providing assistance to family members in areas such as childcare, giving financial support to help pay for private schooling or after-school tutoring, and trading of used clothing and household appliances tend to be common among

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families domiciled in the same community or living close to one another. These families may coordinate household shopping needs, always seeking items that are cheap and affordable. Buying in bulk and repackaging to save cost tend to be frequent. For those who happen to live in the same town, it is not uncommon to find multiple households sharing child-rearing and babysitting to minimize cost. After-school activities are also coordinated to ensure that children are supervised all the time the parents are working. Parents and households may take turns providing after-school care for minors. A noticeable trend among some of the families is the cosharing of tutors who are hired to assist with homework and at the same time provide coaching and prepping children for nationally standardized tests. Education of children is considered premium. For many African immigrants, scholastic achievement is regarded as the proven and time-tested pathway to social mobility and advancement in a credentialized and meritbased society such as the United States. Age-graded expectations (particularly those that enforce education, respect for authority figures, and commitment to abide by the rules and laws of nonfamilial agencies such as the police) are incorporated into routines of child-rearing practices and socialization. The pressure on children to make excellent grades is intense. The expectations of children are that they will be able to see the value of good education at an early age. Perhaps this identity and expectation is based on the parents’ perception that good credentials and education trumps racial and ethnic attributes. To ensure that children are grounded in educational and scholastic achievements, a majority of the African immigrant families hone the skills of their children to emphasize and reinforce a connection between scholastic accomplishments and a good standard of living arising from good employment and income. Most immigrant families contend that achieved status often will override and minimize the effects of de facto discrimination and racism based solely on racial and ethnic attributes. Surmounting such discrepancies and conflicts in the form of discrimination and racism has been a major preoccupation of African immigrants. Certainly, their black identities make them highly susceptible to individual or group discrimination. However, many of them maintain that it is possible to confront racism and discrimination via the mechanisms of self-improvement through education, strong family relationships, and conformity to the norms of the host societies.

NATIONAL AND TRANS-AFRICAN IMMIGRANT IDENTITIES, NATIONALISM, AND CONSCIOUSNESS During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when thousands of African students and immigrants from Anglophone Africa started enter-

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ing Britain to study, several of them joined together to establish the West African Students Union (WASU), the African Progress Union (APU), the Society of Peoples of African Origin (SPAO), the African Association of Edinburgh, the Union of Students of African Descent (USAD), and the Gold Coast Students Association (GCSA), to mention but a few, to fight against racism and discrimination in Britain, promote intra– and inter–West African unity, strengthen relationships with other Africans (notably those from Francophone Africa), provide benevolent assistance to needy Africans, and agitate against foreign colonization. These associations and many others that the African immigrants established became the voice and manifestation of the growing presence of Africans in the global arena. It was from these Pan African networks that the agitation for self-determination gathered momentum and changed the course of political history in Africa. The leaders of Africa’s independent movements (notably Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sir William Ofori Attah, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Jomo Kenyatta, and Dr. Siaka Stevens, just to mention a few) honed their political skills as immigrant students in Britain.35 As immigrants, these students fought for and represented a united Pan African front to wage relentless criticisms of the domination of Africans by the Western colonial entities. These mutual benefit Pan African and benevolent associations continue to form in the new global migrations of the twenty-first century. Through them, Africans are able to define and position their transnational identities by focusing on first, how to navigate the internal politics of their host societies, and at the same time focusing their energies and resources to shape the development process and nation-building in Africa. The fulcrum of African black transnationalism as it is constituted in migratory domains is geared toward the urgent imperative of liberating the continent and the black diaspora from the grip of Western colonial subjugation and domination. As Abraham (1991) attested, at the forefront of black nationalism and the resulting identities that were constructed around it is the elevation of white supremacy and total hegemony which relegated black concerns to the foreground while at the same time elevating and promoting the economic and political interests of white societies. The subordination of black culture and the affirmation of white racial superiority, for blacks of the African diaspora, is designed to not only devalue black culture, but is also geared toward the application of racial ideologies which provided the structural basis and justifications for political and economic denigration of peoples of black African ancestry.36 The articulation of black nationalism and diaspora consciousness was heightened during black participation in the two World Wars, the agitation for black self-determination in colonial Africa, the clamor for black civil rights in the United States, and the recognition that if black soldiers fought valiantly to protect white interests in the wars, it is only fitting that their civil rights and citizenship

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ought to be respected and affirmed. Black identities and consciousness incorporated these elements as feelings of African and black nationalism swept across the world after the end of World War II. For the Africans in the diaspora as well as those living on the continent, the creation and sustaining of identities is premised or grounded in Afrocentric principles and ethos. According to Asante (1988), Afrocentrism gives a sense of shared destiny based upon the facts and experiences of the peoples of black Africa. A significant component of the Afrocentric world is the rich diversities of cultural systems that come together to provide content for and enrichment of the lives of Africans. As Asante opined, “All African peoples participate in the African cultural systems although it is modified according to specific histories and nations.”37 For the vast majority of African immigrants entering the diaspora social domain, the continued articulation of immigrant identities is premised on the need to preserve and nurture African institutional structures and normative systems. In that regard, the immigrant associations become the markers and propagators of African cultural systems. Theoretically, they have become the pillars around which African cultural forms are given resonance and consciousness.38 African immigrant national associations are also sites for the contestation and protestations of the economic and political mistreatment of the poorer countries of Africa in the world’s global systems of production. This resistance forms a crucial component of Fanon’s articulation of the sufferings inflicted upon the colonial peoples of Africa by white colonial regimes.39 The immigrant national associations function like mutual aid or benevolent societies whose members are united by a sense of common identity as defined by the nation-state. Their principal objective is to represent the collective interests of the migrant nation as a political entity. Another is to assist in the socioeconomic, cultural, political, and economic development of the migrant nation-states. At the same time, these organizations are structured to provide assistance for immigrants in locating economic and cultural opportunities. An example of one such association is the National Council of Ghanaian Canadians (NCGC). Writing about the NCGC, Owusu (2000:1172–73) reported that Ghanaians in Canada have set up this association to represent their collective interests, at the same time ensuring that this association becomes the political and economic agency through which issues concerning the future developments and relationships between the immigrants and their home governments can be strengthened and given meanings across transnational spaces. Among the accomplishments of the NCGC listed by Owusu (2000) are lobbying the Ghanaian government to pass legislation recognizing dual citizenship, making financial contributions to support hospitals and schools in Ghana, working with Canadian immigration authorities to expedite visa applications for family reunification purposes, and defending the legal rights of refugee immigrants to forestall their deportations. Addi-

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tionally, these entities may provide financial assistance to other Africans who are displaced internally due to loss of residence. The Pan African nationalist fervor transcends geography, space, locality, and borders. Their essence, once formed in the diaspora, is to define the immigrants’ sense of nationalism and continental pride. Through the Pan African continental and nationalist groupings that are formed in the West, Africans are able to authenticate black identities while at the same time creating new sites for the interpretation or re-interpretation of the cultures of the continent from the perspective of its citizens. The goal is not only to accentuate immigrant identities but more importantly, to underscore and manifest the cultural and political interconnectedness of the global black African experience. Migration and the diaspora are conceived as vehicles for surmounting vested colonial and anti-colonial representations of the continent on the world scene. The national and continental groupings and associations that are manifested among the immigrants are intended to shape the discourses of Africa while positioning it within the broader contexts of global affairs. The pan-alliances become a nexus and the centerpiece for the imagining of Africa and its possibilities in the consciousness of the migrants. Kanneh (1998) articulates this notion in his seminal work on the interlocking nature of race, nation, and culture in framing African identities in global domains.40 For some African immigrants who are forming diasporic identities in localities other than their ancestral places of birth, the journey to the West in general may be characterized by apprehensions and consternation about role and status expectations. Coming from different socioeconomic, cultural, and political backgrounds, some of the African émigrés have to confront marginality and alienation in foreign locations. The way to reconnect and to establish a sense of group cultural normalcy is by forging alliances and networks that have a continental appeal to foster supra-national unity and preservation of cultural identities. African immigrant identities in cross-national spaces may also assume relationships and identities that are formed by the immigrants to anchor their national and Pan African identities. Nationalistic immigrant identities are manifested by identities that seek to position African nations and the continent as a whole in global affairs. The sociological representations of the cultural identities are constructed or structured in such a way as to give prominence and saliency to issues confronting and affecting the entire region. Such identities center on the development of anti-colonial identities and perspectives which is aimed at ending the persistent colonial and unequal economic and political relationships between Africa and her Western colonial partners. Included in this identity are ideas about a global Third World political and economic alliance based on shared interests and commonalities bringing together

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immigrants from developing regions of the world. This is a colonial and postcolonial identity which the immigrants link to the global reach and power of Europeans and the United States. The articulation of this identity finds resonance in the immigrants’ support for participation in political and social causes that advocate the total emancipation and liberation of Africa’s oppressed. Coming to the United States has afforded the immigrants the chance to understand the importance of global economic interdependency and the need for the peoples of African descent to become integrated into world economic production systems. The reproduction of social and cultural identities among African immigrants in the Western nations are negotiated or structured in such a way as to preserve the cultural contents of African institutions and at the same time to explore the possibility that through associative interactions with other global interests and activities, identities can be (re)shaped in consonance with global changes and configurations. When they have rallied around and formed these broadbased continental associations to represent and map out the trajectories of their varied and multiple identities, African immigrants, in essence, are redefining their power and diasporic global identities in international public spheres. Once constructed, these identities are then culturally transmitted and shared through various channels of social and cultural activities such as parties, seminars, meetings, and giving support to political events and functions aimed at centering and recognizing the role of Africa globally. The varied social groupings and networks that the African immigrants construct to manifest their identities may be viewed as forms of social capital41 because they serve as channels and sources for the propagation of African cultural ideals and normative beliefs. These associations or secondary groupings are social-capital-generating institutions because they can be utilized to transform and enrich the immigrant experiences by enabling and giving agency to facilitate the collective marshaling of resources to implement various strategies to optimize the migratory experiences. The reliance on these institutions to anchor their African traditions and cultures represents a rejection of complete assimilation by the African immigrants. In their widest meanings, these social networks and groupings may be viewed as ways to manifest multiple forms of integration into the host and origin societies alike. The interface of these institutions with what goes on at home in Africa is significant because they show that although international migration may transform the economic lives of migrants, maintaining connections with the cultures of places of origination is an important cog in the overall migration process. There is not a single or linear pattern that defines the contents of structural integration among the African immigrants. Their pathways to inclusion and cultural participation include the utilization of social networks and reliance on their own institutional structures to forge identities and

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ultimately, inclusion and integration.42 As Portes and Zhou (1993) and Portes (1998) have suggested, immigrants to the United States use multiple pathways to forge inclusion and social participation in the affairs of the host society. According to Owusu (2000), the authentication of these networks in terms of their functionality is premised on the spatial location of these associations in the larger metropolitan communities where the diaspora communities congregate. Easy access to a central location where members can attend meetings and participate in the affairs of the association is pivotal in deciding location preferences. For managing the day-to-day affairs of the association, a hierarchical structure consisting of administrative leadership is entrusted to members who have educational and practical experience in managing the organization.43

THE AFRICAN IMMIGRANT AS AGENT OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL CHANGE African immigrants are actively involved in the affairs of their respective home societies and communities. This keen interest in home affairs is structured on the ethos that that migration can be used as a strategy to alter the economic and social circumstances of relatives and communities to secure better standards of living for Africans.44 An important aspect of the cultural identities of Africa émigrés is the growing significance of diaspora philanthropy. Diaspora charitable organizations have become an institutionalized feature of transnational African migrant identities. Whether loosely organized or well-structured philanthropy, these formal and informal networks are filling the void in government-sponsored developments by launching their own initiatives to alter the cultural, social, and economic landscapes of African countries. To date, a majority of the African nations have not been successful in formulating comprehensive and centralized mechanisms to incorporate their graduates, skilled professionals, and immigrant diaspora communities in the tasks of development and nation-building. This under-utilization of skills is a major hindrance to economic and social development in the region. Every sector of Africa’s institutional life and culture continues to grapple with how to harness all the available human and natural resources to launch effective schemes and programs to tackle persistent problems such as poverty, poor health, stymied economies, and ecological fragilities, to mention but a few. Despite the magnitude of the problems facing them, African immigrants in particular manifest an indomitable spirit and a belief that some, if not all, of the problems affecting the region can be overcome or minimized. This is reflected in the findings from the survey and focus group sessions which suggest that a growing number of African immigrants in the United

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States continue to redefine their identities by positioning them within the overall imperative and need to assist in fostering economic and social development of their home nations and the continent as a whole. What emerged from the study is that many of the immigrants are repositioning themselves to do for their countries what foreign aid and bilateral and multilateral donor assistance has yet to accomplish—to embark upon grassroots community social and economic development schemes to provide people with the hope and prospects of a brighter future. For many of the immigrants, the opportunities presented by international migration are seen as the channel to uplift individual families at home while at the same time providing meaningful economic development projects designed to ameliorate some of the chronic problems confronting most parts of Africa, particularly the rural areas where the bulk of the population resides. The role of the African immigrant as a community developer takes on several forms. As seen, the financial remittances immigrants send home is a significant undertaking and initiative. These financial remittances operate at the micro-level of social and cultural life. They constitute the fulcrum of extended family capital and resource mobilization for launching small capital projects which are sorely needed throughout Africa today. For African countries, a critical issue will be how to effectively incorporate and harness diaspora resources into economic development schemes.45 Equally significant for the African governments are how to create the synergies to mobilize the capital resources of their diaspora populations, but also how to integrate immigrants’ ideas and new ways of thinking gained while living abroad. It is the other forms of economic and social assistance provided by African immigrants that are beginning to change the lives of at-large community groups and constituents. The data from the immigrant focus group sessions and the survey showed the extent of immigrant involvement in community and social development beyond the familial unit of economic production. Nearly 85 percent of the immigrants in both the focus group and survey indicated that they are involved in programs organized by African immigrants abroad to provide basic infrastructural facilities and amenities for entire villages and communities. Topping the list of social and community development assistance provided by immigrants include giving funds for the construction of feeder roads and bridges to connect rural food production sites to markets and commercial centers. This is followed by the construction of cultural institutions such as schools in rural areas. This was cited by 77 percent of the study participants. A close third area is the collection of funds by various diaspora communities in order to ship loads of medical and hospital supplies to rural clinics. (This was cited by 73 percent of the study participants.) The collection of new and used clothing, as well as computers and textbooks to be shipped to Africa, was ranked

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as the fourth diaspora development activity engaged in by the immigrants. More than two-thirds (68 percent) of the respondents indicated that they participate in and support activities of NGOs specifically set up by private organizations and foundations (including those founded by immigrants abroad) to provide direct economic and cultural assistance to communities in Africa. One third (35 percent) of the immigrants are aware of the activities of NGOs and immigrant-based economic and cultural activities in their own countries. The cultural institutions the African immigrants set up following migration to implement these strategies have already been mentioned. These include the immigrant village and hometown associations, the alumnae associations, religious and worship centers, and the national immigrant associations. It is through these organizations that the Africans abroad are able to maintain strong connections with their respective homelands and places of origination. Once they find themselves in transnational spaces, tribal, ethnic, religious, national, and educational differences are minimized and bridged. These differences are replaced by an overarching broad agenda embedded in African nationalism and a shared destiny whose aim is to re-center African issues as an equal partner in global cultural society. Toward this end, the immigrants project a broad-based identity that transcends differences and instead embraces community ethos and orientation, posited on the belief that the opportunities garnered from the migration process can be beneficial not only to the immigrants themselves and their families, but equally to their communities at large. It is significant that these forms of community development resources are channeled directly to the source, bypassing official and bureaucratic agencies where corruption, cronyism, and political patronages are commonplace. The infusion of direct economic and cultural assistance brings more value added to community social infrastructure and development than locally induced central government assistance. When African governments formulate or allocate economic and cultural development projects, the benefactors are usually directed to politically loyal districts and constituents, rather than allocating development projects in districts needing assistance the most. Seeking to find ways and strategies to assist in the community development of their respective homelands is considered an important aspect of sharing the dividends of international migration.46 The roles played by African immigrant diaspora communities have yet to be integrated into development and policy initiatives. As indicated, African governments themselves have yet to tap the human resources and assets of their citizens living abroad. Understanding the dynamic roles played by these immigrants in the lives of their homeland cultural communities become critical as these countries seek to find ways to ameliorate the hardships faced by many of their citizens. International migration and the

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economic and cultural opportunities it creates are utilized as the channels to effect and implement social changes in Africa. The anchoring of African immigrant identities in the United States has come full circle. The immigrants represent a mélange of cultural and social identities that are not centered on purely limited domains or issues. Instead, their immigrant identities (like their myriad of cultures) are manifested by a wide and broad array of issues that pertain not only to their race and ethnicity but equally to issues confronting Africa and the world at large. The immigrants have moved away from the cultural depictions often associated with Africa and its people as a land of diseases, war, famine, violence, corruption, extreme poverty, and deprivation, a place where everything has gone awry. Their identities continue to shift in response to the changing realities of international migration brought upon by globalization and the spread of capital. Certainly, the boundaries of their identities have become enlarged due to their incorporation into the global economy. And to ensure their adaptation and continuity in the black diaspora world, these immigrants have found it fitting to rely on rituals imported from home to cement their stay in the host society. Embedded in the identities that these immigrants are manifesting are hopes, aspirations, dreams, and a belief that they can play a vital role in changing international perceptions about Africa through gradual uplifting and empowerment of the people. These immigrants portray and represent cultures and identities that are not fixed, but instead dynamic, very fluid, and truly global. They manifest global identities that are constantly shifting and undergoing cultural and economic metamorphosis. The immigrants have enlarged their cultural and economic domains to enable them to confront and deal with their marginalized statuses as minorities and foreign-born. The enlargement of their social fields and domains that are formed within the nexus of international migration are designed to transform African cultural heritage and give it new contexts and meanings in global formulations. These formulations are themselves designed to eschew the notion that as a group, African immigrants are homogeneous with monolithic cultural systems that can often be interchanged or be reduced to simple categorizations. The construction of transnational African immigrant identities is linked with the colonial identities and legacies that define the collective experiences of the immigrants. These identities are inextricably associated with the marginalized and racialized status of African immigrants in the United States. Stepping outside the realities shaping their immigrant identities is a manifestation of their desire to enlarge the confines and boundaries of their class, ethnic, tribal, racial, and Pan African circles and networks in order to incorporate different spheres of cultural influences and prisms. Social identities are often sites for conflicts waged sometimes over how identities are negotiated and constructed. African immigrant identities are

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equally subject to tensions and conflicts. Cultural, ethnic, clan, and tribal schisms and conflicts abound, although these differences are masked in the migratory process. These are the same differences that often have been at the center and the root causes of cultural and ethnic clashes in Africa, the consequences of which have had lasting impacts on national and pannational cross-group integration and economic and social development throughout most parts of Africa. The continuity of these transnational immigrant identities will be tested by how as a group the African immigrants are able to resolve differences emanating from the class, gender, ethnic, tribal, and clan fragmentations that continue to cause rift and social dissensions across the continent. Their presence in the United States may mitigate and ease the cross-grouping conflicts but long term, the scope and intensity of these conflicts may influence and redefine the content of African transnational immigrant identities in foreign domains. For those among them who enter the country with poor work and educational skills, the formation of identities may hinge primarily on labor force participation where they are likely to encounter racism and discrimination in the workplace which ultimately can impact on the identities that they will forge. For these lowwage immigrants, identity will be constructed around economic concerns rather than focusing on issues of pan-ethnic, clan, tribal, or African nationalism. Their marginalized economic status and roles will peripheralize their issues, creating pockets of disenfranchisement and protracted alienation from the body polity of American society. Continued African migrations to the United States will add to the internal diversities of African émigrés along varied sociocultural, economic, and political categorizations. This process will enrich the African immigrant diaspora communities but at the same time it may compound difficulties by heightening divisions and fragmentations, thereby thwarting the formation of inter-group alliances and coalitions to nestle African immigrant transnational identities.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF AFRICAN IMMIGRANT TRANSNATIONAL DIASPORA IDENTITIES The identities manifested by the African immigrant communities in the United States are subject to stresses and pressures emanating from segments of the host society that want to protect their culture and institutions from the influences of mass migration, particularly from non-European countries. The cultural and economic terrain of immigration has changed remarkably since the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan came to office. Reagan’s tenure marked the ascendancy and a spike in political groundswell of anti-immigration fervor across the country. Conservative and neoconservative politicians and policy makers alike spoke about new immigrants in

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derogatory tones, often scapegoating them as the source of various fiscal crises facing municipal, county, and state agencies.47 There was no acknowledgement of the positive contributions that immigrants, legal and illegal, bring to the American cultural and economic experiences. The majority of the African immigrants are aware of this shift in immigration ideologies in the United States. Their (immigrant) vilification by media analysts who claim to be protecting the cultural values of the United States from being eroded and overrun by foreigners continues to push more and more of the new immigrants into isolation or into a subterranean world of immigrant life and work. This voluntary isolationism springs from legitimate fears emanating from the rising tide of public anti-immigrant fervor in the United States. As public confidence in the American economy erodes and hundreds of thousands of manufacturing and service-related jobs leave the country, more and more Americans are beginning to experience job insecurities. Recessionary pressures in the housing market, ballooning national deficits, and “stagflation” have left Americans wondering if they can afford to retire, can educate their children, or can even keep their jobs. As a subordinate group with little social and political power, immigrants, including those who are in the country illegally, are blamed in part for this economic quandary. The result is that thousands of immigrants who are qualified to become American citizens rush to apply for citizenship so that they can have another layer of protection in uncertain economic and political times. For undocumented and illegal immigrants, the hope is that amnesty legislation will be enacted by Congress so that they too can come out of the shadows and fully engage with the American system and participate in the affairs of the country. However, the deepening recession, the mortgage meltdown, and the near-collapse of the financial markets coupled with rising unemployment rates has dimmed the prospects that the Obama administration will tackle and reform the immigration system, a task the Bush administration tried unsuccessfully to achieve. Mass unemployment, job layoffs, and business closures devastated the once robust and thriving economies of immigrant-rich states like Florida, Nevada, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, California, and North Carolina. Immigrant-rich Michigan recorded double-digit unemployment rates as the automotive industry downsized, trimming thousands of middle-class workers from the payroll. For the hundreds of thousands of undocumented African immigrants, the future of their migrant identities is going to be shaped, in part, by the outcome of the economic recession and public sentiments regarding the economy in particular. Looking to the future, the resolution of the plight of the estimated 20 million undocumented workers and their families residing in the United States would impact upon how these African immigrants assimilate and seek full incorporation into American society. One may surmise that the

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future of the United States as a global power will hinge on how well it is able to incorporate and improve upon the living standards of its diverse immigrant population. Harnessing the human resources of all the immigrants, Africans as well as others, would go a long way in defining a new paradigm of racial and ethnic diversity and cultural tolerance in the United States. African immigrants who enter the country are risk takers, filled with ambitions and the hopes they have of becoming successful in America. Sometimes severely limited because of poor linguistic skills, the new immigrants must overcome many obstacles, but their resilience and strong work ethic enable most of them to build networks of familial support to minimize the impact of their low economic status in America. This adaptive mechanism and the drive to become successful lie at the root of their growing importance to the strength and competitiveness of America’s economy. Economic security and cultural survival are critical to the immigrants’ formation of transnational identities. Maintaining and fostering close economic relationships with familial and non-familial associates in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere in the world is intended to ensure that the immigrants will have access to a wealth of resources to enable them to confront the challenges of meeting their daily economic needs. This form of global and transnational resource mobilization is an economic enabler: it brings together African immigrants who have come to recognize that the linchpin for their survival in the West rests on their abilities to create and cultivate economic relationships whose principal goal is the empowerment of immigrants and the institution of their family units. By conceiving of family in transnational terminologies, these immigrant Africans are able to mobilize resources from all over the world to change their economic and social circumstances in the West as well as in Africa generally. The altruistic intra-group economic relationships among the immigrants are shaped by the immigrants’ sense of the alienating effects of Western individualist culture which puts stress on individual needs. Once formed, these nodes of transnational identities come to have a significant impact on the migratory experiences of African immigrants. Through these relationships and the identities that are formed, decisions are made about a wide range of issues, notably the sharing of information about occupational and work-related opportunities, secondary migration and relocation decisionmaking, future migration sponsorships, and how to maintain strong and viable economic linkages with relatives at home in Africa. The broadening of the African immigrant household to include relatives living far away from the United States fosters a new household economy based on features of communal or traditional economies but rooted in the modern capitalist system of economic and industrial production. Savings, investment in the collective human resources of the extended family unit, collective as opposed to individualized goals, and the sharing of financial resources all

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lie at the base of how the African immigrants have managed to reconstruct their lives in the United States. As seen, the main goal of this cooperative ethos is to harness the collective resources of all family members to achieve group-defined goals. Culturally, the importance of the formation of transnational nodes of immigrant identities among the African immigrants is posited on the notion that the social construction and negotiation of identities among marginalized minority African immigrants living in foreign locales can have a deleterious impact on the migratory experience. For African immigrants in the United States, the cultural networks are therefore created to serve as pathways for entering the public domain, and to transform invisibility based on minority status and racial and ethnic subordination into a visible, culturally affirming, and powerful image that celebrates intersections of black cultures. The shared cultural roles and the multiple identities that are manifested by these experiences are intended, both in the short and long term, to serve as an alliance and reference group to buttress African cultural heritages and legacies in America. The civic importance of this shared cultural essence is that it provides an outlet for the immigrants to connect with the host society and participate in its social affairs. It is also a means of affirming and using group and collective economic and cultural security to offset the trepidations and concerns that immigrants in general often associate with living in a foreign land.

NOTES 1. See Portes, A., and Bach, R. (1985). Latin Journey. Cuban and Mexican Immigrants in the United States. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 2. See Boyd, M. (1989). Family and Personal Networks in International Migration: Recent Developments and New Agendas. International Migration Review. Volume 23 (3): 638–70. 3. See Appadurai, Arjun (ed.). (2003). “Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination.” In Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press; Appiah, Kwame Anthony. (2006). Cosmopolitanism. Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. 4. See Fred W. Clothey’s (2006) discussions of how diaspora groups concept and create boundaries and rituals to support the cultural communities of immigrant minorities. 5. IRCA Public Law 99-603 was passed to control and deter illegal immigration into the United States. The major provisions include legalization of undocumented aliens living in the country since 1982, the legalization of agricultural workers, the enforcement of immigration laws at U.S. borders, and the imposition of fines and sanctions on employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers. The act sought to require employers to verify the employability and legal status of aliens before hiring them.

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6. U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics. Annual Flow Report, Department of Homeland Security. Washington, D.C. (March 2009). 7. Examples of nonimmigrant classes of admission include foreign government officials, temporary visitors for business or pleasure, aliens in transit, academic and vocational students, exchange visitors, victims of crimes, entertainers, treaty traders, and investors. See Office of Immigration Statistics. Department of Homeland Security Annual Flow Report. Washington, D.C. (April 2009). 8. See Table 1. Lawful Admissions and Issuances of Visas, 2000 to 2004. Immigration Policy in the United States. Congressional Budget Office, Congress of the United States, Washington, D.C. (February, 2006). 9. See Congressional Budget Office, Congress of the United States, Washington, D.C. (February, 2006). 10. High immigration admission states or countries are excluded from participating in the DVLP. This means nearly all of Western Europe is excluded. A country can also be designated as a low immigrant admission country if the number of immigrants from that country is lower than 50,000 over a five-year period. 11. See http://travel.state.gov/visa/immigrants and http://www.dvlottery.state .gov for participating countries, eligible occupations, and the administration and organization of the diversity visa lottery system. 12. These figures were calculated using information from Table 4: Immigrant Admissions Under the Diversity Program, by Region, 1997 to 2004. Congressional Budget Office, Congress of the United States, Washington, D.C. (February, 2006). 13. Though directed toward refugees from Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East escaping from communism, African refugees did benefit from the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 and 1954 and the Refugee Escapee Act of 1957, which sought to widen the scope of the definition of who constitutes a refugee. 14. The 1980 Refugee Act repealed the limits on refugees coming from communist countries and redefined a refugee in accordance with UN protocols. The act made provisions for providing federal support and resettlement of refugees in the United States. In stressing the need for the United States to recognize the plight of people fleeing persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political orientation, the act facilitated the resettlements of refugees from noncommunist countries and war-torn countries in Africa to be resettled in the country. 15. For detailed information about Muslims in the United States, see Karen Isaksen Leonard’s (2003) work: Muslims in the United States. The State of Research. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 16. See Geneive Abdo. (2007). Mecca and Main Street. Muslim Life in America after 9/11. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. See also, McCloud (2006) about Muslims in American society. 17. See Arthur (2000, 2008, 2009). 18. See Gilroy (1993), Cohen (1995), Liegeois and Gheorghe (1995), and Hourani and Shehadi (1993). 19. I use the term to refer to the interdependent transnational sites African immigrants create to bolster their cultural presence following migration. An important feature of this transnationalism is the stress on systems and organizations that are intricately woven into the fabric of immigrant cultural life forms in both the

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migrant homeland and the host society where they are domiciled. This system of transnationalism is also inclusive of extended kinship networks who are domiciled in other migratory circuits or destinations. Together, the kinship members constitute an organic whole or unit whose members share collective economic and cultural goals. 20. For a detailed discussion of the comparison of past and present articulations of immigrant transnationalism, see Nancy Foner’s comparison of transnational ties forged by Russian Jews and Italians in America with their respective home countries in Europe at the turn of the 20th century. 21. Nancy Foner (2001). Islands in the City. West Indian Migration to New York. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. Foner describes a similar relationship that black Caribbean immigrants establish with the islands that they leave behind to come to the United States. 22. Stephane Dufoix’s (2008:59–79) four typologies of how immigrants form transnational diaspora experiences abroad is significant here because embedded in the transnational associations, networks, and institutions African immigrants create are Dufoix’s centroperipheral, enclaved, atopic, and antagonistic elements. In the centroperipheral mode is the immigrant organization of a “national community in the host society which links the migrant to his home country. The enclaved mode involves the local organization of an immigrant community within a host society. The atopic mode has a trans-state feature and it refers to the way of being in the world between states that is built around a common origin. The antagonistic mode describes the transnational activities of immigrants who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the current regime in their country of origin.” For detailed description of these four typologies, see Stephane Dufoix (2008). Diasporas. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 23. See Chamberlain (2006). 24. See Pnina Werbner’s (1990), Fred Clothey’s (2006), and Parminder Bhachu’s (1985) accounts of how Asian immigrants utilize similar familial-based institutional networks to forge inclusion in their migratory societies and organize their resources to optimize their economic status and integration. 25. Mary Chamberlain (2006) depicts similar familial arrangements among Afro-Caribbean families stressing in particular how family organization and structure promoted unique black Caribbean and West Indian diaspora identities at home and in the West. 26. See Nicole Rodriguez Toulis (1997) for detailed information about how African and West Indian immigrants shape and construct their identities in the West against the backdrop of white colonial negative images and stereotypes of peoples of black African descent and ancestry. 27. See, for example, Mary Chamberlain (2006) and Elaine Bauer and Paul Thompson (2006). 28. See Deborah Bryceson and Ulla Vuorela (eds.). (2002). The Transnational Family. New European Frontiers and Global Networks. Oxford, England: Berg Publishers. 29. Khalid Koser’s (2003) study of Iranian immigrants in the Netherlands also found that social networks formed along familial and kin-based lines can serve as principal conduits for sponsoring selected family members to travel abroad. As Koser noted, these social networks play a major role in identifying the migration

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destination, the available financial support for prospective migrants, and information on how to tap into the economic resources of previous immigrants who have already settled in the destination countries. 30. Suzanne Model’s work on the formation of immigrant ethnic enclaves by black, Italians, and Jews in New York City is an example of how immigrant job prospects are enhanced through ethnic enclaves. 31. Elaine Bauer and Paul Thompson’s (2006) book entitled Jamaica. Hands Across the Atlantic provides a comparative analogy of how Jamaicans also use similar structures and organizational settings to allow family members to engage international migration. 32. See, for example, James (1999), for how African migrants construct identities using vast networks of familial and kin-group resources to celebrate their cultures and at the same time preserve their cultural institutions. 33. See Nyberg-Sorenson, Ninna. (2004). Migrant Remittances as a Development Tool. The Case of Morocco. Migration Policy Research Working Paper Series. Number 2. Geneva: IOM. 34. See Bersselaar’s (2005) account of how Igbo migrants in Nigeria created institutional structures to enable them to “imagine home” as they live their migrant lives and identities in new geographic settings during the colonial era. 35. See Hakim Adi’s (1998) work on West Africans in Britain during 1900 to 1960. 36. See Abraham, Knife. (1991). Politics of Black Nationalism. From Harlem to Soweto. Trenton, NJ: African World Press. Manning Nash. (1962). “Race and the Ideology of Race.” Current Anthropology. Volume 3: 285–88. 37. See Asante, Molefi Kete. (1998). Afrocentricity. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 38. For detailed commentary on Afrocentrism, see Stephen, Howe. (1998). Afrocentrism. Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes. London: Verso. 39. See Fanon, Frantz. (1985). Wretched of the Earth. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin. 40. See Kanneh, Kadiathu. (1998). African Identities. London and New York: Routledge. 41. For a discussion of the concept of social capital and its role in the formation of immigrant networks and cultural diasporic communities, see Halter (2007), Ogbaa (2003), Stoller (2002), and Coleman (1998). 42. See Portes and Zhou (1993) and Portes (1998) for discussions of the multiple ways whereby immigrants to the United States use multiple pathways via assimilation and acculturation to forge inclusion and social participation in the affairs of the host society. See also Bloemrad, Irene. (2006). Becoming a Citizen. Incorporating Immigrants and Refugees in the United States and Canada. Berkeley: University of California Press; Cohen, Robin. (1997). Global Diaspora. An Introduction. London: UC London Press. 43. See Thomas Y. Owusu’s (2000) account of the role of the Ghanaian immigrant associations in Toronto, Canada. 44. See Sheffer, Gabriel. (2003). Diaspora Politics. At Home Abroad. New York: Cambridge University Press. 45. See Ozden, Calglar, and Schiff, Maurice (eds.). (2006). International Migration, Remittances, and the Brain Drain. Washington, D.C.: World Bank; Maimbo,

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Samuel Munzele and Ratha, Dilip. (2005). Remittances. Development Impact and Future Prospects (eds.). Washington, D.C.: World Bank. 46. For additional information, see Bryce-LaPorte, Roy, and Mortimer, Delores (eds). 1976. Caribbean Immigration to the United States. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution; Bryce-LaPorte, Roy. (1972). “Black Immigrants: The Experience of Invisibility and Inequality.” Journal of Black Studies. Volume 3:29–56; Bashi. (1997, 1998a, 1998b). 47. September 11, 2001, aggravated and inflamed anti-immigration sentiments and fears in the United States. It sparked public debate about the imperative of tightening immigration policies, border surveillance, and monitoring the illegal immigrant population, hastened deportation proceedings, and created massive bureaucratic structures (including Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration) to streamline immigration and border enforcements in terms of admissibility. It also intensified immigration raids and whipped up congressional frenzy to protect the northern and southern borders by the passage of legislation allowing the construction of walls and fences on the southern fringes of the border with Mexico.

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4 Rationalizing the Meanings of African Migrations

As a group, African immigrants now constitute a growing component of what some have dubbed the “new migration” to the United States coming from non-European destinations such as Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia. Coming to the United States from a variety of cultures and traditions, African immigrants have to define how the identities they seek to manifest or construct are going to be viewed and perhaps contested by the members of the host society. For African émigrés, the process of identification begins by defining who these immigrants are, what brings them to the United States, and their individual or group expressions of what it means to be an African immigrant. Through the lenses that these immigrants define their presence in the United States, subjective and objective meanings are contextualized and brought together to undergird and structure what it means to have an African immigrant identity.1 Social and cultural identities are structured to have content and meaning. The meanings formed from identities are often communicated, negotiated, shared, and given resonance within specific social and cultural genres. As social actors, the meanings that African immigrants give to their diasporic experiences are significant representations of African cultural forms and systems of social life. The meanings brought to bear on migrant diasporic experiences are designed to link, accentuate, and place African perspectives about life within the overall contexts of international migration. The meanings and rationalizations African immigrants give to their diasporic formations are core to understanding the internal structure and cultural boundaries the immigrants specify as they forge inclusion or exclusion in their host society. The articulation of the meanings that are given by the immigrants to explain their migratory sagas also points to the sources of the stresses and strains or the conflicts 119

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arising from the problems posed by balancing expectations between the migrant-sending and destination societies.2 The global entry of Africans in transnational migration is imbued with subjective and objective meanings. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the meanings and rationalizations formed by African immigrants in association with their migratory experiences in the United States. Migrant identity formation is an important facet of incorporation into the host society. African migrants straddle between the cultural traditions imported from Africa while at the same time cautiously embracing selective aspects of the cultures and traditions of the United States. The negotiation of this complex relationship combines with factors operating in both the sources of migrant origination and destination countries to shape the outcomes of how these immigrants attribute meanings to their migratory experiences.3 The sources of these meanings that African migrants have come to associate with diaspora identities are discussed from economic (structural and nonstructural issues affecting African migration, including migrant articulation of “home” and status integration via the mechanism of home ownership), sociopolitical rationalizations of migration (the context of social and political environment of African migrations), and civic and psychological rationalizations of migration (migrant issues related to citizenship and naturalization, including repatriation). The discussion aims at unraveling how these meanings are articulated and given actualization among African émigrés in the United States. The broader sociological implications of migrant rationalizations are cast within the framework of issues affecting Africa and its role in global migration.

FORMULATING THE ECONOMIC RATIONALIZATIONS AND MEANINGS OF AFRICAN MIGRATION Economic rationalizations are the dominant motivations behind African migrations to the United States.4 The migration literature is filled with a plethora of studies delineating the importance and assessment of economic factors in explaining the reason(s) why people migrate. This emphasis, while laudable, tends to mask other covariates that are not easily estimable in delineating the meanings and outcomes that migrants associate with the decision to migrate. From the perspective of economic theory, migrants move to places of high economic opportunities to fulfill one main objective—raise their human capital potential and maximize their standard of living. This view suggests that migration is a calculated act (cost-benefit analysis) implemented to provide the migrant and their family relatively higher wages than what they would earn if they did not migrate. However, for African immigrants as a group, economic factors framed within the

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human capital perspective alone are not sufficient to capture the broader range of issues underpinning their migratory experiences. In the human capital approach to migration, the risks associated with moving are factored into the decision to migrate. So are the probabilities of finding employment and earning higher wages, being able to afford the actual costs of moving, assessment of linguistic and cultural barriers, and the presence or absence of social and familial networks. The importance of economic factors in spurring migration among Africans is undisputed. To improve upon the human capital of their members, families organize their resources to tap into the economic and cultural benefits of international migration. In Africa today, migration has become the mode of incorporation into the global economic and cultural production systems. For many families in Africa today, migration is rationalized as a poverty-reduction strategy designed to raise the overall standards of family members. Families may band together to share the cost of traveling abroad.5 Toward this goal, family members may harness their resources, including at times the sale of valuable family treasures (jewelry, other cultural artifacts, and land) to pay for the cost of sending a promising son or daughter abroad.6 Upon the completion of his or her study, the family member is expected to contribute remittances to support other family members, particularly the elderly and siblings, and other extended family members. Many African families have come to develop and associate higher education with the prospects of international migration to the United States or the West in general. Education gives access to the economic opportunities found in the United States. It also serves as a conduit for global incorporation as well-educated graduates can find high-paying jobs someplace else other than in Africa.7 For many African immigrants, the rationalizations of the benefits or costs of coming to the United States are often cast to reflect (at the micro-level) the economic benefits that individual migrant families stand to gain in undertaking the journey to the United States. As they enter the United States, African immigrants, including those coming from elsewhere, are faced with complex bureaucratic hurdles in the form of paperwork and visa categories now available to them. For those who were part of the “old” migration from Western and Eastern Europe, these new requirements will definitely be seen as too restrictive. For Africans and other groups constituting the “new” migration, these hurdles are rationalized as necessary outcome to establish legal or permanent residency in the United States. Successfully navigating these rules can point the immigrant to a better life than what they are accustomed to at home. Another level where the rationalization of the outcomes of migration is articulated is at the macro-level of extended family relationships and the need to strengthen the economic standing of extended family units by incorporating their members into the global economy via work and the opportunities to maximize total family income. The

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high economic expectations these migrants associate with their presence in the United States is at the core of the increased family chain migration by African immigrants. Some African immigrant families may combine their resources to support the relocation of other family members to destinations in the United States where economic opportunities are relatively better than the current place of residence. Multiple migrations are therefore common. Scouting different communities, towns, and cities in America to evaluate the comparative economic advantages they offer is commonplace.8 The goal is often to improve upon their economic outlook and at the same time offer financial support to other family members in the United States and in Africa. By not confining their settlement patterns to specific locales, some of the immigrants fare better than other ethnic and immigrant minorities who do not engage in internal migrations upon arriving in the United States. The meanings or rationalizations migrants form or develop from their migratory experiences are significant not only for the migrant themselves, but also for their host societies and the immigrant-sending countries. Migrants enrich the cultures of their host societies, adding immensely to the ethnic diversity of the host society. The net economic contributions that migrants make to the host society are undeniable. Yet migrants do not sever ties completely with their home countries. After they leave home, migrants usually maintain social, cultural, political, and economic ties with their places of origination. Some of the migrants form benevolent or mutual aid philanthropic societies to assist in homeland development. The assistance they offer may include building schools and clinics, digging wells, providing school uniforms for needy children, funding adult literacy programs, and providing civic and political education. As outlined earlier, in the case of African immigrants as a group, the relationship with home is maintained through remittances, visits, voluntary repatriations, sponsoring relatives to come to the United States, and maintaining a keen interest in the political, social, cultural, and economic affairs of home. More and more people are clamoring and yearning for the chance to leave their home countries in the developing world to travel to the developed nations to pursue economic activities or to access opportunities that will enable them to send regular remittances to support their families.9 Researching the mechanisms and processes whereby these transnational relationships are maintained and nurtured will add to existing knowledge on migrant identities and cultures. This area of sociological inquiry is important because it provides the nexus for understanding the nature of how immigrants, as a group, structure ideas and definitions about their migratory experiences. When they define the economic rationalizations underpinning their migration, African immigrants tend to stress the need for their continued membership in the global economic systems of production. For several of these immigrants, the

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expectation or belief is that with their economic participation and involvement in global production, they can offset or at least find ways to reduce and minimize the impact of the extensive economic problems affecting the whole region. In their conversations and observations about the economic motivations behind their migrations, these immigrants articulate the idea that Africans need to reorient themselves to new ways of thinking about their place and role in world affairs. This new way of thinking recognizes the imperative of the need for Africans to collectively resist the entrenched peripheralization, neglect, and subordination of their status as economically dependent and impoverished countries whose fortunes are predicated on the magnanimity of the richer countries. Core to the belief systems of some of the immigrants is that Africans are capable of directing and controlling their own destinies with assistance from global partners or countries that are genuinely interested in promoting the well-being and advancement of Africa. For these immigrants therefore, the opportunity to engage in international migration is a challenge as well as responsibility. The challenge is to show that Africans are capable of competing in the global labor market. The responsibilities emanating from this challenge are that through the instrument of migration, unmet and unfulfilled aspirations and dreams can be rekindled to give hope to the many in Africa whose lives are shattered by economic miseries. Nurturing and sustaining this hope is at the heart of the reason why many of these immigrants never sever ties with their home countries. It is also the reason many of them continue to be active in economic and cultural development programs at home.10 An analysis of the data examining how African immigrants formulate rationalizations associated with their migratory experiences revealed some poignant findings. An overwhelming number of immigrants consider international migration as beneficial and significant in altering their economic status. Migration is rationalized as a family income–enhancing strategy designed to raise the economic position of the migrants’ extended family units (table 4.1). To achieve social and economic mobility, the majority of the immigrants concurred that Africans have to look beyond the continent if they are to fulfill their economic aspirations and dreams. No matter the type of work available to them in the West, the migratory process is rationalized as offering better economic outcomes relative to what is available in Africa. Migrants stand the chance of earning relatively higher wages in the West. Holding jobs that most of them indicated they would not perform at home, many of the immigrants focus on the wage differentials between work in Africa and the West in general. A considerable number of immigrants and their families enjoy standards of living that most would not have attained if they had stayed in Africa. In a sense, these migrants are risk-takers who calculate that the economic cost of not migrating will have dire consequences not only for them but for their families as well.

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Migration improves standard of living and economic well-being The opportunity to earn higher wages promotes migration Migrant families at home gain as a result of migration The benefactors of migration are the sending countries The benefactors of migration are the receiving countries Migration causes brain drain and skill shortage Migration stalls economic development Migration has become a force for social change in Africa African immigrant-sending countries cannot sustain the continued loss of their human resources Migration is once-in-a-lifetime chance for social mobility African immigrants work jobs most will not perform at home Migrants fare better economically than non-migrants To become successful, Africans have to migrate to the West Migration is a poverty-reduction strategy As a group, African immigrants are altruistic and nationalistic

Statement

Table 4.1. Immigrant Representations of the Meanings of Migration

43 38 32 45 25 37 39 32 35 32 38 34 39 44 37

40 50 62 48 51 28

Agree %

40 49 63 15 33 33 37 56 44

Strongly Agree %

10 6 2 9 3 12

7 5 2 14 20 10 8 3 8

Strongly Disagree %

13 3 2 3 1 15

8 3 2 22 15 11 9 5 9

Disagree %

5 3 0 1 1 8

2 5 1 4 7 9 7 4 4

Don’t Know %

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Migration fulfills a psychological satisfaction of well-being African governments should not tax citizens who migrate Restrictionist migration polices in the West are anti-Africa The benefits of migration outweigh the perceived costs Migrant remittances outweigh foreign assistance Immigrants transfer resources to aid homeland development Remittances targeting consumption stall economic growth Remittances foster dependency on diaspora relatives Migration and globalization promote economic development Pressure to support family members causes migration Manpower and skill shortages are not attributable to migration Advanced nations must compensate the LDCs for brain drain Migration causes inequalities in migrant/non-migrant families Migration eases social tensions for Africa’s governments Policies designed to retain skilled population are ineffective Migration is an unavoidable consequence of globalization Structural adjustments and debt servicing promote migration Unfair trade practices limit Africa’s foreign exchange earnings Corruption is not a cause of African migration Violence against women causes African migration Violence and civil unrests are not root causes of African migrations Migrants are unpatriotic/selfish, looking out for their economic interests

58 42 34 32 36 44 22 28 23 43 32 16 33 27 29 35 33 26 16 20 42 9

22 37 28 28 40 32 35 34 22 32 28 13 37 24 38 31 35 34 18 29 38 6

4 10 9 15 8 10 18 14 22 11 15 31 12 21 10 13 9 12 34 17 15 45

9 7 15 11 12 9 13 15 18 6 12 28 14 22 15 12 14 15 27 22 2 28

7 4 14 14 4 5 12 9 15 8 13 12 4 6 8 9 9 13 5 12 3 12

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Economic issues dominate the formulations of the meanings of immigration. The majority of the immigrants identified positive aspects of migration. These include migrants’ perception that: (1) migrant remittances outweighs bilateral and multilateral foreign aid; (2) international migration enables the immigrants to transfer their resources, skills, assets, and resources to aid in homeland development; (3) international migration is a potent force of social change in Africa; (4) international migration is an unavoidable consequence of globalization and capital dispersion; (5) international migration promotes sustainable development and globalization; and (6) international migration fulfills a psychological need promoting migrants’ personal well-being.11 Migration opens up new vistas of opportunities for the immigrants and their families. These opportunities are not available to nonmigrants in Africa except for those who work with major multinational corporations, banks, and financial institutions, or operate their own businesses. Even among these elites, occasional travel to the West is imperative because it affords them the opportunity to update their credentials by attending refresher courses or to develop economic networks to support their businesses.12 The immigrants attach a lot of significance to remittances. The majority of the immigrants agreed that remittances targeting family consumption rather than economic production are not inimical to economic growth in Africa. Remittances play a major role in ensuring economic survival of entire family units. Families rely on the remittances to meet basic economic needs such as food, housing, clothing, and healthcare. Institutional remittances African migrants abroad send home supporting schools, hospitals, literacy, and civic education for adults, and providing water in rural areas are only a few of the uses of remittances.13 Some of the immigrants set up nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to bypass inefficient and at times corrupt government agencies by transferring their remittances directly to community agencies working in development. Additionally, some remittances are channeled toward the establishment of small-scale businesses which then become the main source of family income. The immigrants were in agreement that sending remittances home does not foster a culture of economic dependency. After all, as the immigrants perceived, most of the relatives at home will not be able to survive without the regular remittances sent from abroad. However, the immigrants also acknowledged that remittances aggravate economic inequalities by increasing the economic and class gap between families receiving remittances and those that do not. These inequalities heighten social and political tensions for African governments which if not resolved can become a source of political agitation and/or violence. Remittances may also lead to more migration by creating cultural and economic aspirations and needs that can only be met by going abroad. Families and individuals without any family member or friend abroad to send remittances may feel

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economically deprived relative to households or individuals who receive support. This motivation may lie behind some of the unplanned, illegal, and often precarious but voluntary migrations involving walking from West Africa through the Sahara desert to the Mediterranean and hopefully, to the European Union or to the United States. Despite their positive perceptions about the benefits of international migration, the respondents also raised some concerns about the deleterious impact of migration on Africa’s march to achieve economic independence. The immigrants oppose any policies by their home governments to impose restrictions on foreign travel in a bid to curb the continent’s brain drain. Most immigrants are also in agreement that the African immigrantsending countries cannot sustain the continued loss of their human resources to the West. However, Africa’s manpower and skill labor shortages, the immigrants rationalized, are not caused solely by international migration. The continent’s economic woes, they explained, are caused, in part, by low manufacturing and industrial production and huge foreign debt obligation, coupled with the mismanagement of resources and institutionalized culture of corruption and thievery. Other causes of the economic problems in African migrant-sending countries cited by the immigrants include unfair global trade practices, a persistent culture of violence, structural adjustment policies, and wealth inequalities between the developed and developing regions of the world. These structural factors are also major causes of migration.14 The immigrants remain supportive of African central government policies to improve the living and working conditions of skilled and educated workers to retain their labor force. These policies include providing better wages, salaries, and benefits for skilled and professional workers. Some of the countries of Africa (Ghana and Nigeria) have started putting in place measures to achieve this goal. In Ghana, the salaries of nurses, doctors, other allied health service workers, university lecturers, and scientists have increased significantly during the latter part of Dr. Kufuor’s administration. By all accounts, the current administration headed by Dr. Atta-Mills is also putting in place measures to raise the salaries and improve the working conditions of skilled professionals. These measures, though laudable, are fraught with bureaucratic encumbrances, thereby rendering them ineffective in stemming the tide of African skilled labor outmigration. Stabilization of consumer prices to offset inflationary cycles, including the need to keep worker strike actions to a minimum, are some of the ways that Africa’s central governments are trying to minimize worker frustrations with poor working conditions and low salaries—often major considerations in the decision to emigrate. From the perspective of African immigrants, restrictionist immigration policies in the migrant destinations in the Western countries which seek to curtail migration from Africans amount to discrimination and anti–Third

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World policies. The immigrants noted that the developed countries benefit significantly from the migration of skilled labor from Africa. However, they rejected the idea that migrant-receiving nations in the West ought to compensate the less-developed countries for the brain drain to the West. Many see their migration as a voluntary and personal act undertaken without governmental role. Some of the migrants stressed the imbalance in wealth, inequality, and standards of living between Northern and Southern Hemisphere countries. Economic stagnation propels migration from the migrantsending countries to the more affluent countries in the West. As long as this gap persists, people are going to leave to the more prosperous countries. This is a fundamental fact of human life. The outcomes and meanings often associated with international migration are rationalized within the dynamics of familial households, including how best to enhance, strengthen, and protect the economic rights and status of family members (particularly women and children). The household is viewed as a social production unit whose primary goal is to empower its members. International migration is construed as a vital means to fulfill economic roles and expectations. Sending remittances home to support elderly parents or to pay for the school fees of younger siblings or extended relatives attending school, altruistic as it might be, is actually intended to position the family for long-term economic gains while maximizing the family’s access to resources. On the part of African immigrants, migration offers new possibilities for implementing and effecting economic and cultural social change. The quest for social change is premised on the view that the community at large is best enhanced if the collective resources of everyone are marshaled for the benefit of everyone. This approach recognizes that in the creation and distribution of economic goods and services, a premium is placed on collective enterprise rather than sectional and fragmented interests that are exploitative and nonequalitarian. It is also recognized that the needs of children and the elderly are primary and that male appropriation of production and any surpluses constitutes an unfair advantage men have historically capitalized to their benefit, sometimes to the exclusion of those whose labor and toil made the production process possible. The information presented in table 4.2 sheds light on migrant identification of some of the economic and social problems confronting the African countries. From the perspectives of these immigrants, these economic and social problems are major motivating factors in the decision to leave Africa. The data reveal that economic infrastructure problems, water and energy issues, HIV/AIDS, general mismanagement, huge foreign debts, and unchecked growth of urban centers are just a few of the problems confronting the countries of Africa. Other problems include declining food production, illiteracy, ecological degradation, lack of exports, and the inability to create robust organizational capacities to sustain economic growth. Oversubscrip-

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Table 4.2. Immigrant Identification and Ranking of Economic and Social Problems Confronting Africa Problem and Issue Economic infrastructural improvements Lack of water, dependable energy, and electricity Inadequate health sector services to combat malaria and HIV/AIDS Political cronyism and economic mismanagement and corruption Inability to manage huge foreign debts and misuse of foreign aid Subpar housing, unplanned megacities, shantytowns, slums Declining food production, overpopulation Illiteracy, poor nutrition, and sanitation Ecological and environmental degradation Restructuring primary production sector to promote export Creating robust organizational capacities to sustain economic growth Crime, violence, lawlessness, and erosion of civil and democratic regimes Inadequate trunk and feeder transportation facilities Oversubscription of imported goods to the detriment of local alternatives Outright neglect of rural social systems Unfair global trade and low commodity prices on market exchanges

Ranking

Percentage

1 2 3

94 91 86

4

82

5

76

6 7 8 9 10 11

73 72 69 68 66 58

12

52

13 14

48 42

15 16

38 29

tion of imported goods to the detriment of local alternatives, the outright neglect of rural social systems, and unfair global trade and low commodity prices all affect the migration of Africans to the more advanced and economically prosperous and developed countries. Immigrant awareness and articulation of the problems facing Africa suggest alternative approaches and ways whereby African governments can revitalize and revamp key sectors of their economies to ensure the global competitiveness of Africa. Attention to these problems can stem the tide of large-scale migration and the loss of skilled and unskilled labor. The inability of African governments to put in place an effective and sustainable campaign to reinvigorate their manufacturing and industrial sector was recognized by the immigrants as a major roadblock to economic takeoff. A manufacturing and industrial production sector is seen by the immigrants as a viable pathway to improve upon the foreign exchange earnings capacity of the African countries and at the same time create employment opportunities to stem the tide of transnational migration. In their rationalizations of what international migration holds for Africa’s future economic and cultural development, the immigrants reason

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that locally driven initiatives must accompany any measures or policies put in place by the central governments of Africa to restructure the region’s economic system. They decry Africa’s overreliance on foreign aid and public capital investments as opposed to alternate models, such as creating the conditions to attract private entrepreneurial initiatives involving the harnessing of diaspora immigrant assets and resources. From the immigrants’ perspectives, the postcolonial model of development followed by the African governments has failed to have any measurable impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. This model of development does not seek to invigorate the use of indigenous resources to promote economic and industrial production. Instead, many of the countries continue to follow a path of overdependence on foreign aid and centrally planned economies using state and public resources. After more than half a century, several of these state enterprises and foreign aid grants and loans have little to show in raising the standards of living of Africans. Table 4.3 sheds light on immigrants’ solutions to Africa’s economic and social problems. Investment in energy resources, sustainable urban and town planning and management, and the need to pass laws to protect the excessive exploitation of children were identified by the immigrants as solutions to the continent’s socioeconomic woes. Other suggestions to revitalize Table 4.3. Immigrant Solutions to Africa’s Economic and Social Problems Solutions Promote more investments in solar and renewable energy Sustained urban and town planning Pass laws to monitor excessive exploitation and use of child labor Intergrate women into economic and national development Mobilize Africans in the diaspora for homeland development De-emphasize foreign aid and stress local resources Develop data base to establish ownership of businesses and private property Need to adequately provide for better feeder and arterial roads Utilization of micro-loans to spur small scale, entrepreneurial activities Promote greater private as opposed to public enterprises Revamp the civil service to trim excess capacity Need to implement enforceable land reforms Compilation of census data on demographic profiles of population Vocational and technical education to train middle-level manpower Implementation of effective tax collection schemes Policies to deal with sewage and street infrastructure

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Ranking

Percentage

1 2

97.3 91.2

3 4 5 6

90.2 88.3 87.2 84.2

7 8

80.4 80.4

9 10 11 12

78.4 76.3 72.3 70.4

13

67.5

14 15 16

67.1 64.2 59.5

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Africa’s economies include reliance on local resources rather than foreign aid, full incorporation of women into national development, promotion of private as opposed to publically owned enterprises, the construction of roads to connect the major centers of industrial and agricultural production, and land tenure reforms. The pathways to social and economic development, the immigrants stressed, must recognize the use of African resources rather than an overreliance on foreign investments. African governments have not been particularly effective in their management of foreign aid. For sustainable economic development to occur, donors must channel their economic resources directly to support community-based projects and bypass bilateral and government-to-government economic and social assistance. From the perspectives of immigrants, finding the solutions to tackle the myriad of problems facing Africa today will be challenging for Africa. However, these problems are not entirely intractable because Africans are capable of finding answers to their problems. The pathways to follow to find these solutions (some of the immigrants maintained) can be found by studying how other countries (India, Brazil, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore) were able to achieve middle-tier or advanced country status within fifty years or less. These solutions call for a revamping of the institutional fabric of African societies, particularly economic and political institutions. Effective management of the region’s resources for the benefit of the people was identified as key to unraveling the potential of African countries. As the last continent to show robust or sustained and measurable economic, cultural, and political development, time is not on the side of Africa as its citizens can no longer wait for vain and empty promises made by their leaders. Ultimately, the immigrants reason that finding solutions to the region’s problems may ease the motivation to travel abroad for economic opportunities. This, in turn, will lead to population retention and curb the hemorrhaging of skilled and unskilled human resources to the developed regions of the world.

PURSUING THE DREAM OF HOME OWNERSHIP IN TRANSNATIONALIZED SPACES An important aspect of the economic rationalizations of international migration among African émigrés is the increasing significance of home ownership in the host and homeland societies. This issue dominated the economic landscape of the immigrants. Respondent after respondent framed their subjective and objective rationalizations of the benefits of international migration by articulating and highlighting the importance of home ownership. With the passage of time and as they acquire assets,

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many immigrants look toward home ownership. Though their rates of home ownership has yet to reach parity with white Americans, immigrant minorities (particularly Hispanic, African, and Caribbean immigrants) are making significant gains in home ownership, particularly in the immigrant-rich states of California, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, Illinois, Georgia, Texas, and Florida.15 The dream of owning a home is a core part of the American consciousness and identity. For these immigrants, home ownership is a form of status integration. It symbolizes structural identification and a cultural affirmation that the immigrant intends to pursue assimilation via the pathway of home ownership. Among the immigrants, buying a home is seen as a pathway for cementing affiliation with the host society and at the same time maintaining continuity in the formation of transnational identities.16 Building a home in Africa is also rationalized as a declaration of migrant intent to foster a transnational identity that straddles multiple societies, and it is an affirmation that the migrant intends to maintain ties with the homeland.17 The narratives suggest the importance immigrants attach to owning a home. According to one Sierra Leonean immigrant, “America has had a truly transforming impact on me. I escaped from a civil war in my country, found myself and my family living in a refugee tent in Ghana. I was able to leave the camp and come to the United States, and after a prolonged struggle to rebuild my shattered life, I am finally able to say that I am now a home owner. I am also in the process of building a house in Freetown.” For this immigrant and others, one of the primary motivations behind migration is to acquire sufficient resources to be able to build or purchase a home in Africa. Even when they are successful in purchasing a home in the United States, owning a home in Africa is often used as a standard to measure the transforming impact of international migration. Having a house in Africa (as shown later) is a visible manifestation and testament of the efficacy and value of migration. Dubbed by almost every American as the principal financial expenditure a person is likely to make in one’s lifetime, buying a home is considered a major economic and life-changing venture. For most Americans who have gone through the complex bureaucratic paperwork of purchasing a home, the experience comes with manifest economic and psychological or personal fulfillment. Owning a home is viewed as an economic investment with long-term financial benefits. In towns and cities where there is population growth, availability of jobs, economies of scale to support business activities, and strong cultural and educational opportunities, the prices of existing homes at all levels of ownership outpaced inflation throughout the 1990s and the early part of the first decade of 2000. During this period, home prices saw double-digit increases year after year until the recent housing meltdown. Despite the recent slump in home values and prices and the

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financial meltdown, owning a home is said to provide a sense of personal satisfaction, positive self-worth, and a feeling of goal accomplishment. Home owners as opposed to those who rent may feel a sense of community identification and integration. This serves to enhance their sense of pride and by extension a willingness to become involved in promoting the economic and cultural enrichment and vitality of their communities to ensure that property values maintain a steady increase. Despite indicating a preference to repatriate home at some point in time, a majority of the Africans consider home ownership in the host society as an important asset. The goal of becoming successful is woven into the imperative of eventual home ownership. Like other Americans and immigrants in general, African immigrants attach great significance to home ownership. About one-third of the immigrants who were studied own a home. Of this number, less than 5 percent owned their home free and clear. “Political and social uncertainties in Africa warrants the necessity of having a home outside of Africa,” Beatrice from the Ivory Coast asserted. In her words, “Decades of social and economic turmoil have roiled most of the African countries making it difficult to decide whether one is able to retire there. Most of the Africans I know in America like the idea of building a home in Africa though they remain leery of what the future holds for Africa. They would rather own a home in America. Later on, some will acquire land and start building their dream home in Africa. Having a home in America is a cushion.” For Beatrice, a home in Africa is rationalized as a preparatory step toward repatriation. Her migratory experience in America is influenced, in part, by the intense pressure she faces from her relatives at home to build a house. Building a two-story home in the Ivory Coast is a cultural marker of her migratory success. Her rationalizations of the outcomes of migration are framed with this expectation in mind. Beatrice’s comments are very insightful because she captures the ambivalence that a growing number of Africans in the diaspora continue to feel about what the future holds for them in Africa. Having a home in North America or Europe is seen as a way to minimize the potential impact of these uncertainties. This means that some of the immigrants are going to continue to define their migratory experiences in purely transnational terms, making the concept of home become rather amorphous and fluid. Jeanne, a recently arrived refugee from Sierra Leone, spoke about the need to maintain two households, one in the United States, and the family house in Africa. “Owning a home in Africa brings status and prestige. It is a symbol of success and social mobility in Africa. Africans value education. But they also value owning a nice two-story house. I like to be able to have a place to go to when I visit home,” Jeanne said. “You can always invite relatives and friends over for a party. It does not matter the kind of work you do in America. People in Africa do not care whether you scrub toilets or work

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as a parking ramp attendant. That’s not what people in Africa look at. Their definition of being successful in America is whether an immigrant is able to build or purchase their own home in Africa.” For Jeanne, the social psychological benefits (social praise, honor, prestige, or accolades) of home ownership in the homeland is premised on the unwritten normative expectation that Africans who get the opportunity to live and work in America are better positioned than their counterparts who do not migrate to create a cultural legacy by building a home which will bring honor to the entire family unit. For Jeanne, “It does not matter whether you live in your own house in America or whether you are renting. People will still disrespect you because of your skin color. But if you are able to build a nice home in Africa, people will accord you great respect. I think this is the main goal and desire of most of my African friends.” Preferably (as Jeanne asserted), the immigrant’s dream home is built in the ancestral family town. If this is not possible, building a home somewhere else (maybe in a regional capital district) commands the same degree of respect and social recognition. African immigrants who are renting do not lose sight of the goal of owning a home in the future. This is based on their expectations to return to the United States following repatriation to seek medical care or have a place to stay when they visit their children and grandchildren, if any. Of the 70 percent who are currently renting, nearly one-half (48 percent) indicated that they are saving money toward a down payment for a home. For those who are saving toward the down payment on a home, it is not uncommon to work multiple jobs or request assistance from extended family members who live in the United States or abroad. It is expected that this money will be paid back. Another 15 percent are participating in home ownership programs organized by government and nongovernmental agencies to prepare low-income people for owning a home. Buying and owning a home in the United States is perceived by the immigrants as the ultimate indication or affirmation that one wants to stay permanently in the United States. The data collected from the immigrants reveal a range of reasons for purchasing or buying a home. Two-thirds of the immigrants cited economic reasons for buying a home: the desire to create equity and use the accumulated equity to fund a project at home, specifically to build a home or start a business. Among this group of home owners, nearly 96 percent indicated that they had used or were in the process of using the equity line of credit from their mortgage bank to build a retirement home in Africa. Upon their completion, these houses are rented out and the income either saved or sometimes transferred back to the United States to pay down accumulated debt associated with taking a second or in some cases a third mortgage. For nearly 23 percent of the immigrants, the primary reason for purchasing a home was to have a place in the United States that they can pass on

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to their offspring after they repatriate home to Africa. Purchasing a home is rationalized as an investment in the future economic well-being of their children. The primary purpose is to build intergenerational wealth to ease the economic plight of their survivors or dependents.

STRATEGIES FOR GETTING ON THE PROPERTY LADDER The African immigrants whose migratory journeys to America are chronicled in this book are from different social, economic, and cultural backgrounds. Differences in educational attainment prior to and following their migration, their occupational and labor force participation, family structure and organization, and geographic region/city or town of residence converge to describe how these immigrants negotiate the bureaucratic and financial thicket associated with buying a home in the United States. African immigrants who are college educated, professional, and living in suburban districts surrounding large metropolitan centers are more likely than their blue-collar, non-college-educated, and inner-city counterparts to own and live in single-family dwellings. For those who own a home, the median value of the home is nearly $165,000. Some of the immigrants (65 percent) who own a home co-reside with other relatives or family members. The average number of co-resident household members is six, including children, in-laws, and grandparents. A number of strategies are used by the immigrants in buying a home. Among immigrants who reported being single, there is a tendency to rely on extended family members who are domiciled in the United States and other countries, particularly in Europe and the Middle East, for assistance in coming up with the initial deposit and other associated costs to qualify for a mortgage. It is expected that the beneficiary of this assistance will pay the money back. In addition, there is a cultural expectation that in the near future, the family member may be able to sponsor another relative from home to come and live and work in the United States and make contributions to the total household budget. This form of assistance is in addition to whatever resources the immigrant is able to come up with toward the purchase of a home. The transnational social networks formed by extended family members who live abroad facilitate the exchanging and sharing of resources, which helps families adjust to the new experiences and uncertainties posed by living in a foreign country away from home. When Fatima, a refugee woman from Togo, bought her suburban home in St. Louis, she had to solicit financial assistance from her two sisters who work in Libya as well as from her first cousins working with a construction company in Dubai. As already indicated, these transnational immigrant households function

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as economic units whose purpose is to preserve the economic assets of its members and at the same time allow for the sponsorship of other extended relatives to come to the West. In the case of Fatima, the money she received from extended relatives working in the Middle East enabled her to qualify for the down payment on her new suburban home. The down payment for her home is considered an investment not just for the economic well-being of Fatima but also for those in her extended family unit who are waiting to be sponsored to come to the United States. According to Fatima, “The financial assistance I received from the Middle East is an investment in our family’s future. We all help one another. I assist them with money regularly. And they are very appreciative. Buying a home is a giant step for all of us. My family is very happy in Togo. My grandmother said she is going to come and live with me. She is going to bring my nephew who wants to study to become a computer scientist. We are in the process of building a family house in Togo’s capital.” This house, when completed, according to Fatima, will be a symbol and contribution from all the family members who live and work abroad. It is a way to honor one’s family. For those immigrants who rely on assistance provided by extended relatives abroad to purchase a home, there is a cultural expectation that they will pay back all or at least some of the money. One immigrant explained the consequences of failing to pay back a loan from a family member. According to Fatima, “Failure to pay back will be viewed as shameful and dishonorable. I could be ostracized and shunned by the relatives. They mean so much to me. I cannot even think about the possibility that I will not be able to assist others considering the help that I have also received. You always have to share your blessings and gifts of life with those who are less fortunate. That is how we have managed to survive to the point where only a few of us who are living and working abroad are responsible for the wellbeing of dozens of people at home.” This form of cultural reciprocity and collective empowerment is deeply ingrained in the consciousness of many African immigrants, particularly those who have developed strong kinship bonds and affiliation with their extended kin group. Fatima’s house will eventually serve as a nerve center for receiving new members of her family. As indicated, newly arriving immigrants who are sponsored will first come to the nerve center, and from there they will engage in secondary or internal migration within the United States to pursue economic and/or cultural (educational) goals. Some of the African émigrés had to take on extra work to enable them to save money for the down payment. Cecilia is a case in point. Despite the fact that it took her five years to come up with the money for her down payment, Cecilia acknowledged that she could not have raised the money by herself, considering she struggles to pay for even her rental apartment at the end of the month. “My relatives assisted me with the required down

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payment, even though they all lived outside the United States and were also struggling to make ends meet. But I assured them that I will pay them back; and that in the future, upon becoming a citizen, I will extend help to other family members by sponsoring them to the United States to come and live with me,” Cecilia stated. After her migration to the United States, Cecilia attended a technical school in her community to upgrade her secondary school credentials acquired while she was living in Liberia. She studied to become a licensed practical nurse. At the time of the interview, she was working at a nursing home for 40 hours a week. Despite the fact that she was raising two children on her own without support from her ex-husband, Cecilia managed to take on a second job, this time working with a janitorial service on the weekends and whenever she was off from her regular weekday job. She arranged with other African immigrant women who lived nearby to look after her two boys while she worked extra hours. The income from her second job was set aside solely for the purpose of qualifying for a down payment on a single family home. “I was determined to buy a home. My children can have their own rooms and a place to play in, a neighborhood free from crime with good schools. That was why I took on the second job. With the money I made, I was able to pay down 20 percent of the cost of the home. That was what everyone told me; that I have to come up with 20 percent,” she remarked. Whether they own their home free and clear or still owe on it, there is a tendency among the African immigrants (just like the members of the host society) to tap into the equity in their homes to fund a wide range of economic activities particularly at home in Africa. Among those immigrants who have tapped the equity in their homes, nearly 60 percent of them indicated that they used the money to start a building project at home. The belief among the immigrants is that while having a home in the United States is considered a major accomplishment by extended family members as well as an indication of economic well-being and success, it does not confer the same status as building a house at home in Africa. As noted, building a home (usually a two-story house) in Africa in the suburbs of the regional capitals or in one’s village or hometown is considered laudable and highly noteworthy. It is a mark of prosperity. It enhances the social position and respectability of the immigrant and endears him or her to the community at large. The psychological and cultural fulfillment brings value and social capital to the home owner. When home owners go home to visit as they frequently do, they not only have a place to stay but they also entertain friends and family members. Immigrants who have been very successful in the United States may also purchase a car and ship this vehicle home, earning them even more prestige and status, especially if it is all-wheel drive or a luxury sedan. These cars are usually not driven once the immigrant

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returns to the United States following their visit home. They are parked in the garage until the next time they return to Africa. The occupational status of the immigrants who are able to accomplish the feat of owning a home in Africa does not matter to extended relatives or friends at home. What matters in the eyes of Africans is that they have managed to acquire the material symbols of status and prosperity. This same social and psychological respectability is not conferred on the immigrants in the United States where they continue to face marginalization, racism, and discrimination in the broader fabric of American society. The pressure to build a home in Africa is a sine qua non in determining and defining the success and outcome of the migratory experiences of these Africans. As an immigrant refugee woman from Dakar (Senegal) asserted, “It is nice to own a home in the United States. But it is nicest to build one’s dream house in Senegal. The house you build at home is meant to symbolize your social achievement. The house you occupy in the United States is a roof over your head, a shelter. The one you build at home is where your soul and spirit resides.” These homes may become the epicenter of the extended family and kin group relationships in Africa. They may serve as the locus for extended family gatherings to celebrate weddings, hold child-naming ceremonies, organize parties, and honor the deceased during funeral rites. For the immigrant who has managed to build or acquire such as a home, there is a utilitarian value. For example, the new home may not just become the epicenter of family or tribal social and cultural activities, but it also symbolizes and marks an important milestone in the internal tribal politics of the extended family. The cultural ethos is that those members of the extended family who have been successful in building a home are to be revered for their feat. This reverence brings status and the ability to influence the course of family relations and decision-making. Spiritually, being able to build a nice home is considered a blessing from the ancestors, a way for the ancestors to manifest their blessings on the family member. A new house is a valuable cultural expression of material well-being. The house may represent or mark an intergenerational shift in the locus of family political and economic power, away from the elderly and aged—who are time and again revered for their wisdom—to the next generation of younger family members who usually are educated and live abroad while sending regular remittances back home. The completion of a new home is a testament to their commitment to remittances and an affirmation to share their wealth acquired in the West with every member of the family. The immigrants stressed the importance of using the value of their home in the United States and the savings that they have accumulated to build a home in the country of origination. From their perspectives, the homes they build using the equity in the American homes is seen as a way to transfer some of their acquired assets to the home country. For those who first arrived in the United States, being successful in

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owning a home is therefore highly prized. It may provide the motivation for other members of the family to consider the benefits of migration to the West. It may help fuel a cultural belief that the West is where one has to go if one is to raise one’s living standards or acquire something of economic value, which can then be transferred back home from abroad. As emphasized throughout this book, many Africans now define their aspirations largely in terms of traveling abroad to maximize their economic potential. Part of the motive to engage in international migration is the pressure and desire to save money toward building a home in Africa.

APPROPRIATION OF THE MEANINGS OF HOME AND LOCALITY Closely related to the formulations of the reasons for purchasing a home in the United States or in Africa are the immigrants’ definitions of home, place, and locality. Understanding how these psychological and geographic constructs are defined and articulated is significant because of the interconnectedness with identity formation and one’s place in the social system.18 African immigrant definitions and attributions of cultural space and territoriality relate to their social construction of “home.” The social construction of the meanings African immigrants often assign to “home” and “place” offers an interesting sociological and cultural paradigm to understand how immigrants create space and give locations meaning. Home is constructed to span multiple spaces and domains. Having a transnational identity that is not only confined to the United States makes the concept of home variable among the immigrants. Networks of transnational relatives with which the immigrants foster kinship and familial relationships provide another layer of home away from the current place of residence.19 These immigrants move back and forth between locales when they speak about home. But irrespective of the spatial and territorial definitions assigned to where home is, most of the immigrants see home in Africa as the cultural space where one’s spirit or soul resides. It is the place where the sacred spirit is in accord with life’s experiences and the yearnings of the heart. In this context of home, one is surrounded by extended family members and a vast network of friends and associates, some who are qualified to become family. Home in Africa is not just a physical location or geographic space. It is also a spiritual place and abode. This is what some of the immigrants might refer to as a substantive, natural, or real home. At home in Africa, as one immigrant affirmed, “You know who you are; no one has to remind you of your place and space in the social system. You have a sense of belonging. You are valued.” For another immigrant, “Home is where you do not have to struggle to define where you come from and what you believe.” Having a presence in America also connotes home. Home in

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America is often constructed among the immigrants to signify a temporary sojourn. When African immigrants construct meanings about home in America, they do so recognizing a certain degree of temporality and impermanence irrespective of length of stay in the United States. References to home in America are often punctuated with the immigrants’ struggles and challenges to better their lives. There is a sense of being a stranger, detached and alienated. “Living at home in the United States is like putting one’s life on hold,” one immigrant stated, suggesting that the spaces the immigrants create to anchor their transnational identities are ephemeral. Other places and spaces where close and distant relatives are domiciled can be said to constitute the “real” home. These are the places (homes) where immigrants can go and live if they fall on bad economic times. These homes may be located in Africa or anywhere the immigrants have extended relatives. What emerged from the data was that home is defined in terms of a cultural and social production unit where different family members are domiciled. The concept of home may assume multiple meanings according to location and the social psychological or spiritual connection one has with this place. When immigrants reference home, for example, the connection is with Africa. The reference is often to the birthplace or one’s nativity. Home in the foreign context or outside of Africa is usually constructed to reflect a nonpsychological affiliation or identification. This may be referred to as the transnational or migratory home. This is the location where multiple migrant family members may congregate and live out their migratory experiences. It is also to this transnational home that prospective migrants from Africa will live once they also migrate. These sites may consist of more senior or seasoned migrants from the same extended family. The size, composition, structure, and functions of these familial-based foreign homes are largely determined by the family’s history of international migration, willingness of the family to sponsor additional members, and the economic and cultural production status of members. The homes set up abroad may be used as sites for the reinforcement and propagation of African cultural values, beliefs, and social identities. They also become sites where the immigrants create a social space to band together to pursue collective goals. Cultural interdependence and social interactions are fostered among the immigrants in these home settings.

DECIPHERING THE MEANINGS OF NATURALIZATION AND CITIZENSHIP IDENTITIES How do African immigrants establish and rationalize the meanings of naturalization and citizenship in the American context? Citizenship is more than the mere possession of the certificate of naturalization signed

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by the President of the United States. As Rosaldo (1997) affirmed, the process involves creating an essence, a meaning, a space, a sense of belongingness, and a connectedness. Citizenship is a legal status defined within the framework of the nation-state.20 It also refers to belonging to a community, imagined or otherwise.21 Forging citizenship and naturalization in the migrant host society is a form of status integration. The acquisition of United States citizenship is presumed to signify migrant intentions to stay longer and gain access to the broader institutions of society.22 Seeking citizenship via naturalization is also an indicator of normative inclusivity and an affirmation of the values of the migrantreceiving country. This membership via naturalization is what Alejandra Castaneda (2006) referred to as cultural citizenship.23 For the hundreds of thousands of African immigrants who have become naturalized citizens of the United States, the process of naturalization assumes psychological as well a cultural significance. Acquiring citizenship is never viewed as severing ties with Africa. Instead, as Rosaldo (1994) contends, citizenship also enables immigrants the right to be different in terms of culture, race, ethnicity, or normative beliefs. Among African immigrants, having American citizenship status strengthens the relationships that most of the immigrants have with their home countries. Table 4.4 presents information about the reasons for seeking naturalization and citizenship for the total sample. The most common reason given

Table 4.4. Reasons for Seeking Naturalization and Citizenship: Total Sample Reason To sponsor relatives to come to the United States Citizenship offers political protection at home Fear of not being able to collect Social Security To acquire an American passport Access to a better life Marshall resources to aid Africa To safeguard the future of my children The freedom to travel To agitate for social change at home Improve upon the image of Africans Citizenship confers prestige and honor Empower blacks in the diaspora Maintain the continuity of the African diaspora Become eligible to vote Minimize racism and discrimination Run for political office at the federal, state, county, or municipal level To become eligible for federal and state jobs

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Ranking

Percentage

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

92.3 84.5 83.2 78.7 76.4 74.1 67.6 63.2 61.4 60.3 57.7 56.5 52.3 41.6 38.2 36.4

17

36.2

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for seeking naturalization and citizenship is to sponsor relatives to come to the United States (92 percent). This finding is not surprising considering that family reunification is the principal form of African immigrant legal entry into the United States. Naturalization offers the opportunity for immigrants to bring their children, wives, and parents to the United States. The presence of nuclear and extended family members can maximize the economic earnings of the entire family considering that a growing number of African migrant families tend to co-reside or live close by enough to assist with the day-to-day activities of family members. An equally significant reason for seeking naturalization and citizenship is immigrant perception that American citizenship offers political protection and security in the homeland. Nearly 85 percent of the immigrants cited this as the main reason for applying to become naturalized. This finding is reflective of the continued erosion of political culture and civil society in many African countries. The immigrants perceive that having citizenship status in the United States will insulate them from political and civil abuses. The privilege to carry an American passport and the need to safeguard the future of immigrant children were other important considerations in seeking naturalization, cited by nearly 79 percent and 68 percent of the immigrants, respectively. Another 63 percent cited “freedom to travel freely” as the main reason for applying for naturalization. Though a definite consideration in the decision to seek naturalization, eligibility to vote and access to federal and state jobs are not as important as family reunification or political security, which immigrants expect to gain when they become naturalized citizens of the United States. Issues related to Africa’s position in the global system are reflected in the reasons for seeking citizenship and naturalization. About 75 percent of the immigrants believe that becoming an American citizen will enable them to better assist in marshaling resources to aid Africa’s development, to agitate for social change at home (61 percent), to improve upon the image of Africa (60 percent), to empower blacks in the diaspora (56 percent), and to ensure the continuity of the global black diaspora (52 percent). Table 4.5 shows the main reasons for acquiring citizenship by migrant country of origination. As expected, family reunification or sponsorship of relatives, access to better life, freedom to travel, perceived fear of not being able to receive Social Security, safeguarding the future of children, and acquiring an American passport were among the principal reasons for applying for naturalization and citizenship. Fewer immigrants referred to racism and discrimination, running for political office, maintaining the continuity of the African diaspora, and improving upon the image of Africans as having significant impact on the reasons for applying for citizenship. The information presented in the table illustrates that irrespective of their place of origination, a majority of the African immigrants rationalize the acquisi-

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To safeguard the future of my children Become eligible to vote To acquire an American passport To sponsor relatives to come to the United States To become eligible for federal and state jobs Citizenship offers political protection at home Citizenship confers prestige and honor Access to a better life The freedom to travel Minimize racism and discrimination Fear of not being able to collect Social Security Run for political office at the federal, state, county, or municipal level Maintain the continuity of the African diaspora Empower blacks in the diaspora Improve upon the image of Africans To agitate for social change at home Marshall resources to aid Africa

Reason 74 90 96 91 98 58 81 92 96 51 98 28 41 58 48 66 82

33 53 45 74 88

Nigeria %

82 88 98 89 97 65 78 89 92 56 94 25

Ghana %

Table 4.5. Naturalization and Citizenship by Immigrant Country of Origin

40 47 35 71 79

81 74 92 90 95 66 63 84 98 48 99 19

Sierra Leone %

36 53 38 77 81

71 80 87 88 90 61 72 88 84 49 87 30

Senegal %

37 39 41 69 86

90 77 97 86 99 70 72 90 91 46 97 15

Liberia %

37 36 46 67 66

88 64 95 90 96 64 75 89 90 53 89 22

Ivory Coast %

31 32 42 63 71

69 70 81 92 92 69 73 81 80 58 86 26

Togo %

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tion of American citizenship in terms of economic, cultural, and political orientations. The data reveal that there are no significant differences in the motivational factors influencing naturalization and citizenship when immigrant place of birth is known. Again, the explanations for seeking naturalization and citizenship coalesce around economic, social, cultural, and psychological themes. For example, migrant perceptions that citizenship and naturalization lead to a better life, provide freedom to travel, enable migrants to collect Social Security, safeguard the future of children, and allow for family reunification were cited by the majority of the immigrants irrespective of country of origination. Naturalization and citizenship is also influenced, in part, by the type of visa categories used in entering the United States. Those who were legally admitted on the basis of professional skills or third preference category tended to seek naturalization once they become eligible to apply. So are those who were admitted on the basis of marriage to an American citizen or a permanent resident. These immigrants fall under the first and second category of immigration preference for admissibility into the country. Information about why African immigrants do not seek naturalization and citizenship can be found in table 4.6. Among the major reasons cited for not seeking naturalization and citizenship are: (1) immigrant intentions to repatriate, (2) the belief that having a permanent residence status is sufficient, (3) immigrant view that naturalization does not offer immigrants any protection from discrimination and racism, (4) immigrant need to preserve cultural heritage, (5) the need to maintain national pride and loyalty to home country, and (6) a perception that foreign-born imTable 4.6. Reasons for Not Seeking Naturalization and Citizenship Reason Planning to repatriate Having permanent resident status is sufficient Citizenship offers little protection from discrimination and racism Preserve cultural and ethnic heritage Foreign-born citizens not fully accepted as Americans Need to maintain national pride and loyalty to home country Citizenship does not offer political security Do not view yourself as American even with citizenship No intentions to contest for political office Citizenship does not offer economic security Citizenship does not offer special protection for my children Cannot afford the cost of filing Not interested or have no immediate relatives to sponsor Lack of time to prepare for citizenship exam Citizenship has little value at home

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Ranking

Percentage

1 2 3

93 89 85

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

82 78 76 64 63 55 52 44 34 32 28 14

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migrants who become citizens are not fully accepted as Americans. For some of these immigrants, there is a sense of being marginalized and pushed to the periphery of American society even when one becomes a citizen. Non-black immigrants who become naturalized citizens are accorded more social capital and acceptance than those who hail from Africa. Their perception is that immigrants of European ancestry who become naturalized are accorded higher social capital and status than those who hail from African ancestry. This casts black immigrants into the role of outsiders. This outsider-citizen status may explain why many of these immigrants prefer not to view themselves as Americans even when they have acquired naturalization and citizenship. Further analyses of the data showed that there are commonalities in the patterns of naturalization and citizenship among the immigrants. For example, immigrant family size, age, marital status, income, and occupational status are important factors influencing naturalization and citizenship.24 However, these variables were overshadowed in relative importance by immigrant length of stay in the United States, the frequency and amount of remittances, frequency of home visitations, immigrant identification with the United States, and home ownership in migrant place of origination. African immigrants who have lived in the United States for fifteen or more years are more likely than their counterparts who have lived in the United States for less than ten years to apply and become citizens. The data also showed that eligibility alone does not account for naturalization and citizenship. Some of the immigrants who have satisfied the length of stay requirements and who were eligible for naturalization had not applied at the time of the study. The rate of naturalization and citizenship was higher among those immigrants who sent monthly remittances home and who remitted an average of $250 every month. These immigrants were more likely than their counterparts who did not remit regularly to own smallscale consumer retail businesses often specializing in imported goods from the United States. The longer immigrants have lived in the United States, the more likely they are to acquire naturalization and citizenship. By far, the strongest predictor of naturalization and citizenship was immigrant identification with the United States. Immigrants who embraced American cultural and normative values and orientation tended to apply for naturalization at higher levels than their counterparts whose identification was with their homeland. The type of visa category is also related to African immigrant naturalization and citizenship. The majority of the immigrants who entered under the skills preference or occupational category tend to apply for naturalization more than any other group. These immigrants hold advanced degrees in the arts and sciences and initially entered the country as students on nonimmigrant visas. Part of the growing black suburbanite middle class, this

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group of African immigrants have benefited immensely from the expansion of affirmative action and diversity programs at academic institutions of higher learning, major private corporations such as Fedex, United Parcel Service, and American Express, and state and federal government agencies. These immigrants are conscious of their social class identities and often will socialize with one another.25 African immigrants who marry American citizens, or entered the country as refugees, or had their status adjusted under the immigration lottery system also tend to apply for naturalization during the first or second year when they become eligible for naturalization. These groups of immigrants also rely on family reunification provisions in immigration law to sponsor relatives from Africa to join them in the United States. Children, siblings, and elderly parents in Africa are usually the first to be sponsored to come to the United States. A discernible trait of this group is their membership in the black middle class. These African immigrants are joining the growing ranks of the college-educated black American suburban middle class. Most of them continue to gain from diversity, equal opportunity, and affirmative action programs at colleges, universities, research institutes, and state and federal government agencies, including private organizations or corporations. African immigrants rationalize citizenship and naturalization not just as a process of forging new political or legal identities with the United States. They also rationalize the meanings of citizenship as an acknowledgement of inclusion and at the same time an affirmation of their cultural differences with the United States. This means that even when they have become naturalized citizens of the United States, these African immigrants want to reserve the right to hold on to the multiple genres of African cultural and social forms constituting the bedrock of their lived experiences in both the United States and Africa. They echo, in essence, Aleinikoff’s (2002) statement that when people become naturalized citizens of another country, they bring the totality of their lived experiences and attributes to the new country.26 Incorporation into the host society via naturalization entails the imperative to be African. In the long-term, it is expected that many African immigrants living in the United States will continue to seek naturalization as economic and political institutions in Africa deteriorate and governments are brought under pressure to meet the needs of the people. Socioeconomic and political characteristics of the African immigrant-sending countries can influence the decision and rationalization whether to naturalize or not. Deteriorating conditions in the sending countries may also shorten the waiting period and the timing for applying for naturalization. This is to forestall any economic or political uncertainties that may arise. The rationalization here is that naturalization offers a new layer of social capital (economic, cultural, and political protection). African immigrants do not expect the economic

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and political fortunes of their respective countries to change during the next few years. Seeking for American citizenship is intended to broaden the field of economic and political advantages that migrants have over nonmigrants. For African immigrants, citizenship is also a means of facilitating the propagation of their identities in the United States.27

FORMULATING THE POLITICAL RATIONALIZATIONS OF AFRICAN MIGRATION For many of Africa’s immigrant population in the United States, a major reason given for leaving Africa is to escape the continent’s persistent political turmoil, civil unrest, war, and factionalism. Political instability has stalled the continent’s push toward creating stable regimes and democratically centered institutions of governance. The lack of political accountability and transparency is a major cause of the deterioration of Africa’s political governance structure. A majority of the immigrants cited this as a primary consideration in their decision to migrate. For other immigrants, the perceived fear of instability and violence accompanied by feelings of insecurity were cited as secondary incentives to emigrate. Diversion of public funds to achieve political ends and the inability of African leaders to formulate a viable vision for economic development coupled with the failure to incorporate minority groups into governance structures were cited as major problems facing Africa today (table 4.7). Under these conditions, people lose trust and confidence in their government. Political conflicts resulting in social unrest, instability, and the erosion of the rule of law were identified as major obstacles in the continent’s political development. Political instability not only promotes outmigration, but it also creates an atmosphere of instability and uncertainty among the public, making it difficult to promote national integration and unity. At the same time, political instability can have the unintended consequence of interfering with economic activities when people cannot conduct trade or commerce and engage in the production of economic goods and services. Additionally, concerns were expressed by some of the immigrants about the collateral consequences of social unrest and wars which, judging by prior conflicts that have occurred in Africa, often lead to the involuntary displacement of innocent civilians. Under these conditions, people may find it difficult if not impossible to go about their day-to-day social activities. Displacement, whether temporary or not, may also heighten political tensions long after the crisis is resolved. Threats, political intimidations, the unleashing of the police-cum-army powers by some of Africa’s governments, and the fear of political or ethnic reprisals may stoke further civil unrest, thereby jeopardizing peace and order.

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Table 4.7. Immigrant Identification and Ranking of Political Problems Confronting Africa Problem and Issue Lack of political accountability and transparency in governance Diversion of public funds for political goals Inability of African leaders to formulate a viable vision Failure to integrate diverse groups into governance structure Failure of leaders to articulate Africa’s agenda on world scene Use of political violence, intimidation, and threats to resolve conflicts Decline in civil discourse, adherence to constitutional provisions, and rule of law Unchecked police-cum-military abuses of power and status Exploiting tribal and clan schisms for political gains Illegal amassment of wealth and institutionalized corruption Violation of the public trust with impunity Misplaced political power, electoral briberies and fraud Faulting the advanced countries as scapegoats for Africa’s problems Failure to educate the public about political rights and electoral laws Prolonged stay in office and holding on to power Land tenure rights and litigation of public and private land rights

Ranking

Percentage

1 2 3 4 5 6

83 79 75 68 61 58

7

55

8 9 10 11 12 13

49 47 41 37 35 33

14

28

15 16

22 18

Within the context of Africa migrations to the United States, leaving Africa to come to the United States is represented as a formal protestation of the lack of resolve on the part of African leaders to create the appropriate climate for democratic governance to flourish. Leaving Africa, therefore, is construed as an adaptive strategy to a volatile political environment. In another respect, leaving Africa is also rationalized as a way to overtly or covertly challenge the political system at home. Once abroad, the immigrants perceive that they are free to actively engage their governments and highlight political problems at home in the foreign media. In this role, the immigrants see themselves as agents of political change. Some of them join national political parties at home by setting up branches in their communities. Once they set up branches of political parties or action committees, they seize the opportunity to create a platform and manifesto toward bringing about political transformation in Africa. Migration has shaped the political perspectives of some of these immigrants. In observing and learning about the American political process, they are able to draw political parallels with African political systems, often identifying the sites where change is needed. Political activities may also involve providing financial support and endorsements for candidates that the immigrants align with. The political support from the immigrant and diaspora community is a sig-

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nificant aspect of African politics today. Immigrant support of political parties filters home to relatives and friends, an awareness that has not escaped the attention of African political party organizers and brokers. When heads of state and high-ranking government officials travel abroad, they seek out the support of the immigrant communities, often using that support as a basis to legitimize their quest for political office. Some of the immigrants indicated that they did not participate in political activities at home. But following their migration, they have become more active, often following news from home and reading about political activities. Some may follow political activities at home by listening to radio stations and/or television stations in the United States operated by immigrant groups. In the end, rationalizing the political meanings of migration is significant due to the convergence of numerous political factors in explaining why Africans move. The political culture of the continent is an integral aspect of the formation and rebuilding of the nation-state. In the short- and long-term, the fragile political climate prevailing in Africa would continue to impact every fabric of society. The resolution of political conflicts would dictate how well Africa would become incorporated into the global community via international migration and the movement of skilled and unskilled labor across transnational borders.

USING MIGRATION TO REDEFINE GENDERED IDENTITIES AND EXPECTATIONS An important aspect of African migration to the United States is the social construction of outcomes and meanings that African immigrant women ascribe to their migration. For some African women, migration is liberating. Some of the African immigrant women perceive that international migration is the means to facilitate and transform the unequal power arrangements in African societies between men and women. The affirmation of migration as power-enhancing is significant because it points to the growing trend, among African women, of utilizing international migration as a tool to redress gender-based inequities (unfair inheritance laws, lack of access to land, the political dominance of men, inadequate capital, exploitation of young girls as sources of cheap labor, and child sexual victimizations) in Africa. Leaving Africa to come to the United States is not rationalized as a complete rejection of African cultural norms and beliefs. Instead, the migratory process is construed as an expansion of the normative fields for learning new roles in addition to the ones brought from Africa. Many of the African immigrant women who pursue naturalization have an extensive network of kin relatives who are already domiciled in the United States. While some come to join husbands, an

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equally larger number come on their own because they possess skills that are in high demand in the United States, particularly nursing, elderly home care, and hospitality management.28 Analyses of the responses from some of the immigrant women pointed to the increasing use of international migration as a strategy to ensure greater economic security and independence. Migration and acquiring citizenship is, for most of these women, a way to maximize their human capital by seeking more economic empowerment at the inter- and intrafamily household level as well as the community level in both the host and origination countries. A principal motivation behind African women’s migration is the desire to break the cycle of dependency on male relatives or partners. As one immigrant woman explained, “The control of almost every aspect of the lives of women (normatively and institutionally) by men are such that it discourages a lot of women from realizing or reaching their fullest potentials.” From this immigrant’s perspective, the opportunities that women now have to leave Africa and go to the West on their own are an affirmation of the need for women to develop agencies and implement strategies solely designed to raise the standards of living of women and girls in African society. As another immigrant woman stated poignantly, “Our men have kept us down, believing that most of us are incapable of decisionmaking and undertaking risks, particularly the risks of international migration. Migration is a means for us to forestall those fears and to show that as women, we are capable of creating new options and opportunities for ourselves away from Africa.” The evidence points to a contestation of the social and cultural basis for the overwhelming dominance of men in African social, economic, and political culture. This challenge is posited from the women’s perspective that existing structures and institutions in Africa continue to assert male power while marginalizing issues directly pertaining to women’s rights and full incorporation into society. The findings of the rationalizations of migration from the women’s perspectives point to the growing economic and educational gains African women have made. However, there is also recognition among the immigrants that despite the gains that they continue to make, women are continually treated as second-class citizens and often denied access to key income-generating sectors of production and decision-making. Migration and the capital resources that women garner following the departure from Africa are often rationalized as the means to bridge women’s unequal access to economic and cultural opportunities. Following migration, some of the African women restructure their lives to optimize the best opportunities for themselves and their children. This does not mean that they totally avoid working outside of the male dominance systems they had left behind in Africa. With the new opportunities presented to them by migration, some of them continue working within

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the same system albeit from a position of economic strength gained while in the United States.29 African women immigrants who initially come to the United States as students on nonimmigrant visas eventually avail themselves to the opportunities presented by higher education. With the undergraduate and graduate training they receive, many are able to transition from nonimmigrant to immigrant status often by applying for labor certification which is the first step of incorporation. Once they get the labor certificate, their employers can petition immigration to allow them to stay permanently in the United States. For these women, naturalization can occur as early as five years after being legally admitted. These women will join the ranks of hundreds of thousands of applicants who will continue to petition immigration authorities to allow them to sponsor other relatives. For many of these women, naturalization is aimed at strengthening their economic foothold both at home and in the United States.30 By becoming naturalized, these women are put in a better position (economically and psychologically) to determine who in the nuclear or extended family will be sponsored to travel to the United States. Over time, the advantage of being in the United States and having the economic wherewithal tilts the gender balance of power in favor of these women. At a minimum, being a citizen of the United States gives them a stronger voice in intra-family relationships and decisionmaking in home affairs in Africa against the backdrop of entrenched male hegemony. The economic consequences of African women’s migration to the United States and the West in general speak to the broader issue of the social and cultural pressures in Africa for women to join the global labor market. It is only by becoming a part of this transnational labor mobility that many of Africa’s women are able to earn enough money to send remittances home to support their families. Writing about global labor markets and remittances in general, Skeldon (1997) noted that that impact of labor migration can be rationalized in terms of the economic benefits and value migrants add to the economies and development of their host societies while at the same time contributing to build economic capacities in their home countries through systematic remittances.31 A notable feature of the meanings formed out of the migratory process is the social psychological satisfaction many of the women immigrants derive from their relationships with other immigrants, notably from the Third World countries, but more particularly, other immigrants forming the reconstituted black diaspora in the United States. These immigrants come mainly from the Caribbean, other parts of Africa, and Central and South America, including immigrants of black descent from Europe who are currently living in the United States. For many of these immigrants, migration has broadened their social and cultural horizons by linking them with other minority immigrant populations in the United States. A consequence

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of this encounter is the vast networks of familial and non-familial relationships that these immigrants structure to authenticate their cultures and give meaning to the migratory experience. The goal of immigrant networks (as seen in the previous chapter) is to broaden the international and cultural scopes of the immigrants while at the same time enabling them to form circles of friendships geared toward effective mobilization and strategizing to overcome obstacles of living in a foreign society. In these networks, common interests and intersectionalities are brought together to give meaning and content to the importance of race, ethnicity, and class status in local and translocal contexts. As one immigrant indicated, “Migrating here has enabled me to build relationships with other immigrants with similar outlooks from various parts of Africa and the Caribbean. Through these immigrants, I have managed to expand my view of the world, no longer dwelling on just economic concerns but then also, issues of spirituality, sexuality, and new ways of seeing my place in the global society.” In immigrant-rich cities across the United States where there is a strong African immigrant presence, the nodes of interactions that the immigrants establish with predominantly minority citizens continue to shape and impact community social organizations and structures. Student populations and their characteristics are altered when native-born children mix with immigrant children in educational settings and environments. Ethnic immigrant stores, formed and located in predominantly minority districts, often become sites for the cultural transmission of new orientations and social patterns. Some friendships are forged. Groups from diverse backgrounds are mobilized for collective action to solve specific social problems (for example, housing, crime, or lack of employment). Similarly, inter-ethnic alliances may be forged along differing social class lines to agitate for improved social services. These interactions between immigrants and the members of the host society are occurring all across the United States. Through their migration, some of the women have been able to expand their social horizons and at the same time reformulate their cultural norms and beliefs in accordance with what they learn about gender equity in American society. With time, these women modify their expectations about how to socialize their own daughters by emphasizing autonomy and self-help, and instilling in their children the sense that passivity on the part of women is an affirmation of male dominance and power. International migration offers new options for some of the African immigrants (particularly women immigrants) to agitate for social change to better their lives. The creation of new options is symbolized in part by the formation of newer identities that transcend the social and cultural politic of African societies. Once created, these transnational identities expand their focus and spheres of activities to include nonpecuniary activities such as agitating for human rights for young girls and women who become vic-

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tims of sexual trafficking, physical abuse, and gender discrimination. The underlying assumption here is that upon traversing international boundaries, African immigrant women tend to expand their horizons far beyond the economic concerns that had initially triggered their migration. The fresher perspective that migration offers is also revealed in the narratives and identities of some of the refugee women in the study. Among those immigrants who had entered the United States as refugees, the social construction of the meanings of migration is framed to reflect the experiences of violence and victimization. It was evident from the focus group sessions that for those Africans who come to the United States as refugees, stateless, or displaced persons, the configurations and meanings of their involuntary migration tends to be directed toward issues of social justice, law and order, and the nurturing of civil cultures. This finding was expected considering the violence that some of them have experienced or endured prior to their arrival in the United States. For these immigrants, experiences with war, violence, and in some cases torture have formed and influenced the outcomes associated with coming to America. In her remarks about the ravages of war, an immigrant from Sierra Leone remarked that “the war affected everyone’s identity and outlook about place, and the outcomes associated with what it means to be without a place to call home. My family’s house was destroyed by the rebels during the war; women were sexually abused, and some of the children taken away or forcefully recruited to become child soldiers while others were forcefully recruited to work in the sex trade.” For this immigrant refugee, the construction of the meanings emanating from her immigrant story is to find ways whereby she can achieve empowerment and at the same implement strategies to contest the increasing legitimization of use of violence as a means of conflict resolution in Africa. “When I become a citizen of the United States, I will use the political protection that American citizenship confers to take issue and agitate for political and civil reforms in my home country. To me, that is the full essence of my immigrant experience: to bring about changes in our political culture,” explains this Sierra Leonean immigrant. As former refugees, the contestation of the victimization suffered as a result of the war has become a permanent aspect of the identities of some of the refugees.

PROSPECTS FOR BROADENING THE SCOPE OF AFRICAN IMMIGRANT DIASPORA IDENTITIES The unraveling of the black African immigrant identities is occurring at various sites of academic scholarship. Despite the fact that the majority of studies on the reconstitution and continuities of the neo-black African diaspora have been investigated by demographers, sociologists, geographers,

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and ethnic studies scholars, there is a growing body of scholarship describing the contents of the black diaspora coming from playwrights, poets, historians, musicians, and literary critics. It is vital to incorporate information about African migration and identity formations from these diverse sources to provide broad-based conceptualizations and insights about the transformative dimensions of international migration in shaping African identities in the West. This multidisciplinary approach can enrich and provide new theoretical paradigms for investigating black African diaspora studies while at the same time bringing a meta-analytical theoretical and methodological framework to the many genres represented by this new field of study. This wide-ranging approach must also encapsulate the multiple dimensions of black African exiles and their identities abroad. The composition of the black diaspora in the Americas, Europe, and Asia have been submerged and peripheralized by the daunting economic and political challenges facing the African world today. Migration or going into exile is a product of these challenges. Understanding the subterranean visibilities and invisibilities of how blacks reconstitute their identities in new settings can offer scholastic insights into how blacks transpose or create African-based community organizations outside of the region. At the same time, knowledge gleaned from this multi-faceted approach may yield information about how black African-based community organizations and structures are contested by the host societies. The frontier of black African diaspora identities and its core components and underpinnings can be delineated using a cross-disciplinary perspective. Recent streams of African and Caribbean immigrants to North America provide an opportunity to study changing notions of blackness and its inherent differing identities and at the same time provide a comparison with the identities formed by earlier migrants.32 The conceptualization of black immigrant identities will have to proceed with information culled from every facet and aspect of the black experience globally. This will require a reflective understanding of global black cultures and institutions, and the historical, political, and economic forces that have shaped and continue to shape the internal dynamics of the black diaspora world. The continuity of African immigrant identities may also hinge on how these immigrants succeed in managing their cultural heritage while forging incorporation at the same time. If they encounter opposition to their incorporation and the identities they are forming, several of the immigrants are going to fall back on their heritage to shield them from cultural opposition.33 A fresh perspective is warranted to give content and meaning to the sociological processes involved in how African immigrants in the West in general articulate and give meanings to their identities in foreign domains. This perspective could also be extended to look at how the lives of African immigrants are affected by globalization, structured inequalities, and the

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gendered contexts of low-waged and fringeless jobs that are predominantly female-based.34 These low-waged jobs are the magnet attracting thousands of immigrants from all over the world to come to the United States and other Western countries. The social and cultural ruptures that the forces of colonization set in motion in Africa has yet to be fully grasped, comprehended, and incorporated in the migration literature. The tensions and conflicts that this process set in motion are still being felt all over the region today. Understanding the complexities of the social, cultural, political, and economic issues that large-scale migration has brought about ought to be fully recognized and expanded upon. The process of engaging in international migration is daunting as well as precarious. Whether they arrive in the United States in a stepwise, chain, or circular, migratory fashion; or they use unconventional forms of traveling (such as foot migration by crossing the Sahara); or arrive as refugees or even as students; or come to join and reunite with relatives in the United States, one thing remains certain—that the migration of Africa’s skilled and unskilled human resources are usually punctuated by extreme and numbing economic realities caused by economic mismanagement, political corruption, failing regimes, and arrested development. For some Africans, migration is a form of voluntary or involuntary exile. For others, it may signify a sojourning status guided by the assumption that with time, living conditions at home will improve and repatriation can occur. Meticulous attention ought to be given to the processes underlying the repatriation processes of African immigrants. A question of interest is whether African immigrants’ notions about local and transnational identities are re-formed at home upon repatriation. If these transnational identities are replicated at home in Africa, it is worthy for research to investigate whether there are resistances emanating from how those repatriated immigrants reinterpret and adjust their transnational identities to fit the local scene in Africa. The need for research studies in this area is critical because not much is known about the reverse migration and repatriation behavior of African émigrés. A specific question needing attention is whether there is a relationship between the frequency of remittances and the probability of repatriation. Having acquired transnational identities, returnees often move and live in multiple spheres of activity. If they had become naturalized citizens of the United States, how do they negotiate and articulate the meaning of citizenship at home in Africa? What are the responses and consequences of naturalization and citizenship for the returnees as they forge inclusion or exclusion in the affairs of the home society? Are there specific impediments that are often encountered by returnees, and how do they resolve these problems? For developing regions in Africa, what is the proper role of the central governments in the migrant repatriation process? Are there resources that can be provided by the central governments to tap and

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harness the capital and human resources that the returnees have acquired living abroad? To what extent do the returnees become change agents and advocates of new ideas, new ways of thinking, as well as sources of social, political, and cultural transformation? How do returning immigrants contest traditional norms and at the same time map out new vistas of opportunities for themselves and their home societies at large?35 There is also the possibility that repatriation may not always involve resettlement or repatriation to Africa but rather to a third country.36 Several African immigrants also have relational ties with family and friends in Europe, Canada and in other parts of Asia. For those immigrants who have acquired American citizenship, the repatriation process may be embarked upon in stages. Upon leaving the United States, some may settle temporarily in Europe, Canada, or Asia where they have relatives. This temporary sojourn may last for a while before final preparatory steps are made to settle permanently in Africa. This process of piecemeal repatriation is facilitated by the transnational identities and massive network of relatives and friends that many of the immigrants have been able to establish over the years.

NOTES 1. According to symbolic interactionists, identities (group or individual), selfconcepts, values, and attitudes exist primarily in the context of a social setting where different groups interact, communicate, or form meanings of each other’s behaviors or actions, Symbolic interactionist theorists like Charles Horton Cooley (1902), George Herbert Mead (1934), and Herbert Blumer (1969) all wrote about the importance of how we define ourselves and communicate the meanings of these definitions to a broader social group. For African immigrants, the images and representations of their presence in the United States is significant because it provides a map whereby other social actors will structure their relationships with these immigrants. 2. One of the contending issues involved in the articulation of how African immigrants rationalize their migratory experiences in the United States focuses on how these immigrants structure relationships with other minority groups, particularly African Americans and Caribbean blacks. For a detailed discussion of the dynamics defining the contours of this complex relation, see Milton Vickerman’s (1999) work on how West Indian immigrants negotiate and define race and ethnic identities in the United States. 3. According to Barkan et al. (2008:11), migration has always required the newcomers and the native born to negotiate their relationship. America, they contend, beckons and repels at the same time. Public attitudes significantly affect the modes of migrant incorporation into the host society. 4. For many Africans, the United States represents their best chances of achieving social mobility and incorporation into the global economy. Coming to America is viewed as an opportunity to achieve economic security for the migrant’s family. This

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quest for economic security is at the heart of Caribbean, Latino, and Asian migrations to the United States. 5. Mary Chamberlain’s (1999) work showed that family migration is not just an African phenomenon. Black Caribbean immigrants also combine their resources to support and sponsor extended relatives to Britain and the West in general. 6. See Oscar Glantz (1978), Suzanne Model (1991, 1995), and Roy BryceLaPorte (1972) of black immigrants and the culture of upward social mobility and advancement in the United States. 7. Milton Vickerman (1999) reported similar findings among West Indian immigrants in the United States. His research concluded that for West Indies black immigrants, education has been one of the proven pathways for achieving upward social mobility in the United States, Canada, or Great Britain. 8. See Robel and Rutledge’s (2008) discussion of how Somali immigrants use internal migration to create maximum economic benefits for themselves and their families. 9. See Rahel Kunz’s (2009:160–80) account of the implications of remittances for the new global economy. Kunz noted that “given the current crisis in development finance, vast sums of remittances have warmed the hearts of members of the international community. International aid donor countries have scaled back their investment commitments to poor countries because of remittance flows. He wrote that multilateral aid has decreased during the past decade while worldwide remittance flows exceed total development aid and have become the second largest, and for some countries even the largest financial flow to the developing world.” The African immigrant-sending countries have realized the remittance potential of their citizens and have started to implement measures to harness these resources for development. 10. During the course of the focus group interviews, some of the immigrants made specific references to India, China, South Korea, Brazil, and Singapore. The references were aimed at showing that with the proper management of the human and natural resources, Africans too can claim their place and become a force to reckon with in the global economy. The immigrants made references to how Indian immigrants in the diaspora in particular and Asians in general have been successful in transforming their countries through education, the restructuring of economies, and the creation of institutions of governance to ensure political stability. 11. For detailed discussions about the economic rationalizations and outcomes of migration, including immigrant remittances and development, see Nicholas van Hear and Ninna Nyberg-Sorensen (2003). The Migration-Development Nexus. (eds.). Geneva, Switzerland: International Organization for Migration. 12. For detailed information about the economic rationalizations of their migration to the United States, see table 4.1. 13. See Thomas and Allen (2000) and McGrew (2000). 14. See table 4.1. 15. See U.S. Bureau of the Census (2000) and Clark (2003). 16. See Stephen Lubkemann’s (2008:48–66) research on how Liberians in the diaspora in the United States rationalize having two homes, one in the host society, and the other in West Africa.

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17. It is important to stress that immigrant transnationalism as it relates to how immigrants construct social spaces in foreign domains is, in of itself, a complex and dynamic process that entails understanding of migrant sociocultural, economic, and political activities. Whether they enter the migratory circuits as refugees or not, immigrant definitions of transnationalism should incorporate the totality of the varied experiences shaping the outcomes of migration. See, for example, Bruno Riccio’s (2001) and Nadje Al-Ali, Richard Black, and Khalid Koser’s (2001) research on this topic. 18. See, for example, Rebecca Golbert’s (2001) discussion of how immigrants create transnational representations of home to reflect their migratory identities. 19. See Roger Waldinger’s (2008) account of how immigrant transnationalism informs how immigrants construct notions of “here” and “there.” 20. For detailed discussions of how migrants construct notions of citizenship, see also Goldring (1998) and Rivera-Salgado (2000). 21. See Alejandra Castaneda’s (2006) work on how migrants construct meanings of citizenship within transnational settings. 22. A number of studies have found that a common rationalization for seeking naturalization in the United States is access to the socioeconomic, civic, cultural, and political opportunities America offers. From this perspective, the calculus of seeking naturalization is utilitarian and designed to optimize the economic and cultural statuses of migrants and their families. See Portes and Curtis (1987), Pachon (1987), Grebler (1966), Bouvier (1996), Alvarez (1987), and Aguirre and Saenz (2002). 23. Cultural citizenship is explained as the social practices and understandings of one’s membership in a given community in which citizenship is negotiated and sought. 24. The results showed that African immigrants who seek naturalization are more likely to live in homes with two or three children, be under 45 years old, be married, have an average total family income of $105,500, and be employed in a professional occupation. 25. For detailed discussions of the black middle class, see Benjamin Bowser (2007). Bowser’s work traces the development and formation of the black middle class from the period of slavery until the present period. 26. See Aleinikoff, A. (2002). Semblances of Sovereignty. The Constitution, the State and American Citizenship. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 27. Kymlicka’s (1995) discussion of the role of societal culture is pertinent to this discussion. His contention is that immigrants must be able to choose from among the broad range of diversity and multicultural systems how they will give meaning and content to the forms and domains of citizenship that they want to reflect who they are as individuals or groups. 28. For more detailed discussions of the causes of African migration, see Okome (2006) and Weiner (1992, 1993). 29. For further discussions of how women use international migration to restructure and define their place in society, see Ruba Salih’s (2001) work on women, the nation-state, and migration. 30. See Guillermina Jasso and Mark Rosenzweig’s (1990) account as to whether immigrants who are admitted on the basis of their skills fare better economically

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and culturally than their counterparts who are admitted under other preference categories, for example, asylum-seekers. 31. For a global perspective on the relationship between migration and development, see Ronald Skeldon. (1997). Migration and Development. Essex, England: Longman. 32. Suzanne Model, Gene Fisher, and Roxane Silberman’s (1999) research on black Caribbean immigrants provides a starting point for understanding the complex intersections of race, ethnicity, economics, and the political structure of migration come together to explain migrant identity formations. 33. As a racial and ethnic minority group, African immigrants, African immigrants, like other underrepresented and marginalized groups in the United States, tend to rely on their ethnic and cultural traditions and heritage when confronted with organized or unorganized opposition to their culture and ways of life. 34. For detailed discussion, see Holger Kolb and Henrik Egbert (2008) on the importance of global markets and international migration. The chapters found in this edited work offer insights into how world trade and what the authors called “club theory” are useful perspectives for understanding the transnational movements of labor from one place to another. 35. For detailed discussion on the role diasporas in economic development, see Jennifer Brinkerhoff’s (2008) work entitled Diasporas and Development. Exploring the Potential (ed.). Boulder, Colorado, and London: Lynne Rienner Publishing. 36. According to Lynellyn Long and Ellen Oxfeld (2004), returning home remains a future possibility among many immigrants in the diaspora. Immigrants may imagine their return, maybe even plan for it. But only a few are able to actually implement the physical return itself. The result is that many immigrants spend their whole lives imagining their return but are never able to enact it.

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5 Gendering the Diaspora Identities of Second-Generation African Immigrant Girls

The construction of gender identities among African immigrants and their descendants has yet to receive intensive scholarly attention in the diaspora literature. The concept of identity connotes shared essence, being, and sense of who we are and an understanding of one’s self as it is given meaning by actors as well as the generalized other. Culture is an integral component of human identities. Through culture, identities are given meanings, shared, constructed, and contested, and boundaries are demarcated and delineated. Migration is identity-defining. Through its multiple and faceted processes, people are able to shape and map out their experiences in new domains and spaces.1 With the continued constitution of the African diaspora in global domains, questions arise as to the nature and forms of identities manifested by the second generation of immigrant youths. These questions include but are not limited to the following issues. Are there specific forms of identities that are exhibited by second-generation African immigrant youth? How do these youth manifest racial and ethnic identities? What are the boundaries of these identities? What structural determinants explain the contents of their identities? Are there external forces outside of the domain of the African immigrant cultural and diaspora communities exerting influences on the presentation and manifestation of second-generation immigrant youth identity outcomes? More specifically, how salient is gender in sketching the boundaries of African immigrant youth identities? How do they confront and negotiate issues of black African and African American racializations within the broader spectrum of racial formations and ideologies in an American society that is becoming more plural and diverse? How firm and durable are their constructs about race and ethnic membership and how central are coethnics, peer reference groups, and secondary groups in 161

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forming the identities of the second-generation African immigrant youths? Once formed, how are these identities used in creating agencies to facilitate integration or exclusivity? Finally, are there any theoretical issues that can be gleaned from the representations of these identities for students of migration studies? The lived identity experiences of the second-generation African immigrants (as well as experiences of other immigrant minority groups) are relevant in understanding the forms of racial and ethnic consciousness and the categorizations of different genres of African identities in the United States.2 It has been more than a century since W. E. B. Du Bois noted the problem of the color line in America and the racial barriers between black and white Americans (Du Bois, 1903). This problem persists today as race continues to be a major issue in black and white relations.3 For the new black immigrants who are coming to the United States as part of the worldwide transnational migration, it is important for social scientists to devote scholarly attention to how these immigrants define and give meanings to the spaces, places, and cultural territories that they create to anchor their transnational black identities. A central question is how the new black immigrants create, define, and interpret racial and ethnic identities. Are there specific crosscurrents that influence their identities, and how successful are they in crossing ethnic, racial, gender, and class boundaries? The relationships and social interactions that these new black immigrants and naturalized citizens forge among themselves to express their racial and ethnic identities as well as the processes they utilize to cross racial and ethnic boundaries are important considerations worthy of sociological enquiry.4 This chapter uses qualitative and ethnographic data to examine the sociological contents of the blended and fragmented identities formed by secondgeneration African immigrant girls in the United States. Statements from the focus group sessions are used to give voice to the forms of gendered, class, racial, and ethnic identities these youths construct. The purpose is to extrapolate the myriad of cultural genres and the contents of the racial communities within which second-generation black immigrant identities are formed and contested within the broader mosaic of black American diasporic identities and images. Aspects of these identities, including the construction of bi-racial or mixed marriages, are explored. A related question is whether or not the second-generation African immigrant youths are going to maintain the identities currently being forged by their parents. I argue that the identities of the second generation are going to manifest a broad array of identities that are neither African nor American, that is, multipleplace identities. Their identities will manifest cultural and social traits that will link them to multiple social fields and spaces. Their identities will not be bounded by territoriality, nation-states, and localities. Rather, the identities of these second-generation African immigrant youths are transcended,

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and are ensconced in a global youth culture whose underpinnings are categorized by place attributes, normative transformations, and redefinitions of what constitutes racial and ethnic membership in a multiplex society. For several of these immigrant youths, structural assimilation has occurred. Nonetheless, this assimilation is limited to carefully selected domains of American body polity.5 Young, vibrant, imbued with enthusiasm, and seeking vistas of opportunities for themselves and their families at home in Africa, many of these immigrants are rewriting and creating new representations and manifestations of black culture in America. The identities that they seek to weave and create are fiercely contested at every level of society. For black immigrant girls, having a black minority status does not always convey or symbolize limitations and blocked or missed opportunities.6 Challenging traditional notions of blackness as degrading and pathologizing, these immigrant youths confront obstacles so that they too can empower themselves and help lift their families and nations from economic and political ravages, scarcity, dependency, and abject poverty. The spaces (local or transnational) they establish to recreate newer identities are fascinating and offer a glimpse into the human quest for authenticity and rebirth. The vision underpinning this rebirth is never to return home to Africa the way they had left it—mostly very poor and always diminished on the world stage. The internal diversities in the African immigrant community make it difficult to paint a specific portrait of immigrant female youth identity. Despite this diversity, some commonalities can be discerned. For young immigrant girls, identity is deeply rooted in the strong cultural traditions and ethos of self-improvement and empowerment through education. This identity is reinforced by their parents who view education as pivotal to social mobility in the United States. Role definitions and rules of conduct are specified in accordance with the expectations that the immigrant girls will create their own pathways to goal attainment, rather than have cultural institutions that they regard as foreign and alienating define for them what their goal orientations and expectations should be. There is a conscious effort in the African immigrant community to stress empowerment (economic and cultural) in diverse forms and to contest notions of blackness that they find incongruent and inconsistent with their heritages and traditions.7 At the present time (in the formation and reformation of the black diaspora in the United States), the constructions of black identities are taking place in piecemeal fashion. To fully grasp the identities that the immigrants manifest, information is needed about their pre-migration identities and the cultural genres that they exhibit at home. Knowledge about this issue will illuminate and address questions about the immigrants’ notions of blackness and how they articulate and manifest individual and group identities. A critical issue here is how to tease out the complex relationship(s)

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between identities that are formed in the local contexts and whether these same identities are transposed to transnational spaces and given cultural authenticity and clarity. Of equal importance is how the second-generation immigrant girls are structuring their black identities in the midst of transnational migration as well as the social processes involved in the negotiations and contestations of the imported identities and the new ones that are formed in the host society. A central question is whether there are social and cultural processes that intervene in accounting for the transnational identities that are created by second-generation immigrant girls from Africa. Straddling between Africa and the United States, these new immigrants bridge the transnational spaces they create by incorporating structural and individualistic elements from the home country and the new society in transforming or reinforcing their identities. For those girls who came to the United States with their parents as refugees and as displaced persons, the formation of newer identities in the face of initial displacement or de-territorization, the re-creation of new places and spaces for manifesting identities, and the assignment of meanings to the new identities are equally important. For example, how do these immigrants transpose the memories of their identities to the new society, considering that some of them are still contesting racial, ethnic, gender, and political identities emanating from the violence some of them had experienced as a result of wars and conflicts? In essence, how do they ascribe identities to the transnational forces that have influenced in a large measure their migrations to the United States? These issues are central to the delineation of the structural and micro factors impinging on how transnationalism (including globalization) and identities are rationalized at the theoretical and empirical levels. Understanding the transnational identities of the second generation is significant because it shows the intercultural interconnectivities that African immigrant families establish following their migration to the West in general. In particular, it shows that the social constructions of family relationships are not conceptualized only to singular familial households. Instead, notions of intergenerational familial relationships are constructed to span broader geographic and global areas (see Chamberlain, 2006; Killingray, 1994). Social identity is a major site for the contestation of ideas about place, belonging, and social status or position within the social system. Through the identities that are formed, positions, statuses, roles, and expectations are articulated and given sociological and cultural import. Identity connotes essence and serves as a prism from which to explain how we define and interpret notions of inclusiveness and exclusiveness. For blacks in the African diaspora in the United States, these identities are critical in the formation of a racial community and group and ethnic identification. A subtext of these identities, once formed, are the attitudes, beliefs, values, and mores

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that become embedded in the expressions of singular and plural forms of these identities. For people of black African descent in the United States, the worldview of self-identification of blackness is also a manifestation of common historical legacies of oppression, racism, and discrimination or the notion that blacks as a people are disenfranchised, marginalized, and sometimes alienated from the core society. These legacies continue to form and shape the multiple confluences of black identities that are created not only by recent émigrés of black ancestry from Africa and the Caribbean, but also among native-born black Americans as well. The constellation of these identities and the shared meanings that they evoke are rationalized within the social constructions of what it means to be black in a race-, class-, gender-, and ethnic-conscious American society. For the second-generation African immigrant girls, an important question is whether the identities that they express are similar to those of their first-generation immigrant parents, or whether their identities are a mirror image of black Americans. A secondary and equally important question is whether the second-generation immigrant girls create their own unique racial and ethnic identities that are neither African nor African American. In their day-to-day activities, these girls come into contact with a cross-section of Americans and non-Americans alike. Their interactions with secondary groups (schools, peer groups, media, social and cultural clubs) including other immigrant children may also influence and shape how they define and express racial and ethnic affiliation and identification. Some of these secondary groups may serve as reference groups whose values, beliefs, norms, and viewpoints these girls may rely on to form and create their own unique identities. Many of the second-generation immigrant girls see their black racial and ethnic identification as a source of pride. They do not identify with the negative connotation typically associated with blackness in America. They bring to the black diaspora a fresh prism and new ways to challenge and contest what it means to be black. They disavow the notion held by white America that blackness is monolithic. Often acting to disaggregate and construct new forms of blackness, these young girls are renegotiating different cultural spaces to give expression to their ethnicities and racial identities. They vacillate between notions of blackness taught to them by their first-generation parents and those that they have learned on their own living in the United States. Some of the young women may try as much as possible to distance and separate themselves from African culture. Others try very hard to embrace it. At the end, what emerges is that by approaching identity as a flexible and fluid concept, these actors are able to create new spaces which allow them the flexibilities to choose those identities that have meaning for them. What they teach us is that identity is not simply discovered in the migrant’s host society. Identities are also formed via the

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historical, cultural, and political experiences associated with colonial and postcolonial manifestations. These sites may give the immigrants another space(s) to form and express new identities and find different forms of articulating what these identities ought to be.8 A growing feature in transnational migration studies are the roles played by culture, community, territoriality, and place in immigrant identity formation and expression. Identity must be explained within the contexts of complex interdependent global social systems.9 As actors, immigrants do create new cultures and identities while giving fresh meanings to old ways of cultural expressions and presentations of identity. Reconstructions of specific meanings concerning identities are formed to provide contexts to new lifestyles and value orientations in the new migrant settlements and places. There are important social, political, and cultural processes that are involved in the formation and expression of migrant identities and cultures. The assumption is that for the new immigrants who are entering the United States today, the creation of new spaces, places, and territories within which to find expression for their individualized and collective identities are important considerations underlying the form(s) of identities that they are going to choose and contest. Some of the immigrants might choose to highlight their cultural differences with the host societies, stressing a new status that is not only unique but at times oppositional to the dominant core cultures. Other new entrants may choose to abandon wholly or partly their own indigenous traits and cultures; others may stress an openness to engage new ideas, learn new roles, or broaden the scope and choices of identities that are available to them. The memories created in the migrant’s places of origination are not lost upon moving to another country. The new country is also a site where new memories, ideas, ideals, and perspectives or outlooks are going to be created. Ultimately, the fusion of the collective memories garnered from both places (home and abroad) become critical in the formation and expression of racial and ethnic identities. And mediating between the old and the new memories are the migrants’ attributions of the transnational meanings which provide the social and cultural contexts for the articulation of immigrant identities.10 Irrespective of the identities that they choose to stress, it is pertinent to note that identity formation among second-generation African immigrant girls is multi-faceted and by no means monolithic. Diverse experiences mark the identities of the second-generation girls. Though most of them have been born in the United States and are therefore American citizens, the households that they live in and the values that they espouse are generally dominated by other immigrants from black Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and some émigrés from Eastern Europe as well. Parental roles in this process, while significant, are not the overriding factor in immigrant youth identity formation. The deeply racialized immigrant communi-

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ties that these immigrant youths identify with are considered marginalized groups by the dominant white culture. The dominant group’s perception about black minority marginalized groups is therefore an important consideration in influencing the form(s) and types(s) of identities that the second-generation African immigrant girls will choose or adopt.11 No matter their countries of origination, the second-generation girls perceive that their blackness serves as the main marker, a common physical trait that will determine whether they will have limited or equal integration or incorporation into the core society. Having a black identity means that the secondgeneration girls maintain a consciousness and awareness of their ethnicity and racial legacy. Even when they have described their identity as American, the immigrant girls still consider themselves peripheral and marginal members of society. The identification with America is based upon birth, permanent residency, acquired citizenship, or naturalization. Their black identities have yet to be transposed to the sense that they are part of a racial community whose beliefs and values find resonance in black culture. Here, one finds a gap between what the immigrant girls perceive themselves to be, and their actual lived experiences as members of a racial and ethnic minority community. Though they identify with America, their values, norms, beliefs, customary practices and rituals are almost entirely an adaptation of African value systems. Values learned from home or imported to the United States serve as the reference point for anchoring attitudes and behavioral expectations. These values may be adapted to conform to American expectations and value systems. The result is that the forms and contents of identities represented among the girls are a mélange of transnational identities. When viewed against the backdrop of the American cultural and ethnic mosaic, the identities that are negotiated by the second-generation African girls are reconfigurations of migratory and diasporic identities grounded in a consciousness whose primary goal is to transcend blackness by redefining what it means to be black in white America.12 For the second-generation black immigrant girls, the identity that is presented is therefore a mix of cultural norms, values, and beliefs held by their parents as well as the new ones that they have been transmitted to them via media, peer group, and schools. These girls have held on to the values and beliefs of their first-generation parents, values such as personal responsibility, accountability, self-help, familial and kin group solidarity, and strong sense of cultural heritage and legacy based on African cultural genres and ethos.13 As children of immigrants, these girls have been taught by their parents to show respect to adult authorities, particularly school teachers, adults, the elderly, peace officers, and anyone who is their senior in age. This enables them to minimize conflicts with core institutions of society (schools, law enforcement) while developing coping mechanisms to deal with conflict resolution. This also means that the immigrant families are

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able to teach and inculcate in their children a sense of respect, dignity, and nonconfrontational posture. This is done to protect the children from the myriad of social and cultural problems (school dropout, violence, crime, and disrespect of authority) sometimes associated with inner-city underclass hip-hop culture. Part of their identity also includes a commitment to educational attainment at the highest possible level. This identity is premised on the belief held by the immigrants that despite lingering structural problems and impediments (racism, discrimination, gender disparities, economic fluctuations, crime, marginality), America is still an open mobility society: that education can be used as a tool to minimize the deleterious impact of these structural impediments. Among the African immigrant families, education is seen as a vehicle for gaining access to a quality lifestyle and middle-class standards of living. For several of the young immigrant girls, cultural beliefs about the premium of education have resonance and purpose. These girls frequently come into contact with immigrants who have attained intergenerational mobility higher than that of their first-generation parents. As one immigrant girl (Eugenia) affirmed, “Education is like the rising tide, lifting up the poor and people of low means by providing them with good income.” The issue is not about whether these girls will be college bound. The question is which colleges or institutions of higher learning they will elect to attend. Eugenia was in the process of visiting colleges and universities at the time of the focus group interviews with her parents. “The expectation of going to college was stressed to me almost everyday. I was told that if I decide not to go, I have to leave home, find my own place, and fend for myself. But if I do go, my expenses will be covered by my parents. I thought this was a cool idea. I still get to leave home. And I still get to attend college. The other immigrant children are expected to do the same thing, irrespective of their parents’ background,” Eugenia affirmed. These predefined expectations and the role that children should play in these social processes are influential factors in the black immigrant communities and their abilities to foster in their children a sense of responsibility, personal ambition, and focus. As another immigrant parent stated, “This is perhaps the best way for minority children to stake a place in society to ensure their future survival. We teach our children to earn everything by merit; that nothing is going to be handed to them for merely showing up.” As an immigrant youth, Eugenia spoke eloquently about black visibilities and invisibilities.14 Eugenia’s sense of gender, racial, and ethnic identities are anchored in what she termed “black positive vibrations.” Referencing the famed Jamaican musician, Bob Marley, Eugenia described the positive vibrations as the cultural heritages, legacies, and affirming values of black people, wherever they are found. These vibrations, she explained,

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finds affirmation in blacks’ sense of community, economic and spiritual well-being of all, black self-improvement, and commitment to family and kin. Skin color, texture of hair, languages, and physical traits are a few of the important attributes of black visibilities. The invisible aspects are those that form the foundation of black culture. They refer to spiritualism and a deep-seated belief in higher powers of human existence and affirmation. Eugenia’s sense of pride and affirmation in black cultural identities is premised on her conviction that as a people, blacks have made significant contributions to humanity. Yet, these accomplishments are not recognized and celebrated because of the continued subjugation and oppression of blacks as minorities and their global depiction as poor, helpless, and a burden to white society. Arguably, Eugenia’s positive affirmation of black pride and accomplishments finds expression in her identity and outlook on the role and place of blacks in American society. Ultimately, she reasoned, “Blacks will have to demonstrate these aspects of their culture and use their rich cultural values to transform themselves and others faced with similar circumstances, that is, oppression.” Eugenia espouses a belief in forging inclusion into American society. This inclusion posits that it is only from a position of strength, respect for others, responsibility, and maybe altruism that blacks can forge inclusion and advocate for equal footing with the dominant white society. She asserts that “black pride is good because it will help change the current perception that blacks are a problem people; merely waiting to be fed from someone’s bread basket. Black identity can be changed to emphasize what is good in black culture and to erase the current situation whereby some blacks continue to blame everyone for their situation other than themselves.” The theme of challenging America to face up to her responsibility of tackling racial inequality resonates in Eugenia’s perspective of what should constitute black identity. The panacea, as Eugenia sees it, lies in collective mobilization and group action to define and ameliorate the pressing social, cultural, and economic problems ravaging black communities in the United States, including societies in Africa and the Caribbean. A collectivized approach to unraveling and finding solutions to issues of community is central in the type of identity that Eugenia presented.15 Central to Eugenia’s sense of black identity is spelled out by her comment that racial exclusion and marginalization of blacks will persist as long as there are factions and divisions in the black community, particularly between the black elites and the large masses of urban poor blacks who continue to suffer the harmful consequences of successive economic downturns and governmental lack of resolve to tackle major social and economic problems facing the country. Invoking W. E. B. Du Bois’s notion of the talented tenth, Eugenia envisions a black identity that involves the marshaling of the resources of the black middle and upper classes to help

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address and find lasting solutions to the erosion of black self-worth among the youth culture prevalent in urban America. “Community by community, we can change this image by replacing the diminishing hope so visible in segments of black urban America today with renewed ambition to build our black communities from the scratch. The ultimate goal is to bridge the yawning gap of inequality that currently exists between black urban and white suburban America,” Eugenia contended. This will mean, according to this youth, “Education, quality jobs, housing, and individual responsibility and accountability at every level of black society. America shares some of the blame for the many ills of black urban America. But so does black America itself,” according to Eugenia. Referencing her grounding in black history and culture, Eugenia believes that the formation of black racial and ethnic identities in the United States will continue to suffer a serious blow if blacks fail to account for why some of these problems have persisted in their midst over successive generations. “My grandmother was a strong-willed woman. She never finished the fifth grade, but she was able to raise seven children working as a cook for a white family. She was self-reliant. She never despaired; she always found a way for help through family and friends. And she helped others whenever she could. Despite being a domestic hand, she was still able to save money for her grandchildren. She took responsibility. This is what I am talking about when I speak about the issue of owning up and doing for ourselves and others,” Eugenia continued. Her belief is that black identity and empowerment will have to be initiated by blacks. Blacks, she posits, “cannot sit on the sidelines and be spectators, or expect white society to pity them.” She advocates for an end to reliance on the government as the source of individual and community empowerment. Governments may facilitate the process but ultimately, she said, “The burden will have to be lifted by individuals, families, and communities alike.” For the second-generation African immigrant girls, the formation and expression of gender, ethnic, and racial identities is mediated by how the immigrants express and rationalize racial categorizations in the United States.16 This means that their identities can be referenced to the structural dynamics of race and ethnic relations in the United States and how the girls define and situate their identities in this context. One of the central findings in how identities are formed by the second generation suggests that within the second-generation immigrant youth community, identity awareness with reference to blackness continues to evolve through formal and informal social and cultural mechanisms, particularly via familial institutions and social affiliations with other social groups (for example, immigrants). Eugenia’s perspective recognizes the imperative that though there are contradictions in terms of how American society deals with racism and discrimination, the task of reclaiming the lost identities of black America

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can come through the forging of inclusion and not through self-imposed alienation, isolation, or pulling away from the rest of America. According to Eugenia, “Blacks are resourceful and capable of finding their place(s) in American society. But blacks cannot succeed if they advocate for the type of identity that is solely based upon the projection of an anti-white oppositional culture. On its part, white society must dispel their established beliefs that blacks do not want to help themselves to become successful. This belief further divides the two groups.” For Cynthia (another immigrant youth), black identity is seen through the lens of her single-parent mother. Cynthia’s mother arrived in the United States as a refugee. Without secondary or postsecondary credentials, the process of forging inclusiveness and incorporation into American society via labor force participation has been a difficult and challenging one for the single mother from Sierra Leone. Though she has managed to find gainful employment as a live-in domestic maid working for a white suburban family, her lack of education complicates any possibilities she has of achieving social mobility. Cynthia bases her identity on the occupational and economic struggles of her mother and her black immigrant friends. When she speaks of black feminine identity, she references the low occupational status of her mother and her inability to climb the ladder of social opportunity in the United States.17 Their conversations focus on shared or common interests: working as domestic maids for white families. “I always feel very sad when my mother and the other women gather here in our house. All they talk about is work, the pain, injustices, discrimination, sexism, and mixed opportunities. At times, you can tell just by listening to them that they feel they do not have any power to change their circumstances,” Cynthia said. For her, the association of the weak economic position of her mother and her friends is not only chilling, but equally disempowering as well. Her mother and her friends have created a social space in the kitchen area where they often congregate on days they do not work to chat and find solutions to their individual and collective problems. The women have created a community to offer support to each other and at the same time, contest and find solutions to their poor working conditions. The plight of her mother’s predicament was evident in Cynthia’s expression of identity. She referenced the need for social justice to protect vulnerable women who encounter economic problems in the workplace, particularly problems facing working class single women. In listening to and watching the immigrant women who often gathered around her mother’s dining table, Cynthia is able to find herself, her place, and the voice to articulate her unique identity. “Women must create better opportunities for themselves to resist economic injustices,” she said. Throughout the interviews, Cynthia’s focus remained on the other immigrant women who often congregated around their dinning table (their place

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of power) to chat about common and shared experiences of black women working as maids. “My generation is going to change this,” she said. At times, she expressed anger and rage at the rest of society for allowing this to happen to poor people, notably blacks, Native American Indians, and Hispanics. During the times when she accompanied her mother to work, Cynthia would often be writing short stories and poems while her mother cleaned, washed, and cooked. Unable to watch her mother’s toiling, Cynthia would offer to assist, though her mom always refused and instead ask her to do her school work or read a book. Cynthia would try not to fix her mind and emotions on the chores of domestic work, nor the many immigrant women she has come into contact with who are domestic maids. Instead, as she explained, she will create in her mind, “Pictures of strong black women who have endured back-breaking jobs,” as she described it. As she reflects on these women and their strife, Cynthia indicated that she feels a “sense of power, courage, and the need to survive and be able to relate to others from a position of strength as a black woman.” Cynthia sees the position of power that her mother’s white employers wield. As she stated, “When I see my mum scrubbing bathrooms and kitchens sometimes on bended knees while the white family she works for will be playing in the living room with their children or sometimes reading, I feel a certain pain I cannot describe. All I see is white privilege. To be white is to be very powerful indeed. It is that power that has my mom on her knees working so that she too can have something.” Cynthia’s thinking emanates from the work and daily struggles that she had witnessed from her mother and her black immigrant women friends. There is bitterness, anger, frustration, and rage on her part. She referenced the unequal, segregated, and at times hostile relationships among black and white Americans. This structured inequality, she rationalized, persists due to the inability of Americans to hold civil discourses on race free from political labels and recriminations. Black America, she argued, must not wait for this discourse to take place. Rather, they should build institutional capacities to enable them to use their own resources to build their communities, better education for their children, and shore up the institution of their family unit. Cynthia finally stated, “The women I see almost every weekend sitting around the dining table at home talking about work certainly have had an impact on me. They have taught me to view women as doers. They have taught me that black women too can be powerful because of what they have to endure to provide for their families.” Grounding this identity is Cynthia’s perception that women are equally capable of transforming their lives to become whatever they aspire to become, not what others tell them to become. This is certainly an identity of empowerment with the clarity of being able to define one’s destiny free and independent

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from all the traditional and nontraditional ways that male-led societies try to keep women in a state of oppression and servitude.18 From Cynthia’s perspective, a black identity manifested by black powerlessness and dependency will not be able to address and seek meaningful solutions to black problems. Though she felt a sense of rage at the plight of her mother and her friends, she nonetheless believes that a black identity that is based solely on anger and probably militancy toward the dominant society and its institutions will backfire. “My mother’s situation is simply a class and economic issue,” she stated. “This can be overcome with time through hard work, education, careful planning, savings, and self-improvement. It is very easy to find a blame for this class issue. The wise use of individual and national resources can very easily resolve this problem,” she rationalized. Cynthia’s construction of gendered identity recognizes the futility of black anger toward mainstream white society. But as she further explained, the process of developing social or national consciousness to address some of these structural problems is highly imperative. From Cynthia’s perspective on the future direction of black America, she believes that a twin-prong approach emphasizing self-improvement and actualization are probably more important than any government-induced program of public assistance. Black institutions such as the church and family, she indicated, can play a fruitful role in this renaissance era as they have done in times past in the face of sustained oppression and dehumanization. The cultural manifestations of second-generation identities among the African immigrant girls are also articulated in terms of global black culture. Here, the emphasis of identity is represented by beliefs and a worldview about the diverse ways for the creation and re-creation of black cultural forms of identification. Some of the girls stress the special ties and linkages that they have established with other African immigrants living in the United States. The association with Africa is explained by the common bonds and recognition that African cultures are unique, and that manifesting these cultures and the multiple identities that they reveal are best understood and propagated by people of black African descent and ancestry. This sense of uniqueness and distinctiveness of African culture is recognized and celebrated as well as incorporated in every fabric of social and cultural discourses. Gloria, a 17-year-old immigrant girl from Ghana, manifests racial and ethnic identities rooted in African cultural affirmations. Her reference group for the formation and presentation of identity is predominantly Africanbased. Born in Ghana, Gloria’s parents migrated to the United States in the late 1990s. She prides herself in coming from a culture in which clear demarcations and boundaries are defined for youth to follow. These clearly

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stated expectations include respect for adults, self-empowerment, and support for family-oriented values. Gloria indicated that these expectations and values have played a significant part in her life by fostering in her a sense of family and community. She referenced family-held values such as hard work and self-improvement as the key to her ambition of becoming an attorney. A related aspect shaping her identity is her equally strong identification with black America. From Gloria’s perspective, African and black American cultures are related and in these related and multiple cultures can be found deeply entrenched consciousness of what it means to be black. And though there are some noticeable differences, according to Gloria, “These differences are such that they do not bring about huge rifts between the two groups.” Her notion of what it means to be black seems to be shaped by the historical circumstances of blacks as an oppressed and colonized people living in a society in which black-white hostilities and inequalities are recognizable and distinct. “The bonds we share have been shaped by our common histories and experiences as black people. And wherever we are, we will always be black. It does not matter whether you are African or black American,” according to Gloria. For Gloria, it does not matter whether she is described as black African or black American. The important thing is to claim one’s heritage and give meaning to the cultural forms for the manifestation of the identities that come with one’s heritage.19 According to Gloria, “Sometimes, I wish America will stop looking at everything in terms of black and white. There is hatred for people who are black and dark-skinned like me. They judge me as a bad person before they get to know me. That is very hard to swallow. But the world is changing. I meet kids from all over the world. They don’t seem to care I am African and black. But their parents do. They don’t know any better except to see black people as bad. This is very sad.” There are differences in how different immigrant households perceive, interpret, and manifest black identities. In some households, African culture is stressed over black American culture. In these households, the means of communication, dress habits, food, and social networks are limited to African culture. Accent is given to an African perspective and worldview. Living arrangements are given African contents. Homes are decorated with African arts and crafts. Strong ties are fostered with other African immigrant families. Among these households, contacts with the rest of America, particularly white society, are very limited. The preferred identity is definitely African. Children are supposed to reflect African cultural identities in every aspect of their lives. Their contacts with other American children beyond the friendships that they form at home are limited to other immigrant children of African descent. Religious rituals and celebrations of tribal and

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ethnic festivals are woven into the fabric of social life. Children are given authentic African names. Mary’s household serves as an illustration of immigrant households with African-centered identities. In her immigrant household, there is a perception that American culture is lax in its outlook on children, and failing to point children in the right way. “My father has a dismal look when it comes to blindly copying urban black youth culture,” Mary affirmed. A constant refrain of her dad is to always remind her of the perception by criminal justice agents and teachers alike that black boys are criminals in waiting or have yet to be apprehended by the law or that black girls are tolerable but difficult to get along with. In a sense, Mary’s father is echoing the saga of the black urban underclass daily confronted with crime, violence, unemployment, father-absence, drug-dependent subculture, and a host of other social problems. In this urban subculture, relationships with women are frequently violent prone, unstable, hostile, and often based upon sexual exploitation. The inner city gangs become a means to assert black male masculinities and aggressive behaviors.20 According to Mary’s account and description of the identities manifested in her household, “My parents are skeptical of American youth identity. They always tell us not to copy what we see others doing or behave in such a way as to call attention to being black,” she said. Her parents’ views about American society have been influenced by their perception of America as a country of immense opportunities and possibilities. But often, these possibilities are shaped by racial and class statuses. For many Americans, particularly blacks, Mary contends that life is hard, and encounters with discrimination and racism pervasive. Maintaining distinct African-centered identities is designed to insulate children from some of the social problems of urban America, especially drugs, school dropout, and crime. Grounding the identities of children in African values is intended to ensure that even when these social problems occur, they can be handled without the child losing his or her moorings in society or their sense of self-worth. “It is important to hold on to the values of our parents even when we disagree with them because they want to protect us,” Mary said. In Mary’s family, the cultural boundaries of what constitutes black cultural forms and identities are contested by defining a cultural territory that is authenticated by meanings that are formed by what it means to be black. The identities and the place and space that come with this family’s identity about black America are limited to identification with a few chosen segments of the host society’s culture (education and labor force participation). Issues concerning racialization and ethnic categorizations with respect to black cultural life in America are seen as contestations which Mary’s family views as outside of its scope of influences. Creating and playing out

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the full meanings of the African-centered identities and cultural ideals that Mary’s family espouses has given this family a fresh prism through which to view black and white relations in the United State. The perception of this family is that ethnic group relations in the United States are often mediated by stratification and structured unequal access to opportunities usually based upon racial and ethnic status. The rigid constructions of subordinate versus superordinate class relationships and the privileges that are formed and contested within these classes or groups ultimately serve as barriers to full incorporation and inclusiveness in America.21 Though Mary’s concepts about racial and ethnic identity have been influenced by her parents, her narratives suggested that she has not fully closed the door on embracing a black American identity. She finds that she cannot fully insulate or isolate herself from black American culture. She alluded to the isolation and alienation that comes with choosing one identity while completely rejecting others. She stressed that she cannot help but accept the view that her identity is ultimately one that is poly-ethnic or a hybridity of identities some of which are ensconced in African and black American cultures. Mary’s perspective is that there are drawbacks on the part of her parents for having embraced an almost African-centered identity. She cited the lack of diversity in her parents’ worldview. “I know that they do not associate with people outside of the group of African immigrant families we know. Sometimes, I feel sad about that because there is a whole new world out there with people from all sorts of background. I can see why they have held on to their culture because they derive a lot of satisfaction from it. But at the same time, they are lonely,” Mary confirmed. The expression of ethnicity and racial identification is a powerful medium in a world that is becoming conscious of multiple belongings and shared cultural creations. At least, for Mary, the questioning of identity expression seems to preoccupy her thoughts. Her search for meaning in identity is ultimately one that makes her challenge or contest the identities that her parents would have her adopt. As Barot et al. (1999:24) opined, “What one is has to be a self-conscious process of discovery that is influenced by social and material conditions as well as by self-expression.” This means that for Mary, new conditions and realities, coupled with fresh opportunities, will become available for her as she interacts with people from diverse identity cultures and backgrounds. Ultimately, she will have to decide which identity she will embrace. The cultural isolationism of her parents and their desire to protect her from some of the realities of urban black life (teenage pregnancies, school dropouts, and disrespect for authority figures, as she listed them) ultimately makes her skeptical of the future. However, Mary remains undaunted in her efforts to expand the scope of her black identity to reflect the need to be open-minded and tolerant of the immense cultural mosaic and tapestry that she finds in America.

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In other immigrant households, there is a blending of cultures and identities, and parents adopt a laissez-faire approach to the identities that their children will adopt. Children are allowed to drift back and forth between African and American cultures, or embrace as many identities as possible, depending upon the children’s preferences. In these households, both African-centered and American values are taught to children. Children are not hindered by parents and family members in terms of their choice(s) of friends and peer group relationships. This open-ended approach to identity formation is premised on the belief that children born in the United States are going to encounter a wide array of identities as they interact and move within secondary group relations such as school mates, friends, and coworkers. In the process of these interactions and interchanges, the child’s personality and identity are formed. A feature of children who are raised in these households is that their parents have lived in the United States for a long time (15 years), have acquired citizenship or in the process of applying, live in suburbia, are college educated, are married, and have a middle-class professional status. Being able to map out their ethnic and racial identity is a challenging and daunting task. Despite the fact that their parents acknowledged that there are drawbacks in allowing second-generation immigrant girls to develop their own ethnic and racial identities, the information from the focus group sessions suggested that for both the parents and their children, the negative portrayal and presentation of blacks and other minorities in media and popular culture is not considered problematic or a major concern necessitating for them to rigidly control what identities their children will adopt or embrace. The parents and their children assert that ethnic and racial differences and categories, while important, are not as divisive and corrosive as often portrayed. A common belief among the immigrants was that it is possible to rise above these divisions by fostering a climate of inclusion. Their perspectives are that children ought to be exposed to global cultures and identities if they are to find their place and role in an ever-changing world. Ethnic and cultural restrictiveness in terms of identity formation are not only polarizing but also limiting as well. As Aba, one of the second-generation immigrant girls from Ghana hinted, “Restrictions cannot be placed on the type(s) of ethnic identities kids should adopt. My parents allow us to express ourselves in terms of how we feel. They do not choose who our friends are going to be; neither do they determine how we define ourselves, what clothes we wear, the music we listen to, and so forth. Their approach is to guide and expose us to many cultures and identities as possible.” Whether they choose to describe themselves as African Americans or as black Africans, the choice of identity is premised on the immigrant’s subjective and at times objective assessment of their transnational migratory experiences. Identities may hinge on the immigrant’s concept of security

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(economic, political, and cultural). In some families, identity is construed in terms of being able to pursue one’s goals free and unhindered by political security concerns. This is the case in households where strong identification with black Africa does not offer much of political security and leverage. As one immigrant girl attested, “The freedom to travel anywhere else in the world with an American passport means a lot to me and my parents. My dad said that an American connection is great because it offers us protections when we go to Africa.” For another immigrant girl, “Having an American identity is a positive thing. People at home in Africa look up to you for leadership and assistance because they see you as someone who has learned different ways of doing things. It is a cool thing to be an American. Others may not see it that way, but I do.”

RECONSTITUTING NEWER FORMS OF IDENTITIES: THE EXPERIENCES OF AFRICAN REFUGEE GIRLS The majority of the victims of war and armed conflicts throughout the world are women, children, and the elderly. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees reports that over three-fourths of those who are displaced internally or internationally as a result of armed conflicts are also women and children. For refugee women and children, finding a safer haven to reconstitute their lives is often fraught with bureaucratic nightmares and oftentimes, outright gendered discrimination as male refugees tend to have access to the resources to facilitate their resettlement. Gender, according to Nolin (2006:4), is a “central organizing principle in migration and refugee research.” For refugee children, displacement (whether internal or international) has a traumatic impact on human growth and development. The post-traumatic effect has a long lasting effect on refugee sense of self, personality, and above all, identity formation.22 Immigrant girls growing up in refugee households articulate identity formation in terms of the ethnocide and genocidal victimizations that they and their parents had experienced. A common theme echoed by many of the young girls who are growing up in refugee households is that no matter what identities they project, the status of being a refugee or an asylee may trump other identities they create or form. As Nolin (2006) noted in her study of refugee women from Guatemala who have been settled in Canada, the ruptures caused by displacement often become important in understanding how refugees re-create and renegotiate new geographic and cultural spaces to mediate between the local and transnational identities that they yearn or desire to construct. This theme is also explored in Edward’s (2007) account of Sudanese refugee women where she describes how refugee host countries construct notions of refugee helplessness and

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victimhood as they try to understand the complexities of displacement and nationlessness. As one refugee girl remarked, “Anytime we have to deal with social services, there is always a sense that we are helpless, hopeless, unable to put our lives together, and without a place to call home outside of America.” Referring to their nonidentification as Americans, one refugee girl quipped, “Most Americans do not know much about the refugees who are here. The perception is that something very bad happened to cause us to come here. That’s all. Most people don’t take the time to find out what really happened. Instead, they lump us all together as people with problems, failing to see us as people with aspirations, hopes, fears, and joys. People like to stress that we are always victims of something.” From this refugee girl’s perspective, this feeling of isolation and marginalization is the reason refugees cling on to their tribal and clan culture, rejecting incorporation and consciously avoiding any institutional affiliations with the host society’s institutions and cultures. Having a refugee status is a source of great discomfort and displeasure. For black refugees in particular, exposure of their refugee status coupled with their maligned status as foreigners predisposes them to further abuses and victimizations by hate and fringe groups advocating white power and racial supremacy. For the refugee youth, the situations and circumstances that caused their displacement and statelessness often dominate the memories of the girls who had experienced forced migration.23 Though some of the girls did not actually experience the forced exile, their parents have played a major role in reconstructing the experiences and the forced flight and escape to safer havens. Girls growing up in the refugee households are told about the forced flights. Stories about the forced flight often serve a didactic purpose: to teach the history of the family to the young and at the same time position them to be able to uplift and create new vistas of opportunities for themselves and their families. Identities are structured in such a way to give eminence to the experiences of home and the new experiences that are socially created in the new domain.24 Describing the formation of black identities in her household, one immigrant girl whose family had escaped from the ravages of war in Africa had noted: “We do not see things in terms of black and white. We stay together. We do not have any American friends. All our friends are refugees. We left relatives behind. Some were killed. We still do not know where others are. Our world is very small, though we live in a big country. We only go to school, be with family, or go to work. Otherwise, we are always thinking about the home we left behind and what remains of it.” This form of marginality and alienation is a common feature of refugee communities all over the world. At times, refugees may also be viewed as a threat to the host society. Edward (2007:166–67) found that black refugees are usually depicted by the host culture as criminals, inferior, low

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status, diseased, and poor. These characteristics may not endear refugees to the members of the host society. At times, refugees have to contend with discrimination, insults, and violence due to their vulnerable status, poor linguistic skills, and lack of social capital. The most difficult part, as one refugee girl admitted, “is living and coping with the pain of rejection by American society. White Americans distance themselves from us, always putting us down. Blacks think that we have taken their jobs and they resent us for that. They never see us as black Americans. To them, we are strangers, never to belong, and a people to be shunned.” This may account for their unwillingness among the refugee community to seek full incorporation and total assimilation into their host societies. The formation of a refugee oppositional culture of resistance is caused by the traumas often associated with violence and war. The refugee girls spoke about the difficulties some of their friends who are also refugees often encounter in the process of rebuilding their lives. “Some of the girls do not attend school. They simply stay home. They live solely on government assistance. They do not understand the educational process. School authorities have limited skills when dealing with refugee students. Some of the refugees do not go to school because they are often subjected to ridicule by other kids. A large number of them drop out,” another refugee youth remarked.25 The voices of the refugee youth are often confrontational. This feeling is very much understandable. Finding a safer place to anchor their victimizations from war has been challenging. The violence and poverty that characterized their lives in Africa have been replaced with hope and new aspirations. But these new aspirations are becoming very difficult to fulfill. The feelings on the part of some of the refugee girls are that the rest of America does not share in their daily struggles for affirmation and dignity. Struggles to deal with being a refugee are often down played. As one refugee youth remarked, “America expects us to forget about our experiences. But this cannot happen overnight. We have every right to talk about the pains of war and to be angry for what happened. And if Americans do not understand this, then they should not have brought us here in the first place.” The language and discourse of war dominates the affairs of the immigrant refugee youths.26 There is a lack of trust in government and government institutions primarily because these same institutions had failed them before resulting in their current predicament. “Things are tough and will continue to stay so for a very long time to come. We just need assistance from the government but they always treat us like we are nothing,” one refugee girl stated. Some of the African refugee girls and their families are doing everything possible to create new spaces and places to affirm their culture and heritage. But as one refugee girl explained through an interpreter, the new aspirations and lives that some of them are striving to establish are often stifled by the persistent cultural denigration that they have to endure

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because of their status as refugees as well as their marginalized status as foreign-born blacks. Total hopelessness pervades the landscapes for some of the girls who are torn between establishing an American identity versus trying to preserve their history and culture in the United States. The fresh opportunities offered by America have yet to be felt by these youth. Some of them continue to resist and confront any attempts by community welfare agencies and organizations to offer them assistance. This stems from the fear of losing their cultural heritage. What is clear is that given the present plight of some of the second-generation refugee girls, there is a sense of being trapped in America without a means of escape. The energies and talents of the second-generation youth are being used, in some regards, to create new spaces for asserting the strengths of the refugee community rather than expose its weaknesses. The refugee social system in which some of these girls live and find expression for their identities is being defined to include sites for cultural contestation and resistance to powerful external pressures that seek to co-opt the refugees into mainstream American social life. For several of the youth, the perception is that the focus of change and collective empowerment for subordinate groups has to be on how to remove the vestiges of entrenched inequality in the United States rather than focusing exclusively on racial and ethnic attributes.27 Of particular concern to the refugee families is the criminal identity law enforcement officials frequently associate them with. Referring to the tension between refugee teenagers and local law enforcement agencies, one refugee girl from Liberia said: “As far as the police are concerned, we are just as bad as black Americans, always causing trouble for others, stealing, and disobeying the law. To them, we are the same: bad people. That is the identity we have been given. But that is not true. They do not trust us. And we don’t trust them either. They disrespect all of us, even including our elderly folks by talking down to us as if we are children. There is no dignity in being a poor black. You are not accorded any sign of respect.” This perspective on identity is not the dominant identity that is held by a majority of immigrants and blacks alike. Black immigrants have their own perspectives about racial and ethnic identity formation in the United States. Despite differences in beliefs and value orientation, the majority of black immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere hold the view that fostering racial commonality and interests among all blacks in the diaspora is attainable and therefore worth pursuing. At the crux of this shared interest and the fostering of commonality is the imperative of achieving the economic and political empowering of blacks in the global diaspora. This process calls for a black-centered perspective while at the same time recognizing variations in black cultural forms and contents. For both groups (native-born and foreign blacks) common experiences related to their subordinate and historically oppressed status make this cooperation desirable

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rather than the fragmentation and separation along the lines of nationalism and place of birth. Some of the refugee girls never see themselves as Americans even though they have acquired citizenship. They see themselves as different, never identifying as black Americans. There seems to be a cultural gap between the refugees and the black American community. Lack of knowledge about black Americans has hindered cooperation and identification with blacks. The converse is valid as well. Most of the refugee teenagers do not form strong links with the home countries that they had left behind. As one teenage girl declared, “The memories of home are better erased because of what we went through. I don’t want to be reminded. There is nothing to celebrate about the culture we left behind. For now, I just want to spend time in college, make new friends, learn new things, and not live my life worrying about all the hatred and disrespect I see here between blacks and whites.” For this young girl, being in the black diaspora connotes newness, a rebirth, and a transition. The cultural and social rhythms defining her refugee identity are being shaped by American cultural ethos. But etched in her mind are fleeting notions of home in Africa with its myriad of problems that she would like to forget and possibly erase out of her consciousness. From her cultural identity perspective, this girl never imagined that she would become part of the black dispersal. Her initial status in America as a refugee still evokes pain, anguish, and a feeling of unwholesomeness. Her consciousness and identity straddles two worlds, the one they left behind, and the new one that they strive to create here. She taps into both worlds to give broader contents to the new identities she wants to form in the United States. Thoughts about returning home become ephemeral, usually interlaced by what could have been. In her mind therefore, there are no national borders or boundaries as she struggles to define her own rendition of black identity. She weaves black identities by imagining how things would have looked like if they had stayed home in Africa and never left. At the same time, she is eager to forge a new identity here in the United States to represent her historical circumstance and experience. She asserts that being in the United States is not about seeking wealth and fortune. Instead, her refugee consciousness underscores the complexities she confronts in attempting to balance how she can claim her nationalistic identity back and at the same time map out different identities to fit her new status in the United States. Achieving this balancing act is problematic for this girl because at times, she is reminded by her black American friends that she is not an African American. Her white friends also do remind her that she is not a black American. She admits to living in an American society that she cannot encompass because others have abrogated and taken upon themselves the responsibility of defining what her identity should be. From her perspective, the way to survive this form of cultural abuse and black

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denigration is to extrapolate new meanings of blackness which she defines simply as being able to reconstruct the positive memories of the identity she had growing up as a young black girl in Africa surrounded by parents, grandparents, and an untold number of extended relatives whose lives she had deemed legendary and very inspiring because they were always around to teach, admonish, and elevate her spirit. The myriad forms of refugee identity formation are also exemplified by Jenny in her family’s fight and struggles to redefine their refugee identity in North Minneapolis, Minnesota. For Jenny, the issue is not how they define, express, and manifest an identity. The contending issue has to do with issues of social justice and respect for human dignity. Jenny embraces a global identity. Being a refugee from Sierra Leone, she is reluctant to embrace and form a black American identity. “I cannot identify with a black American identity. I was not born here. I identify as a black African. My clan identity is also important to me. That’s what I know. I guess my life and identity is a reflection of my clan beliefs. The basis of community life is the clan,” Jenny indicated. She proceeded to elaborate on her idea of a racial and ethnic identity paradigm by stressing the cultural differences between African and native blacks in the following statement: “The experiences are not the same. I am not accepted by the black American community. They tend to look down on us as foreigners. Being refugees, they tend to disrespect us even more. I live in a community of black African Sierra Leoneans. We form our own community. At school, we keep to ourselves and the black Americans do the same. All my parent’s friends are from Sierra Leone or from Africa. Occasionally, we interact with students from Asia and Latin America.” According to Jenny, her parents’ perspective about black American cultural forms and identities is negative. The focus group narratives confirmed Jenny’s perspective. Her parents’ belief is that black Americans have been slow in creating community structures to bring about the empowerment they need to improve upon their standards of living. Jenny’s parents stressed the value of education and self-help. And though they acknowledged past injustices and racial subjugation and the oppression of blacks, they contend that foreign-born blacks from Africa and the Caribbean have manage to develop strategies to offset and minimize continued racism and discrimination targeted against blacks in general irrespective of where they hail from. Describing her father’s stance on racial identity and community values, Jenny reiterated, “My father’s belief is that we should never have to accept a handout from anyone as long as we are able-bodied. We should always work for what we want and not rely on anyone to hand it to us. His thing is that we have to hunger for success and never allow anyone to define who we are or what we should become.” Unlike her father, Jenny believes that some of the negative images and stereotypes about black Americans and the identities that they evoke are

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unfounded and too harsh. Though she subscribes to a black African identity, she still perceives that blacks of whatever background do face mistreatment in the United States. Jenny’s sense of racial and ethnic identity about what it means to be black is also captured by her statement that “Americans seem to believe that to be black is not cool; that to be white is to be somebody, and to have a purpose in life. They keep pushing black people out. They keep talking bad about them all the time. I don’t like it. I am also black though I was not born here. We are the same skin color, some shades darker and blacker than others.” Although some of the second-generation immigrant girls perceive blackness as problematic, they nonetheless gravitate to black cultural forms and artistic expressions. Here, several of the girls have a sense of shared cultural interconnectedness with black Americans. Their language forms, choice of music, clothing, and cultural fads are definitively black American. The cultural forms emanating from these creations are used as markers of identification with black America. But that is where the similarities end. The second-generation girls use these forms of cultural expressions to engage and contest their own youth culture and identity. The meanings they assign to these cultural and artistic forms are given relevancy in the African context. The identities that are formed by these cultural manifestations are shared with other girls and adolescent family members at home in Africa thereby giving blackness and some of its cultural manifestations a transnational twist and content. This extends the boundaries of black American culture to the urban centers of Africa. The language forms and cultural nuances depicted in black American hiphop music are adapted to the African urban scene. When they go home for visits, some of the girls share black American music with their peers. Among a segment of the girls, there is a subterranean perception that identification with urban black cultural forms and music does not convey the same degree of negativity that some often associate with clothing fads and musical forms, especially rap and hip-hop music. This may suggest a process of identity selectivity when it comes to the formation of identities among the second generation. It also points to the fluidity of racial and ethnic identities.

CONTESTING SHADES OF BLACKNESS: FORMATION OF BI-RACIAL AFRICAN IMMIGRANT DIASPORIC IDENTITIES Family life is a major aspect of the lives that African immigrants rely on to create their identities in the United States. As stated, the importance of family in the lives of the immigrants are manifested in the strong bonds

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of kinship and the myriad of networks that African immigrants generally create to adapt to the expectations of their migration journeys. The familial- and kinship-based networks provide economic and social psychological support to their members and at the same time anchor the immigrants in African values and norms. Marriage and the rites associated with the celebration of this institution form the bedrock of family life among Africans. Among the African immigrants who were studied, inter-racial and ethnic marriages are with immigrants from the Caribbean and SouthCentral America, particularly other immigrants from Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, and Brazil. A common stress of these marriages is the accent on the cultural resources and diversity offered by marrying someone within the black global diaspora. These mixed families celebrate the vastness and richness of black cultural tapestries. At the same time, these marriages are also seen as cementing cultural ties to the African-centered world. Inter-racial marriages with whites are also becoming increasingly common. These inter-racial unions cut across all social and economic class lines. Usually, these marriages are with people who have a similar background in terms of income and educational attainment. Inter-racial marriages are typically to be found among African immigrant women who have pursued postgraduate education since their arrival in the country. They also tend to be suburbanites with a professional status and total household income exceeding $140,000. These inter-racial marriages are seen as a manifestation of full or complete assimilation into the host society or the dominant culture. For the black immigrant women who married white men, race is not seen as a cultural or economic barrier to social integration. This section examines the formation of racial and ethnic identities among bi-racial and ethnic immigrant girls. The goal is to situate and describe the narratives defining the identities emanating from the identity relationships that the immigrant girls form outside the boundaries of their own ethnic and ancestral culture. For those immigrant girls who have a bi-racial identity, there is the need to understand how notions of identity are constructed and defined, including an assessment of the sociological and cultural outcomes of these identities as they are negotiated within the broader spectrum of immigrant adaptations in the United States. Of equal significance is how recent immigrants of black descent are able to cross racial and ethnic boundaries in the United States as they forge new black identities. Despite the relatively small number of immigrant girls of mixed racial and ethnic background in the study (N = 12), mapping out the identity experiences and how they play out is significant to the understanding of racial identity politics in America. As their numbers continue to grow many of these girls find they have to contest the multiple dimensions and meanings of blackness.

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VOICES AND IDENTITIES OF SECOND-GENERATION BI-RACIAL AFRICAN IMMIGRANT GIRLS Eunice is a Sierra Leonean immigrant woman living in Omaha. She came to the United States in 1986 on a student’s visa to attend college and to reunite with her brother who also lives in Omaha. She majored in food science. Upon the completion of her college education, Eunice was afforded the opportunity to acquire practical training and experience at a grain milling and processing plant. The practical training visa that she obtained was to have lasted for a year. But prior to its expiring, Eunice was informed by the manager at the mill where she worked that they would like to offer her permanent employment. This meant that the company will petition the immigration authorities to allow Eunice to stay in the country as a permanent resident. It was also at this time that Eunice met her partner, George. The two worked in the same plant but in different units. George is white and originally hails from Kansas City. He had graduated with a degree in agricultural science from the University of Missouri. Shortly after they met, Eunice and George got married. Their marriage was consummated in the birth of one child. Eunice’s family and relatives in Africa were open to the idea of Eunice’s marriage to a white man. The only hesitation and concern were those expressed by her grandparents who were not receptive to the idea. After the birth of their first child, Ruby, the family considered going to Scotland or Ireland because they perceive Europe as more tolerant of diversity and social inclusiveness than America even though they admitted that Europe too has its share of racial and ethnic animosities. But as the family rebuilds their lives in the United States, they remain cognizant of the importance of racial and ethnic identities in the United States. While it is a source of pride for many, racial and ethnic identity expression can also become a site for waging social conflicts.

RUBY’S BI-RACIAL AND ETHNIC IDENTITIES: CHALLENGING OLD IDENTITIES AND CREATING NEW ONES For Ruby, the social construction of identity is often problematic because of the mixed messages she comes across from both blacks and whites. She finds acceptance among her predominantly white, middle-class, suburban friends and their families. Issues and discourses dealing with race and ethnicity are often civil and courteous. Ruby presents a black identity though she is quick to point out that she is Sierra Leonean–American. Growing up in a middle-class home, both of her parents stressed to her the double heritage and identity. Culturally, the family emphasized both aspects of their bi-racial identities and celebrated this double heritage. To Ruby, her

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black and white identities do overlap. “I do not have to choose a black or white identity. I would like to keep both identities. I am proud of my dual heritage. My parents expose us to African and American cultures. We travel to Africa every other summer to my mom’s village near Freetown. My dad is American of Scottish descent. We have been to Scotland several times. I feel my Scottish identity whenever we go there. My mixed blood of black and white is not a big issue,” Ruby attested. Ruby is a light-skinned woman. Her black friends have a problem accepting her blackness and dual heritage. She alluded to the racial categorizations and the politicization of skin color preferences in the United States. Her skin color locates her in two worlds, one black, and the other white. Among her black friends, she is white. And some of her friends resent her for wearing African clothes and going to black boutiques to have her hair done. To most of her black associates, she cannot pass as black.28 “You are not one of us,” a black beautician once reminded her. “I like black culture. I like to celebrate it. It is a part of my being and who I am. But my skin color is used against me, as if I have leprosy. Sometimes I couldn’t help but believe that there are blacks in America who practice the same kind of bigotry they attribute to whites,” Ruby said. According to Ruby, her black friends see her light skin color as a privilege in a white-conscious America. For some blacks, her near-white skin means that she has not endured any of the racial and class denigrations or sufferings of dark-skinned blacks in the inner cities of America. With Ruby’s light-toned skin hue come privileges, access to quality private education, middle-class lifestyle, dual-income professional household, and a suburbanite culture. Ruby acknowledged that being brought up by middle-class parents whose lives were stable made a huge difference in her life. At home, Ruby was made to read about prominent African American, Caribbean, and African men and women. Her parents wanted her to learn about the accomplishments of progressive black thinkers and personalities, to learn from their experiences and create opportunities to excel and be empowered. At the time of the focus group session, Ruby had read about the lives and works of notable and inspiring blacks such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Kwame Nkrumah, Sidney Poitier, Nelson Mandela, Marcus Garvey, Harry Belafonte, and civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Andrew Young, Stokely Carmichael, and Malcolm X. Ruby also spoke about black female leaders such as Shirley Chisholm and Harriet Tubman. “My parents wanted me to understand that there is a long line of black people from this country, Africa, and the Caribbean who have achieved distinction in all walks of life and who have qualities worth emulating,” Ruby remarked. To bring her youth identity to full circle and to celebrate the duality of her identity, Ruby was told about Scottish personalities at an early age. She referenced Scottish personalities such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter

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Scott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, John Buchan, Marian McNeill, and many others. She proceeded to say that “unfortunately, several of my black teenage friends, especially those in the inner cities, have no sense of the history and accomplishments of notable black leaders. They know about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. But that’s all.” Several of her friends dismiss and discount her knowledge about prominent black men and women leaders. According to Ruby, there is a perception in urban black America that light-skinned immigrant children living in the suburbs probably attending private or public schools are excludable from identifying as black. From Ruby’s perspective, she is reminded at times that to be black is to know and live with untold disadvantages and daily struggles to ensure survival. “When my black friends look at me, they think of someone who has not struggled for anything. They equate blackness with struggles, always having to fight for everything, being angry, not trusting society. When they look at me, they see someone who is different because they speak differently. Is that what we have reduced blackness to? If it is, then we have a long way to go,” she remarked. In essence, her class privileges have not endeared her to black society and culture, particularly urban black culture. Ruby’s parents have been very careful introducing her to black American culture. They remind her often that her identity will be challenged and questioned, that she will have to negotiate the forms of black and white identities she will like to express in this society. They have cautioned her to expect and face social rejection on account of her skin color. But she did not anticipate that her foray into black culture would be met with such resistance, particularly at the black beauty shops where she perceives that she is often subjected to subtle and sometimes overt discrimination and racism on account of her skin color. From Ruby’s perspective, being black comes with a full range of identities, ethnicities, and racial formations. Blackness, she reiterated, “must be inclusive of all the different shades and tones of blackness. Who is qualified to judge or decide whether one is black or not? I am the only one who can feel and experience my blackness. It is a condition, a state of mind, and even a consciousness.” Ruby’s comments bring to the fore a contentious issue in black America. That is, who is a black American? Her very fair complexion reminds some blacks that she is not black enough, or certainly not part of the black historical struggles for respect, dignity, and the affirmation of the humanity of blacks as a group. For white Americans, her skin color is too dark to be considered white. Ruby tries to resolve this dilemma by referencing her separatedness from both black and white America. This separation, she referenced, can lead to isolation and alienation. At times, the pain and anguish brought upon by her sense of not belonging becomes a source of dissatisfaction and displeasure. “Sometimes, I resent going to public places where people stare at you because you are of a mixed heritage. I never feel

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the same way when we are in Europe. They do have their problems there also. But I find my sense of ethnic and racial belonging challenged overtly more so in the United States than in Europe,” she said. In straddling both black and white identities and ethnicities, Ruby feels that her identities are masked by the intensive focus on hues of blackness. The unmasking of these identities, particularly her black identity, has been the most painful for her due to black prejudice toward anyone who is of mixed black heritage. Ruby’s search for a black identity and place to manifest her identity is overshadowed also by the divisiveness and cultural warfare over race, ethnicity, gender, and class identities so pervasive in the United States. As Ruby indicated, “People expect you to conform to their racial typing. As long as you do that, you are fine with them. Otherwise, you are avoided. You are told you don’t belong. It hurt when I was a child, and it still hurts today,” she said. This fractious divisiveness and the accompanying racial categorizations based on skin color are implicated in the persistency of racial discrimination post the civil rights era. Ruby decries the practice among whites to describe blacks in monolithic terms by noting that blackness cannot be reduced to a unique homogeneous trait. From her perspective, white aggregation of blackness to a homogeneous quality may suggest that there are no significant variations or physical and nonphysical differences among blacks. She underscored the point also that blacks tend to differentiate among the different shades of blackness. “Blacks often mark out those who are pure-blooded blacks from those who are mixed and bi-racial. There is a lot of self-hate out there. Blacks also need to rise above skin color,” she stated. The contestation of her blackness makes her feel invisible to other blacks. She alludes to and reiterates her earlier assertion of not been accepted as a black woman. “When people look at me from a distance or even come close enough to interact with me, they often deny my blackness. Even after I identify as black, they still persist in their belief that I am not black because I do not have black traits,” she hinted. Here, Ruby is affirming her black existence and identity, challenging existing notions about how being black is constructed. “At times, I feel like I am being pushed out of the black family. Sometimes, I feel like I want to give up affirming my blackness and instead highlight my European identity. But I cannot do this because that will mean denying that I am part African, American, and Scottish,” according to Ruby who wants to live and experience the full range of the identities manifested in double or triple heritage if her American heritage is included.29 “Black people talk about love all the time. They talk about this love in their songs, in their churches, in their homes, and in their large and small circles. The way they talk about love will make you think that they will readily without question accept anyone who lays claim to being black. But I guess not,” she said. Ruby proceeds to accentuate what her social studies teacher once said to her

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that “blackness is an experiential phenomenon.” For Ruby, this statement means, “To say you are black is to live, think, act, and relate to white society in a certain way. What these ways are, I do not know, and neither can I tell you about it.” Ruby ultimately questions this relational identity or affiliation with black America. What she hopes for is to find ways to preserve the enduring cultures of black peoples of African descent, including the preservation of the heritage of those blacks who are not in the black diaspora. The form and type of identity she envisions has no cultural bounds or limitations. Instead, it is translocal and heterogeneous. Its core aspect is that it has to be African-centered, with adaptations and renditions allowed to ensure the viability, flexibility, and inclusiveness of the multiplicities of black cultural lives. Our discussion of this subject was punctuated by the question which Ruby’s father asked about whether the lived experiences of blackness and black people in America and Europe can be transposed to the realities of what he termed “the other blackness,” referring to the black identity experiences of blacks in Africa, South and Central America, including the Caribbean, and Asia. For Ruby’s family, being black is not confined to a limited geographic space. They embrace the idea that black identities in different parts of the world are shaped by cultures and institutions that may have little or no resemblance to black American or black African culture. Ruby’s cultural memories of her grandmother shape her identity as well. “She was a strong woman,” Ruby said. “She kept the family together under trying and difficult times and I admired her womanhood. She did not present herself as a victim. And let me tell you, there were several bad things happening to her as an uneducated woman living in a village in Sierra Leone,” Ruby maintained. “She taught me to be proud of who I am as a black girl and never to allow myself to be brainwashed by those who will tell me that because of my skin color, I am not a black girl,” Ruby asserted. The statement from her grandmother, Ruby contended, marked the beginnings of the development of her identity and black consciousness. Ruby’s grandmother challenged notions of male dominance and patriarchal authority. She was its victim, according to Ruby. But what she learned from her was about the dialectical tensions and contestations of identity that girls and minority women of color often have to endure. Ruby renounces the persistent denigration of women, especially black women, as mere subjects who are not in charge of their destinies. For Ruby, vestiges of the degradation of women are still in vogue today but in newer forms. For black women, some of the new forms of this degradation are economic disempowerment and the relegation of issues concerning the well-being of black women as peripheral and therefore unimportant. This is coupled with the black women’s sense of unbelongingness, their invisibilities as minorities in their own spaces, and the failure of social institutions to offer them any support to ease their economic and cultural woes.

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In the end, what emerged from the identity that Ruby is attempting to weave is one that may be described as Pan African and rooted or anchored in African-centered values and norms. It does not matter to her whether other blacks accept her as a member of the black ethnic and racial family. All she knows is that she is an ascribed member of that global tribal group. The future of this group is not going to be determined only by a segment of blacks who have experienced or lived a particular form of blackness. As Ruby’s mother referenced, black culture and its multiple identities and cultural manifestations cannot be reduced to or be symbolized by a sense of hate and anger toward other blacks and non-blacks. There are certainly lingering feelings of black anger and rage against the dispossessing and dehumanizing aspects of white America’s enslavement of blacks. This may lie at the root of black self-pride as well as black self-hatred or misunderstandings which may be directed toward other blacks. The contours of the national discourse on this issue and the implications emanating from this dialogue in the black community and in the general society at large have yet to be intensified or become sustained for a protracted period.

RIMONA’S BI-RACIAL AND ETHNIC IDENTITIES: STILL CONTESTING FORMS OF BLACKNESS Rimona’s mother came from the tiny West African nation of Togo. A former French colony, Togo is a land of cultural, ethnic, and tribal contrasts. Dozens of languages and dialects mark the boundaries and cultures of different groups who are incorporated into this nation-state. Rimona is 17 years old and was born in the United States. Her father is Moroccan. Both college educated, her parents have a suburban home in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. Rimona’s dad is a computer and software engineer. Her mother teaches English as a second language for recently settled African refugee women. The family prides itself on its African, Middle Eastern, and American heritages. For Rimona’s family, the chance to live in the United States is considered highly valuable because as Rimona’s dad affirmed, “We like living in this country. We owe a lot of what we have (our education, work) to the opportunities we found here. I met Rimona’s mother here and we got married. This would not have happened if I was in Morocco where skin color also divides people, with black Moroccans placed at the bottom. And when most Moroccans think about blacks, they only think about slaves, servants, and people of lower-class background.” Coming from a society where skin color divisions remain deep and entrenched, Rimona’s father is aware of the social and cultural tensions about race, ethnicity, and class. In America, he said, “We still have these divisions, but at a minimum, one can rise above it through education, hard work, and strong family support. Bit

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by bit, the hatred and divisions against blacks is dying a slow death. And we welcome that not only for ourselves but also for our daughter Rimona.” Like Ruby, Rimona presents a racial and ethnic identity that is mixed and transnational. She celebrates her Togolese black heritage and culture. At the same time, she is steeped in Arabic culture. Rimona is also a vibrant secondgeneration American citizen. This triple heritage is accentuated in Rimona’s family via a strong consciousness about multiple identities, each identity valued and incorporated into the family’s social discourse. The focus group session with Rimona’s family centered on how second-generation black immigrant girls conceptualize the enduring interactions that underpin the formation of black transnational identities. From Rimona’s perspective, two factors converge to shape her identity. The first is her strong belief in working to ease the plight of poor and rural black women in Togo and also in Morocco where there is a strong black Moroccan presence. She depicts the images of black African women’s economic and cultural struggles to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. “I have seen how hard black women in Africa work. Whether in Togo or Morocco, I always see women who work very hard for so little and have to take a lot of abuses in these cultures due to their lack of education. That has to change through the education of the women. Also, laws protecting these women will have to be implemented,” Rimona indicated. Her advocacy is that these women will organize to effect changes in the distribution of land, economic empowerment, access to property rights, and the right to control their own fertility. “I think the men who control everything need to realize it is in their interests to promote the well-being of women and children,” Rimona hinted. Expressing her perspective about black women in the United States, Rimona questions the fact that often, too many black women, including immigrants from Africa, are confined to the low-paying sectors of work with fewer benefits. Her mother started like that, working in low-paying jobs until she decided to go back to school. From Rimona’s perspective, black women must take steps to empower themselves and carve niches for themselves in every aspect of American society. This means, according to Rimona, “that blacks and women must take advantage of educational opportunities to help themselves rather than expecting someone to step in and help them. Some of the Togolese women here work and attend school at night. They also have families. I see that those who have finished their education all have good jobs and live in nice homes. This tells me that people can make it if they keep on trying. You have to be hungry for something, for the American dream, and work slowly toward becoming somebody.” A second related aspect of Rimona’s youth identity is based on her contestations about the negative images and prejudice frequently associated with blacks.30 “Blacks in America carry a lot of weight on their shoulders. We have to fight for everything. That is why some blacks are angry all the

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time. White Americans think blacks are bad people, not trustworthy, and criminals. But that is a wrong way to view blacks. Most blacks, just like most whites, are good people. As usual, it is only a few bad apples who give the rest a bad name,” Rimona said. “But the negative views about blacks can be overcome through hard work. One can rise above these labels,” she said. “I think what is helping me cope with the difficulties of being a black female comes from my parents. They have taught me to be strong and be proud of who I am, and not to do anything to confirm other people’s negative views about blacks,” she remarked. Rimona’s reference to black anger is noteworthy. Writing about black rage, Gates and West (1996:94) wrote about the lethality of black rage caused by the protracted hidden injuries of racism (blackness). This rage stems from the long-term cultural denigration and economic miseries that they have suffered, and ultimately leads to selfhatred, degradation, and hatred of others; this rage proliferates, sometimes unabated (Gates and West, 1996). Like Ruby, Rimona’s black identity is also based on her belief that the conscious disparaging of black American negative identities and presentations in media and popular culture can and should be contested as the majority of blacks do not fit those negative perceptions. As Rimona acknowledged, the cultural and economic adversities facing blacks in America are daunting. However, as she affirmed, blacks must be the ones to fight to change these negativities. “We will have to strengthen minority education and compel the youth to stay in school and graduate,” she acknowledged. While she advocates self-empowerment and individual responsibility, she nonetheless feels that government also must do its part to provide minority communities with the support they need to strengthen their communications and create well-paying jobs for blacks. To accomplish this, immigrants of black African descent must also become involved rather than assert their cultural differences and separation from the rest of black America. From Rimona’s perspective, “All shades of blackness are one family and tribe. The differences are minute. Yes, we can celebrate these differences, but we should not use it as a source for dividing ourselves.” Rimona’s identity is also embodied by her fluency in French. Both of her parents were originally from French-speaking countries. Her ability to switch back and forth between English and French offers her a different and unique identity that is not only cosmopolitan, but also layered with her sense of belongingness to her multiple communities of origination.31 She talked extensively about this colonial legacy of language and culture that she has imbibed from her parents. She lays claim to the repertoire of identities and experiences offered by her fluency in both French and English. Rimona has read extensively about French colonial policies in West and North Africa and the Belgian Congo at the urging of her parents. She was taught about Negritude by her parents.32 After all, this is another aspect

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of her multiple identities. Her fluency in French has provided her with an additional outlet to anchor and bring meaning to her myriad of identities. This identity is positioned by her keen interests in the struggles of second- and third-generation immigrant Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, and Francophone West African youths in Paris who are besieged with chronic unemployment, poor housing, and social and cultural displacements. Their quest for social justice and inclusion in French society reminds Rimona of black struggles in America for liberation and emancipation. Rimona feels an affinity with the identities and struggles that define these youth. She listens to the hip-hop songs that they have composed to contest the economic and cultural realities and the malaise of their urban and disconnected lives. These songs, she attested, are purely derivatives of black American hip-hop cultural forms with slight adaptations to contest black youth identities in a Parisian setting. Her linkage with these youth is through the shared cultural affinity of language. Rimona describes the difficulties the immigrant youths face with respect to defining their own collective and unique African and Arabic identities and the resulting isolation and alienation that they have often encountered from French politicians and the police. She spoke about her favorite French cuisine, literary works, and paintings. This cultural layer of her identity fascinates her American friends. At her high school, Rimona is working with her social studies instructors to establish a French Studies club to give her another medium for cultural and identity expressions. Rimona has a dark-toned skin color with long straight and dark hair. She blends in very well in both the African American and African immigrant communities. She is conscious of the apparent cultural gap between black immigrants and native-born blacks. She attributes this to the lack of historical and cultural understanding between the two groups, in particular blaming the colonized status of blacks as the principal source of this tension. Racial and class residential segregation has separated Rimona’s suburban family from her black urban counterparts. In the suburbs, Rimona does not often come into contact with a lot of urban black youths. The few blacks in her community are also middle-class families. On weekends during the summer, she will go the park with some of her friends to play basketball. Together with some of her white friends, they have developed friendships with other immigrant girls from the Caribbean, Africa, and South America who frequent the park. Rimona and her friends hardly make any distinctions about their ethnic, racial, and class identities. Ethnic mixing is the norm among these youth who often, according to Rimona, are tolerant and sensitive of the range of ethnicities and identities that are manifested in their circle of friends. When they mix, their class, racial, and ethnic differences are often blurred by their common interests as youth who share distinctive adolescent habits and cultural fads. Associating with

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other youths from different ethnic backgrounds has broadened Rimona’s scope of cultural identification. As Rimona commented, “Since meeting these new friends, my attitude on a lot of things have changed. I have become more tolerant and understanding of different cultures. I do learn a lot from the other kids and this has influenced my outlook as a minority youth. We all learn from each other. The experiences are great. Our parents may frown upon the company we are keeping but my friends understand that we are different. We are one because of our similar interests.” Rimona’s tastes for music and dress styles have been influenced by urban black cultural fads. But she has also borrowed and adapted white ethnic cultural fads from some of her friends. Her black and white immigrant friends living in her community have also broadened her cultural identity. Rimona’s embrace of urban black hip-hop culture is monitored by her parents who have given her some flexibility in choosing how she wants to express her blackness. Her parents’ main concern is that Rimona is not going to become completely immersed in hip-hop culture. This value is affirmed through the family’s commitment to educational excellence. As Rimona explains, “Expectations about doing well in school are hammered in by my parents. The other Moroccan and African families here do the same. Children are expected to prep well for college. Idling and milling around in town and at the mall every weekend like some kids do is frowned upon. My parents consider it as wasting time—time that could be spent reading or studying.” Relationships with outsiders are encouraged by the Rimona family, but the family understands where to draw the line. The parents take the time to know who Rimona’s friends and parents are, affirming each other’s values and thereby anchoring their children in culturally approved values. This is to ensure that the children’s behavior can be monitored by adult authority figures. The Moroccan immigrants have developed strong affiliations among themselves and do take a keen interest in the well-being of their children. Rimona’s father’s friends are all Moroccan immigrants who have formed a small but vibrant ethnic enclave community. Ethnic solidarity is affirmed by the immigrants who embrace this ethnic community. This enclave has enabled this immigrant community to mobilize its resources to set up ethnic businesses that provide ample opportunities for providing employment for other Moroccans. Intra-ethnic employment has become a dominant form of incorporation into American society. Rimona works after school at a Moroccan-owned rug shop. Here, she meets other Moroccan youth who are also second-generation immigrants. Rimona’s black Muslim heritage forms another core part of her multiple identities. The family has blended this aspect of their collective identities into their American cultural life. The family has cultivated a strong ethnic and cultural interchanges with other Muslims in St. Paul and Minneapolis.

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They have integrated and blended Islamic practices and traditions into their everyday activities. Rimona’s family is guarded about their faith. Rather than dress in traditional Muslim attire, the family prefers to be less visible by adopting Western-style clothes. This is not to diminish their Muslim identity. As Rimona explained, “They confine their Muslim beliefs to home. We are not the only Muslims who do that. Several Muslims here in the community have chosen to blend in, quietly practicing their faith without drawing attention.” The family has managed to develop very strong inter-ethnic ties with both white and black families who are always in and out of their suburban home. Creating inter-ethnic alliances across cultures has ensured that the Rimona family is able to maintain their cultural traditions and at the same time be open to embrace other identities. In doing so, the family has managed to negotiate the types and forms of inter-ethnic ties they want to forge with other groups, particularly middle-class, suburban whites. Forging inter-ethnic alliances across cultural and class lines has enabled Rimona’s family to widen their circle of secondary group networks while at the same time staying committed to their immigrant cultural heritage, tradition, and institutions. The family indicated that they would like to develop closer relationships with black Muslims in the metropolitan areas of Minneapolis–St. Paul. But searching for the specific Muslim groups they would like to identify with has been very difficult after the 9/11 attack. Though not having a mosque in their suburban community as a visible expression of their religious identity, the family is conscious of the political consequences of joining with any Muslim groups that have a radicalized agenda. Rimona’s father talked about the radicalization of some of the Muslims in the metropolitan areas of the Twin Cities, and expressed concern over the passage of laws by the Bush administration designed to monitor the activities of Muslim charitable institutions and organizations to ensure that they do not channel their resources to aid and abet fringe Islamic groups in the Middle East and North Africa. In the course of the focus group discussion, Rimona’s father asserted Muslim identities are not as monolithic as frequently portrayed by the media. For Rimona’s family, the expression of Islamic identities has become more and more tempered as the family has achieved middle-upper-class status through education, sustainable professional employment, suburban status, and higher salaries. “The extreme groups are usually in the city centers of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Those of us in the suburbs have never fully subscribed to their agenda. There are other ways to express discontent and fight for social justice,” Rimona’s father acknowledged. Confronting and coping with the paradoxes and dilemmas of her black identity is daunting but at the same time very exciting for Rimona as she attempts to tap into the full range of her multiple black ethnicities. Finding multiple points of reference to manifest and construct her ethnic and

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racial identities will continue to dominate her consciousness. Ultimately, the type(s) and forms of identities that she will manifest will represent an interwoven cultural identity that is multiethnic and fluid. As a second-generation immigrant Muslim youth, Rimona’s identity is transracial and inclusive of the diverse youth she comes into contact with. Her identity and the experiences they evoke are certainly different from that of her parents or grandparents. What is certain, though, is her preference to embrace the cultural experiences of being a Muslim youth and at the same time create new experiences to reflect her American realities and challenges. This diverse approach means that Rimona is willing to engage in issues dealing social justice, particularly her concerns about race, ethnic, and class struggles and fragmentations in the United States and their impact on her identity. Rimona understands and is appreciative of her Muslim heritage. She extends the boundaries of her identity by interacting with immigrant Islamic Egyptians, Iranians, Pakistanis, and Saudi Arabians. At the same time, her social network is also comprised of inner-city blacks and Eastern European and Chinese immigrant youths. She celebrates this diversity and ethnic mixing and cultural blending often by reading the writings of Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Chinua Achebe, and Ama Ata Aidoo. At the same time, to preserve the remnants of her Muslim identity, she reads the Quran regularly and according to her, is at the point of becoming a young Islamic scholar versed in the prophetic teachings of Mohammed. The processes involved in the formation of identities in second-generation immigrant cultures are difficult to delineate. This difficulty stems, in part, from the continuous and ever-shifting nature of immigrant identities. The construction of identities among the second generation is based upon multiple domains of social life where identities are created and shared. Class, community, gender, race, ethnicity, family networks, religion, education, labor force issues, and place-specific attributes are all significant in delineating the contents of second-generation African youth immigrant identities. Race and ethnicity dominate the social fields of the second-generation youth and it is the focal point of their identity formations.33 For the African girls, the narratives from the focus group sessions would seem to suggest that there are unique social and cultural perspectives about the identities that are formed by the second generation. The second-generation black diaspora girls have immersed themselves in the active process of defining and establishing their individual and collective senses of identity. Core to this identity is the premium that is placed on traditional African values. Like their parents, some of the youth believe that an African-centered identity is critical for the preservation of the heritage and legacies of the first generation. But beyond these legacies, the youth are engaged in a form of selective identity formation involving a blending of African and black American–centered approaches to identity construction. What this suggests is that parental influences are still

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very strong in shaping the forms and contents of identities exhibited among the girls. So are secondary institutions such as media and peer groups. It is difficult to predict the form of identity that will ultimately emerge. A conjecture is that at a minimum, a duality of identity can be subsumed. This duality as indicated will comprise core aspects of both African and American values and ethos. Continued internal diversity and ongoing waves of international migration from Africa and the Caribbean will play a pivotal role in shaping the confluences of black identities in the United States. Cultural bridges to connect black America with black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean will strengthen the cultural bonds among blacks in the diaspora and at the same time affirm the cultural and social interconnections among blacks. This will also help enlarge the prism and cultural spheres and influences of black identities while affirming those collectively held values that underpin the meaning of what it is to be black.34 At the national level, systematic and rationalized attempts to forge racial and ethnic harmony in America and the open discussion of issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and class will also impact the forms of identities that second and subsequent generations of black immigrant children are going to forge in America. A major consideration, however, is that as national resources shrink and the resolve to tackle pressing social and economic problems diminishes, the gigantic task of minority group integration and incorporation into the mainstream society will become harder to tackle. The centering of identities among this group of second-generation black immigrant girls may reveal some of the struggles and processes black girls articulate by giving meanings and cultural contexts (contents) to their burgeoning identities. For each of these girls, the articulation and manifestation of identity is a slow and gradually moving process. Identity formation is multifaceted and is formed over a period of time. Identity may be modified, renegotiated, rethought, and redefined. In this vein, identity may be discontinued because of changes in the social, cultural, and behavioral imperatives. Identities become part of the life cycle and are often filled with the continued emergence of the self. Irrespective of what form of identity this will be, it is important to mention that a key feature of this identity will be black awareness and consciousness, coupled with the gendered experiences that these girls are going to articulate. The reconfiguring of their black identities and consciousness as well as their attempts at renegotiating a place in the black diaspora will continue to take on both transnational and localized forms. This means that the identities they form will span not only their black African roots, but also their multiracial, class, and ethnic heritages. Their sense of being black spans the identities that can be formed in the multiple spaces that they now inhabit. This is what Hackshaw (2007:169) referenced

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when she described how black West Indies immigrants in the United States negotiate experiences of racial and ethnic categorizations through the prism of the racial norms that they learn upon coming to the United States. Some of the new black immigrants and their families are making their residences in the suburbs surrounding major urban centers. Here, many come into contact with white, middle-class, suburban families who had fled the urban centers to the suburbs in search of quality schools, better recreational facilities, better housing, and lower crime rates relative to the urban areas. It is in the predominantly white suburbs that some of the new black immigrants are creating their new black identities while contesting the old forms of black identities at the same time. Some of the black immigrant families have been able to create new identities for themselves while at the same time forging inter-ethnic and racial exchanges with other groups. By crossing the fixed boundaries of ethnic and racial formations in their communities (urban or suburban), some of the new black immigrants are able to redefine white perspectives and attitudes regarding the place and role of race and ethnicity in American social discourse. Struggling to negotiate multiple identities and also likely to be labeled as outsiders by their white counterparts, these immigrants and their second-generation daughters are undaunted in their quest to attain their respective American dreams and at the same time broaden the scope of existing limited notions of black identities in the United States. Many are being forced to juggle multiple youth identities within a greater social system that does not necessarily support, validate, and affirm their cultures. Their identities are being formed against the backdrop of African-centered cultural norms, a select borrowing of some aspects of American culture, and a coupling or blending of their cultures with other immigrant cultures that they encounter in their communities. The picture of their racial and ethnic identities is one that is robust, encompassing specific black cultural forms, and interlaced with new cultures and identities that they learn in the new social spaces that their migration has allowed them to create in the United States. Overall, their youth identities are structured on the need to show appreciation of and, where possible, celebrate the multiple heritages and legacies that some of them continue to imbibe or learn from primary groups such as parents, grandparents, and other secondary groups, including peers and acquaintances. Their identities become multicultural and cosmopolitan, often intersecting with the boundaries of numerous social and cultural entities and organizations common to their individual and collective specific environments. In the end, structural (for example, family relationships, ethnicity, class, religion, economic considerations, racial outlook, influences from secondary institutions, inter- and intra-immigrant relationships, societal and cultural norms of the host societies) and nonstructural (for example,

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the psychological and subjective rationalizations of youth culture from individualistic perspectives, social networks) factors converge to depict and locate the forms and contents of identities that the second-generation African immigrant girls create, negotiate, or contest. While some of the girls construct specific boundaries to demarcate and root their identities, for others, the construction of identities are based on the crossing of ethnic, racial, and class boundaries to tap into the mélange of identities, opportunities, and experiences that America offers.35 The social construction of race and ethnicity continues to influence how the second-generation youths are defining identities. For American-born minority and immigrant children, the articulation of racial and ethnic categorizations and expressions will continue to reflect transnational foci and multiple genres that are shaped by the experiences of immigration and interconnected transnationalization. The multiple transnational immigrant households in which the second-generation youths reside will continue to have a compelling force in structuring transnational identities that span multiple social fields in the United States and Africa. The implication for the United States is that its minority immigrant second-generation black population will continue to exhibit complex forms of social and cultural organization that will redefine the contours and race and ethnic representation as well as what it means to be black in America. The boundaries of these redefinitions have already had a major impact in repositioning the contents of relationships among black immigrants and U.S.-born blacks.36 The structural and nonstructural underpinnings of the multiple identities that the second-generation youth construct are continually shifting. At times, the youth are uncertain about their identities. For some of them, identities may appear to be somewhat unstable, perhaps fluid. For others, identities are yet to unfold or become fully incorporated into every facet of life. For all of the youth, there was recognition that the identities they construct or are in the process of constructing will become contestable in America’s ever-shifting racial and ethnic mosaic.

NOTES 1. See, for example, Hall’s (2004) theoretical account of identity formation and contestation. 2. According to Uba (1994), identity is a complex phenomenon varying extensively from person to person and subject to contextual forces such as one’s environment, consciousness of group membership, and the application of certain predefined norms and values to structure beliefs and thoughts about identity. Fong (2002) similarly maintains that identity is based on social experiences, sense of belonging, and defining oneself to reflect one’s thoughts, beliefs, values, and behavior.

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3. See Shapiro (2004), DeNavas-Walt et al. (2008), Oliver and Shapiro (1996), Hacker (1992), and Wilson (2007) for detailed accounts of the structured inequalities between black and whites in the United States. 4. Scholars continue to stress the importance of racial formations on the identities of various immigrant groups in the United States. See, for example, studies by Model (2001), Alba and Nee (1999), Kasinitz (1992, 2001), Dawson (1994, 2001), and Bashi and McDaniel (1997). 5. Sociologist Milton Gordon (1964) had suggested that Anglo conformity is the norm of adaptation and incorporation for immigrants and racial minorities in the United States. Among second-generation African youths, measured Americanization has occurred though many continue to hold on to the traditions and customs of their first-generation parents whose values reflect a strong attachment and conformity to African cultural norms and values. 6. As Waters (1999) and Bryce-LaPorte (1972) reported, racial and ethnic identity formations among black immigrants are based on prior racial socializations and norms learned or acquired before and after migration. For additional information on the formation of ethnic and racial identities of black immigrants, see Hackshaw (2007), Portes and Zhou (1993), Stepick (1998), Vickerman (1999) and Rumbaut (1996), among others. 7. As a group, second-generation African and Caribbean immigrant youths continue to reconstruct new identities of blackness based upon the rejection of the historical negativities typically associated with blacks in America. In structuring their identities, foreign-born blacks tend to stress their international and or national origin status as opposed to constructing identities based solely upon their immigrant experiences in the United States. 8. The second generation black girls have been brought up in environments where transnational cultures and multiple frames of expectations and beliefs are encouraged. For many of them, the identities that are constructed are designed to link them simultaneously with parental places of origination as well as the transnational mixing and blending of identities that these youth come across in the United States. 9. For a detailed discussion of the various theoretical models explaining how immigrants construct identities in transnational settings, see Schiller and Fouron (2001), Smith and Wallerstein (1992), Basch et al. (1994), Faist (2000), Morawska (2003), and Smith (2000). 10. See, for example, Jones-Correa (1988), Sassen-Koob (1988), Smith and Guarnizo (1998), and Rumbaut (2004) for a describing of the processes involved in the establishment of multiple transnational sites for identity formation and expression among immigrant populations. 11. See Paul Wachtel (1999) for a detailed account of how race and racist tendencies are highlighted and given prominence in the American social and cultural psyche. 12. Pessar (1995), for example, maintains that second-generation immigrants in the United States maintain and structure identities that reflect the migratory experiences of their parents. Pessar’s idea is significant to the understanding of identity formation among African immigrant youths because of the influences of “home country” nationals and the networks of kin groups in anchoring immigrant children

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to the normative and belief systems of the home of origination. In this regard, these second-generation African immigrant children can be said to move between different forms of cultural expectations and identities as they engage in the social affairs of the host societies and its multiple cultural genres. 13. The identities of the second-generation African girls are seamlessly interwoven and multifaceted, with varying components, some stressing gendered relationships, others stressing Pan African ideals and Afrocentricity, with still others stressing the mélange and hybridity of youth and adolescence cultures found in the United States at large. See Portes (1995, 1996), Portes and Zhou (1993), and Almaguer (1994) for discussions about how immigrant youths in general create identities in multiple settings and domains. 14. According to Eugenia, black visibilities and invisibilities may take the form of cultural denigration and exclusion of blacks from core institutions of society. Black subordinated status is a major point of reference in forming cultural identities. Like other adolescents, Eugenia relies on the affirmation of prior experiences, history, culture, and norms derived from multiple sites, including Africa, the United States, and the world at large to form and give content to her identity. For Eugenia, her black identity is a politicized issue that has to be contested. In a nutshell, Eugenia’s identity is being shaped, in part, by the intersections of gender, racial politics, class, discrimination, and economic participation. See Kasinitz (1992, 2001), Vickerman (1999), Rumbaut (2004), Portes and Zhou (1993), and Waters (1996) for a detailed discussion of identity formation among second-generation immigrants to the United States. 15. Eugenia’s sense of self and identity as a second-generation immigrant youth is positioned by her strong sense of attachment to core African values and principles. Her statements reflect what Vickerman (1999) and Portes and Zhou (1993), among others, have reported: that second-generation immigrant youths tend to embrace (maybe not totally) the cultural and normative ideals and beliefs of their first-generation parents and their cultural places of origination. 16. See Hackshaw’s (2007) account of the formation of black ethnicity and racial community among black immigrants in the United States. Hackshaw reported that second-generation black immigrants perceive that their experience in the United States is defined in terms of exclusion and marginalization. These immigrants also structure their identities on race and ethnicity to reflect the imperative of using group or collective action to contest the sites of structured inequalities in the United States. 17. Cynthia’s insights about the intersections of gender, class, race, and ethnicity in shaping economic participation and access to opportunities in the United States is rather compelling. Referencing the subordinate status of her mother in contrast to the superordinate status of her mother’s white employers, Cynthia cannot help but come to terms with the wide economic gap between the black women, including her mother, who all work as domestic servants, and the white women they all work for. For Cynthia, this relationship conjures images of entrenched inequalities. 18. Cynthia’s depiction of identity is structured on her sense of class and gendered inequalities in the United States and the world over. From her perspective, entrenched systems of oppression often target vulnerable minorities, particularly

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households headed by women. In her framework of identity, the economic empowerment of women from all walks of life is the key to ensuring that women have equal access to opportunity and resources. 19. Gloria’s identity stresses the bonds of cultural affinity that blacks (whether from Africa, the Caribbean, or the United States) have in common. She identifies herself as part of the growing number of blacks who are united in their resolve to transcend race and ethnicity by adopting a broader and inclusive worldview of citizenship. Gloria’s depiction of her black identity resonates on the need to forge inclusion by emphasizing her transnational ties and culture. She does not want to be pinned down by race, ethnicity, culture, or gender. She strives to learn more about the cultures her parents brought with them from Africa to anchor her beliefs and values, rather than embracing beliefs and ideals that she is exposed to in the United States. 20. See Elijah Anderson (1994) and Nicholas Lermann (1991). 21. For Mary, the formation of identity may involve notions held by her parents that black culture, particularly urban hip hop culture, is a dead end for many black adolescents. Her experience of identity illustrates how the racialized beliefs of family members may play a pivotal role in shaping the contours of identity formations among the second generation. In a sense, her parents want her to choose whether she will embrace the culture of the first-generation parents, or whether she will blindly copy urban black culture. For Mary, it is not an either-or proposition. 22. See United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR, 1999). 23. For some of the refugee youths, the social construction of identity is structured to incorporate the experiences associated with the forced flight to safety. As they weave their tapestries of racial, gender, ethnic, and class identities in the United States, these girls emphasize what they have learned about their respective places of origination, their current place(s) of exile, and the sociocultural conditions and consequences of their immigration and life in a foreign setting. The totality of these interrelated experiences all combine to depict the forms of identities that these girls are going to manifest. 24. Rouse’s (1995) research supports the perspectives of the refugee girls in structuring identities of race, gender, class, and ethnicity to reflect the totality of the experiences at home and in the new society. 25. Finding ways to seek incorporation and/or assimilation into American society has been very difficult for the refugee youths. Many project an antiassimilationist perspective and at times, manifest a countercultural view of American society. Robert Park’s (1950) assimilationist perspective does not apply to this group of immigrants because of their desire to remain an enclave of detached refugees who have little or nothing in common with the power and established structures of American society. For detailed discussion of the theoretical issues underpinning the articulation of race and ethnicity among minority groups, see Gordon (1964), Bogardus (1930), and Wirth (1945). 26. The interconnectedness of the refugee girls is the common experience of war and violence. Their narratives are reflections of this shared social reality and offer a glimpse into their exiled identities abroad. 27. In his classic work on inequality in the United States, Gunnar Myrdal placed a heavy emphasis on black-white inequalities along the dimensions of employment,

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income, housing, occupation, and educational gaps among blacks and whites in the United States. See Gunnar Myrdal (1944). 28. Ruby resists a singularized depiction of her racial and ethnic identities. Identities, she contends, are shaped by complex dialectical relationships often influenced by geographies of space, culture, inter- and intra-migrant interactions, sense of self, and normative expectations. 29. For Ruby, the social construction and contestation of racial and ethnic identities should incorporate and attend to the continuities and/or contradictions people encounter as they seek inclusion and membership in human affairs. 30. Some of the immigrant youths reported that past efforts at racial healings in the United States have been approached on false premises and promises that white privilege is a right that cannot be negotiated away. Some of the youth seek to change the negative perceptions held about blacks in general. However, as many contended, it is difficult to erase these stereotypes because of the entrenched and institutional forces (political, social, economic power), operating against powerless minority groups in America today. Challenging the prevailing thinking of blacks and other minorities proved difficult for the youth. Nonetheless, the results showed that like other youths (particularly Latino), these African immigrant youths are seeking ways to attain empowerment and transformation of the social discourse on race and identity politics in the United States. 31. The texture of Rimona’s racial and ethnic identity is ensconced in her view that the multiple forms of black identities cannot be limited to the experiences of blacks in the United States. Black identities, she contends, are not tightly bounded and fixed by geographies of space or territory. In this era of globalization, she contends, blacks in America must be challenged to look beyond their communities and perhaps, away from the United States if they are to reconstitute what it means to be part of the global black diaspora. 32. The progenitor of this concept was Leopold Sedar Senghor, a poet and social theorist formerly and later the president of the West African nation of Senegal, a former French colonial possession. His ideas were formed during his stay in France where he met many other African and Caribbean blacks in France and the rest of Europe who were relegated to lower socioeconomic and cultural status by the Europeans. His social philosophy was that African cultural and normative systems are not only unique but also fundamentally different from that of their European counterparts. He decried the poor treatment of Africans in particular by the Europeans and the subordination of their humanities by white societies. 33. Omi and Winant’s (1986) idea of racial formation is applicable to our findings on how second generation African immigrant youths construct identity. From Omi and Winant’s perspective, race is the core, the central axis of all relationships and interactions in the United States. Omi and Winant argued that the meanings of race are defined within the nexus of collective or group identity. The racial and ethnic identities of the youth are being defined within the broader social and cultural landscapes of the United States. The racial and ethnic formations of the youths are not fixed or immutable; rather their identities are renegotiated and remodeled according to changing patterns of subordinate-superordinate relationships. 34. This observation is based on our finding that among second-generation African immigrant youths, the articulation of race and ethnic membership is structured

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on the interplay of diverse factors, some of which are structural in dimension (language, culture, education, economic participation, cultural legacies and histories, traditions), and some individualistic (the personal social psychological meanings and attributions of the meanings of race and ethnicity within the contexts of one’s lived experiences). 35. According to Hackshaw (2007), the language that the second generation uses to articulate their identification with the African American experience is different from that of their parents whose constructs of race and ethnicity have been mediated by experiences acquired prior to their migration to the United States. For the second generation, therefore, racial and ethnic identities and formulations are shaped by what they experience in the United States. 36. See Faist (2000), Smith (2000), Foner (2000), and Basch et al. (1994) for a theoretical framework for understanding the formation of transnational identities among recent immigrants to the United States.

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6 African Immigrants and Native-Born Blacks: Discourses on Finding Common Ground

Since the voluntary migration of Africans to the United States, systematic efforts have been made by scholars of the African diaspora to unravel the contents of the relationships that African immigrants establish with other minority groups, particularly native-born black Americans. A survey of these scholarships has revealed cultural similarities among the two groups. Blacks, in general, emphasize a strong familial system anchored in extended kin group and consanguine relationships. They tend to elevate and embrace African cultural systems and heritage to preserve their traditions and legacies. They are racial minorities with similar colonial experiences when it comes to minority-majority group relationships at the national and supranational levels. A shared heritage of slavery and foreign colonization marks the collective experiences of the two groups. In a race- and color-conscious American social system, African and American-born blacks continue to occupy lower social hierarchies when multiple dimensions of well-being and life chances (healthcare, income, lifespan, longevity, home ownership, access to capital, income, and wealth) are contrasted with white Americans. Peoples of black descent unite in their celebrations of African festivals and cultural rituals such as Kwanzaa and age-graded rituals to honor the transition from childhood to adulthood, including marriage and child-naming ceremonies. As a visible minority group, African immigrants share a host of common physical and cultural traits with their native-born counterparts. Like black African immigrants, African American and Caribbean-born blacks share a common bond of descent and ancestry from Africa. Their black skin color also serves as an ascribed marker of ethnic and cultural identity and membership or belongingness to the group. 207

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Differences between the two groups have also been noted in the literature.1 Included among these are educational, cultural, and economic (labor force) differences with African immigrants having relatively higher educational attainments than their American-born counterparts.2 African immigrants also boast of well-oiled networks of kin group and family relationships that are seamlessly woven into the cultural and economic production of goods and services. This human capital is translated into the formation of transnational networks of families that marshal their economic and cultural resources to implement strategies to empower themselves and at the same time confront the poverty and myriad of problems facing the African region as a whole. The African immigrants have confronted their marginal and foreign status in the United States by developing a strong sense of nationalism and Pan African ethos whose stated objectives include the centering of Africa in world and global affairs.3 The histories and experiences of the two groups form a significant facet of American ethnic and cultural history. Black African consciousness and knowledge about the black American struggles for civil rights and emancipation is undisputed. Black American consciousness about black Africa’s agitation for self-determination and the ensuing postcolonial political and economic unrests as well as the ethnic and tribal-cum-clan fragmentations are known and of central concerns to black Americans. As Magubane (1987) contends, the confluence of many factors (enslavement, denigration, contempt for Africa, and exploitation, including white hegemonies over blacks), created severe problems for global black identities, affecting in particular the incorporation of peoples of black origin into the world’s geopolitical and economic structures. The systematic negation of black humanity and blacks’ designation to subaltern roles persisted even at the epoch of white economic and political power. The result, in part, is that peoples of black African descent are still struggling to define and redefine their identities, roles, and places in the global community. For black African immigrants, the articulation of racial identity is linked to the historical symbolisms often associated with being black. Writing about black Jamaicans in Britain, Nancy Foner noted that Afro-Caribbean immigrant identities about race and ethnicity are shaped by colonial depictions of shades of blackness.4 To be light-skinned is to have access to social mobility. To have a darker complexion and thick black hair is to be confined to poverty and lack of access to white-controlled economic and cultural resources. For black African immigrants, the articulation of racial and ethnic identities in America is problematic due to the fact several of the immigrants have maintained their black African cultural identities and characteristics. Negative experiences with discrimination and perceived denial of economic opportunities on account of skin color and place of origination were cited as major problems facing the immigrants in the

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United States.5 For some of the immigrants, good educational background does not easily translate into better access to economic resources and opportunities. And though they continue to make moderate gains in income relative to what they were earning in Africa, some of the African immigrants (particularly the recently arrived) are yet to achieve economic incorporation due to unemployment and underemployment, discrimination, and the 2007 recessionary cycle. The importance of the black African immigrant presence in the United States and the contributions that these immigrants bring to America are immense. Some of these immigrants have joined the ranks of America’s professional classes. They have become doctors, nurses, lawyers, and pharmacists. Others have joined the ranks of the American professoriate, including a strong presence at America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities. (HBCU). Black Americans have become aware of the increasing presence of black immigrants in their communities. In Atlanta (Georgia), there has been a 284-percent increase in the African immigrant population during the past two decades. In the Midwestern cities of Minneapolis–St. Paul, the black African immigrant community grew by over 600 percent during the decade 1990–2000.6 Coming from highly diverse backgrounds in every aspect of human endeavor, the new black immigrants entering the United States add to the ethnic and racial tapestry of the United States. In particular, they transform, enrich, and broaden the African American ethnic quilt with their cultural presence. Within this plural and ethnic mosaic representing black American identities is the notion of shared cultural essences, the varied ways in which black African culture adds to the black American racial and ethnic tapestries. This cultural essence is unique and central to black American identity because it affords an opportunity for black Americans to encounter their African roots and heritage while maintaining the continuity of the black diaspora in the United States. It also affords blacks a fresh opportunity to tell their own histories from their cultural prisms, to define the contours of their mutual heritage, and at the same time to forge a black cultural renaissance and consciousness that is reflective of the totalities of black heritage, values, history, experiences, and cultures. This chapter brings together the shared gendered experiences of a group of African immigrant and American-born black women. It seeks to highlight the varied ranges of social and cultural spaces or borders in which black African immigrant and American-born black women contest and negotiate specific genres of racial, ethnic, and gender identities. It accentuates the view that new identities are constructed or negotiated by the immigrants following their migratory and diaspora experiences in the United States. Core to the theoretical underpinnings of this chapter is the idea of how immigrant groups and members of the host societies define

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and maintain different forms of boundaries (racial, ethnic, class, religion, and gender). The chapter relies on narrated prose from the subjects to demarcate the social or cultural boundaries and shared commonalities, particularly how these are constructed, negotiated, and crossed. Specifying the permeable or impermeable borders defining the structural relationships of different groups forming the black diaspora is significant because it provides a context for understanding the different forms and varieties of black cultural manifestations.7 I argue that the sociocultural and historical legacies between African and American blacks must be reaffirmed through sustained understanding of the diversity inherent in black cultural forms. This entails a systematic investigation into the experiences that come together to shape the complex and multiple forms of black diasporic cultures and social institutions at the global pan-black level. Using a focus group session, representatives from both groups were brought together for an intercultural discourse about what it means to be African, black, female, foreign-born, and native-born in an American society where increasingly the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, and gender become critical in mapping out diaspora gendered cultural identities. The black women in the focus group discussed a wide range of topical issues. These include how to forge or achieve transatlantic diasporic unity among blacks in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States; the varied manifestations of black identities; the contextual issues confronting blacks in the diaspora, including the cultural representations of black nationalism, intra- and inter-black family dynamics; and how to transform the future of the black worldwide diaspora and black communities. Black African immigrants and American-born blacks continue to forge their own unique identities to reflect their social, cultural, political, and economic circumstances. This process of intercultural definitions, interactions, and awareness is taking place in large and small towns and in communities across the United States where the two groups encounter each other in the midst of the rising numbers of black émigrés who are coming to America.8 As the black African immigrant population continues to rise in the United States, a number of questions will have to be answered. First is the question of how to delineate the diverse forms of social and cultural interactions between black African immigrants and their American-born black counterparts. Secondly, are there specific areas of cultural, ethnic, and racial identity intersections unique to the two groups? Thirdly, are there transcultural sites for schisms, and how are these manifested and illuminated in the body polity of the black communities in America? Finally, are there any social implications emanating from the ties that the African immigrants establish with their native-born counterparts? Looking forward, how will these cultural affinities alter or transform the identities of racial politics in the United States? Their seminal interactions and discourses and

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the understanding of the forces that shape the contents of their interactions is a worthwhile sociological inquiry and investigation. The forces of globalization and transnational migration serve as the principal channels that are bringing various black cultural groups and societies together. Decolonization and the opportunities offered by globalized systems of education have contributed to the increase and presence of the black foreign-born population living in the United States. Their shared cultural affinities and the differences inherent in how blacks as a group express their cultural identities are dynamic and complex. Interests in their cultures have been on the rise among social scientists and the academic community in general. This interest is fueled in part by the growing number of black African and Caribbean diaspora studies at major colleges and institutions of higher learning across the United States. The aim is to broaden the focus for the understanding of black culture and recognize its multiple facets and dimensions. The continued development of African American culture is inexorably tied to the continued increase in the black immigrant population that has entered the United States as well as public interest in the composite or aggregate relationships and interactions that are forged among different groups of blacks. It is equally important to understand the multiple cultural genres that form the core of this cultural renaissance and its role in the growing mosaic of American ethnic and racial formations.

NARRATIVES ON RACE, ETHNICITY, POLITICS, CULTURAL KINSHIP, AND PAN AFRICAN NATIONALISM The focus group sessions allowed the study’s participants the flexibility to cover a broad range of subject issues pertaining to the collective experiences of African immigrants and American-born blacks.9 The discourse between the women covered a broad array of issues. It seeks to tap the full range of the women’s phenomenological constructs regarding gender and identity formation within the American pluralistic and multicultural bouquet: family life, raising children, confronting and dealing with marginality, gendered oppression and intercultural relationships, immigration, black spirituality, African and black cultural renaissance, shared black ethnicities, the role of black America in Africa’s development, the shifting representations of continental African identities, and the future of African immigrants and peoples forming the global black diaspora. A. B.: Blacks in America continue to embrace African cultural and spiritual notions. But few have any deep understanding about the diverse cultures of the peoples of Africa. Black American women have embraced African hairstyles. The rhythms in black songs are definitely African. Many

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blacks recognize and celebrate Kwanzaa. There are very many positive things about Africa. My view is that to embrace the positive aspects of African culture is also to ask the difficult questions such as the following: Why is black Africa slow in becoming developed? What explains the prevalence of violence, the wars, and the brutalities being committed by blacks against other blacks? Where is African civility? Where are the courts? I cannot fathom the violence among Africans. Africans are now in charge in Africa, controlling their own destinies. So why will they become embroiled in all these self-destruction and annihilation? I feel ashamed as a black American to see the cradle of black genealogies in such a horrible state of affairs. Is it black self-hatred? Can you explain these things to me? C. B.: Obviously there are aspects of every culture that are deplorable, and in the case of Africa, these are the issues we need to resolve to convince the rest of the world that we are a peace-loving people. And we are. What you see about the lynching, burning people alive, and the violence is tribalism, ethnic fractions, and hatred. Unfulfilled dreams, failed aspirations, and extreme poverty are only a few of the underlying reasons. The intensity of the inter-tribal tensions is enormous. And it is a major cause of our economic and political stagnations. Added to these are the massive problems caused by widespread corruption and organized pilferage. Some still blame the European colonialists. I do not subscribe to that thinking. Yes, the Europeans had a hand in this but we cannot blame them for everything. The British and the French are gone.10 Africans cannot continue using the Europeans as scapegoats for their lack of will to find solutions to the chronic wars, corruption, entrenched dictatorial regimes, poverty, institutionalized violence, the lack of civility, accountability, and rule of law. Some people still want the British or French to come back and re-colonize them. At least they reason that during the colonial era, there was stability and some sense of security. Schools were set up. There was enough water and electricity; new roads were constructed. The railway lines were built or extended. Colleges and universities were built. It has been about fifty years since the Europeans left. I do not have an answer. Brighter spots are appearing in Botswana, Ghana, Senegal, Uganda, Malawi, Tanzania, the Ivory Coast, and maybe South Africa and Nigeria. It is a huge continent. Changes will be slow in coming. A. B.: I understand what you are saying. I feel black Africa’s pain. I feel the burdens and the insurmountable challenges millions and scores of Africans face today. My concern is how do we create a supporting environment to nurture institutions that will work for the mutual benefit of the billion or so people in this region of the world that have been bypassed by economic

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development and every possible form of human advancements during the last five decades? As a woman, what is your own paradigm and approach to this problem? Is it the African leaders who are standing in the way because of the pervasive corruption? Or is it because the rest of the world has abandoned Africa focusing instead on the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe? C. B.: To a large degree, the leaders have failed the people. They come to power and become megalomaniacs. They have institutionalized thievery, corruption, and cronyism. They continue to amass untold wealth at the expense of the poor. They build palaces and edifices to symbolize their power. They surround themselves with military and police men because they want to hold on to the reins of power in perpetuity. The international community is equally culpable. Everybody stopped caring about Africa because we have let so many of our well-wishers down. You can only get so many opportunities to get things right. I think sustainable development is the key. When people are doing well economically or when they have something that gives them meaning in life or something to latch on to (it could be economic, family, community, culture, religions), they tend to develop a positive approach to life’s problems. They become imbued with hope for themselves and their children as well as look forward to the future. For me, a women-based solution is for women to develop cultural solutions buttressed in economic empowerment. This empowerment should have as its goal one tenet—to develop a legacy to ensure intergenerational cultural connections with our children so that we can embolden them to become the children and future adults we would like them to become. Women should organize and form viable organizations to lobby international donor countries and nongovernmental organizations to redirect their assistance to community grassroots institutions at the local level working directly to provide basic services for the poor. This will help bypass corruption, political pandering, and inept central bureaucracies that negotiate international assistance on behalf of their respective countries and channel the funds into private pet projects in their respective districts to gain patronage and favor. This will bring transparency and accountability which ultimately will mean that the people will become the direct benefactors of donor assistance.11 A. B.: But how can we accomplish this empowerment and uplift blacks when the bulk of our black children are being written off by the educational system or are portrayed by the justice system [as] trouble-prone? How can we do this by not affirming existing stereotypes about black children and institutions, whether in Africa or here in the United States? What legacy are

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we going to leave for our children? Are we to leave them with a legacy of anger and frustration which some of us have endured since birth? Or do we leave them a women-based strategy that will enable them to overcome these structural and psychological hurdles? Most of them carry a heavy burden of being black. The literal chain of oppression is still with us today in varied forms of economic denial of opportunities to young blacks. Lack of jobs continues to leave many of them in pain and suffering. Many of them cannot compete in the global economy due to their lack of educational competence and proficiency. I know a lot of them are giving up on the American dream. They think the dream is only for some but not for them. Some of our children have stopped dreaming about America’s promise. We must free ourselves and our children from this economic bondage and imprisonment. Labels are assigned to our children by the mass media. Rightly or wrongly, some of these labels are used to justify the government’s lack of resolve to invest in our blighted urban communities. The continued lack of investments in our communities is a form of economic oppression. Government and financial institutions sometimes justify the lack of community investments by frequently referring to the crime problem in black and Latino communities across the country. But they overlook the fact that crime is a direct response to the economic conditions in these communities. C. B.: We need to confront our collective fears and work hard to get rid of the stereotypes in our communities and create work in our communities. Black women can take the lead in this regard. The systemic oppression of blacks in the United States was a worse chapter in the chronicles of the country’s history. The end of that oppressive period was followed by another period marked by the continued racialization of blacks. The gaps in achievement that this caused have been very difficult to close. But close it we must. We need to take care of our own needs first, that is, our economic, cultural, and spiritual needs. We need to disavow the idea that we have to serve others first before we serve ourselves. As black women, we have a long history of doing more than our fair share of everything. We single-handedly raise our children most of the time. We are running the choirs at church; we are running the economies of our respective households. We work multiple jobs to put bread on the table for our families. We are the primary caregivers for our parents and grandparents. We are lifting huge loads and climbing uphill at the same time. It is like the image of the black African woman who carries her load on her head and carries her baby on her back while at the same time carrying something, maybe the family’s food she will be preparing when she gets home. Where are the men in all these roles? Too many of them continue to turn their backs on their families. We have turned ourselves into economic and social mules just to ensure our survival. Sometimes we need for others to do certain things for us rather

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than think we can carry the weight and the burdens of others. We leave our own children at home to go and take care of other people’s children, mainly white children. We have to create our own jobs to employ our people. We have to foster economic independence, and instill in our children a sense of self-worth and dignity. We need for the youth (mainly the boys) to respect girls and women, coupled with respect for authority. We cannot continue to live and raise our children with a victim mentality. We suffer as a group when we do that by robbing ourselves of the power of individual and collective mobilization. The angst will have to cease. We have to find a way to convert the angst into positive action for our collective good. Posterity expects us to do this. We need to bring up our children in the ways we want them to be so that they can form their own aspirations. The victimhood mentality impedes the establishment or formation of grassroots coalition and the building of alliances to agitate for this change and make this process of “becoming” possible. The victim mentality may scare away some folks who are our natural allies from stepping in to assist in this cause. We have to invest in our individual and collective strengths to achieve our total empowerment and self-improvement. A. B.: Exactly. You are saying then that passivity and sitting on the sidelines will not get anything done. We need to acknowledge that contrary to how we are portrayed as black women, we are really not passive at all. We are social actors who are in control of our destinies no matter what these might be. In that respect, I concur with you. But then we need a valueoriented framework to position this angst. Sometimes we are defined by the larger culture as a group very much weighed down and being dragged by all kinds of negative experiences. We need a new and fluid way(s) to express our being, our identities, hopes, and aspirations as black women. This will make it possible for us to reach out to others and coalesce together for community action. The solution we seek should not be a leftist or rightist solution. It should be a black African woman-centered solution and one that is framed to recognize that existing social rankings and inequality by race, gender, and class are pernicious and inimical to our well-being as uprooted and displaced women of black African ancestry. We need to forge alliances with Caribbean women also, including blacks in South and Central America. The present antagonist burdens and inequalities rooted in sexism, classicism, and racism that we have to endure are very extensive and well entrenched. It affects all black women. But it is more magnified among black women who live outside of America because of the poverty, disease, violence, and illiteracy. These issues transcend black African women. It is a Third World agenda. We have to close the educational and economic gap. Closing this gap is daunting. It must start with individual families. We do not have a whole lot of levers to pull because we have squandered a lot of

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opportunities. In Africa as you stated, we have squandered our capital by fighting wars and committing all kinds of genocidal atrocities on our own people. Then after we finish fighting, we expect that the rest of the world will step in and provide us with the food, medicine, water to drink, and clothes to wear. In black America, we do not invest in our children’s education. We rely on the public schools to educate them. Some of the inner-city schools are failing our children. Yet, we do not do anything about it. They drop out and cannot find jobs. We complain about immigrants taking away our jobs instead of educating ourselves to become more competitive. C. B.: In the case of black Africa, our leaders must come together and work on a plan of action to press for the institutionalization of progressive ideals, particularly shoring up civil culture, [a] bold agenda to improve infrastructures (roads, hospitals, clinics, vocational-technical education), and most of all, a unified approach to recognize women’s suffrage, their right to own property, protection from cultural practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM), child sexual enslavement, and the economic abuses or exploitation of children in the production of goods and services. These will become goals and earmarks that can form the basis for international economic, political, and cultural assistance. This plan is robust because it recognizes the need to buffer the rights of women, and children in particular, and ensure that they will be accorded human dignity and have their rights affirmed under law. Marriage laws may have to be strengthened to safeguard the interests of women and their children upon divorce, bereavement, or separation. Of greater significance is an assessment of the laws dealing with testate and intestate succession. You think these are appropriate measures to elevate the plight of women and children? A. B.: Yes, I do, but with a caveat. The central governments of Africa are not equipped or have sufficient resources to design and fully implement these goals. Actually, some of them have already passed legislations to start addressing these problems. It is enforcement of existing laws regarding the need to protect the rights of women and children. This can work if the international community lends a hand by making the achievement of these conditions a prerequisite for economic assistance. Countries will then have to certify to donor countries that they have achieved or surpassed these benchmarks. Assistance will be withheld until benchmarks have been met or exceeded. This will ensure a carrotand-stick approach. It will foster a sense of accountability among rogue regimes that the international community is watching. The magnitude of the problems facing black Africans is huge. It will require a concerted and sustained global oversight because in my estimation, the bulk of the leaders want to incorporate their countries into the global economy but

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are reluctant to have to change their oppressive and corrupt mindset, including their use of violence and the ruthless use of state power to quell political dissent. Their heavy-handed approach to conflict resolution by resorting to violence usually does not come with bold reaction from the global and investment community. The African Union and the West in general should not prop up the undemocratic regimes in the region. Some of these governments are shored up by the West even though these governments have been rejected by their own people. Also, when people are displaced internally in their own countries as a result of war, it takes African leaders and the international community ages before they come to grips with the human conditions associated with war and carnage. Women, girls, and boys are usually the victims of these conflicts. To make matters worse, the women and the girls are subjected to sexual assaults, rape, ethnic cleansing, and even death. They often have no protection. The perpetrators are soldiers and roaming malevolent bandits who often times manage to secure safe passage and avoid prosecution. C. B.: Black politicians must embrace a new paradigm, one that is encompassing and inclusive of safeguarding the collective interests of the peoples of the black African dispersion wherever they may be found. The suffering of black women in Africa is also tied to the suffering of their counterparts in the United States and these other places. We have to convince our leaders therefore that the solution to these sufferings must be a broad based agenda and initiative to tackle poverty and the systemic exploitation of women and children. The current system whereby our black leaders localize their politics to the interest of their black constituents must cease. Instead, black leaders should advocate for all protected groups, particularly the vulnerable. The black politician’s calling should not be limited to local issues. Sometimes, I wish black American political leaders will take more interest in African affairs. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) should lead the way. Our interests are sometimes too sectional and fragmented. The needs are huge and gigantic, but incremental steps can be implemented by our politicians to push for the opening up of international markets for black African goods to the United States. A. B.: What role do you define for the growing cadre of African- and Western-trained professional African women elites? Do they have a voice in defining the issues? Are they present at the table of political and economic decision-making? What are their perspectives? How do they change the ever-worsening plight of women and girls in Africa? How can they harness the resources of women and girls to make them leaders of their communities and nations? Oprah’s lead in setting up a center in South Africa for training girls to leadership positions is a good start.

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C. B.: With the opening up of university education in Africa, it is not surprising that many women have taken advantage of the tremendous opportunity to pursue advanced and postsecondary education to become more competitive with their male counterparts. Remember some time ago that women and girls were kept out of the educational system in Africa. This was a deliberate effort to keep women in subservient roles in the home and in farming. Coupled with this was the fact that some families considered an investment in the education of girls a waste of scarce resources since these girls will grow up and be married off. Instead, families encouraged the education of boys. But thanks to the opening up of secondary and postsecondary schools across the region, more women and girls have taken advantage and have started going to school. This is a significant social change. What I know is that educated African women are beginning to play a major role in national development. They are not silent. Whether they live in the West or back home in Africa, the educated African women champion the causes of their mothers, sisters, daughters, and grandmothers. Because when you chat with them, most of them will recount stories about gendered victimizations that women and girls have suffered. They assist in educating young girls, bring their mothers to come and live with them, and most of them work within the male-dominated system, pushing their agendas one at a time without trying to upset the apple cart. They attempt to give voice and find an outlet for the expression of gender identities that speak specifically to issues affecting women and young girls. It is a very strenuous terrain to have to traverse in light of all the powerful patriarchal structures. I know some who have built schools and established leadership centers for empowering women and girls. I also know about some of these women who are at the forefront of legislation to proscribe FGM, improve inheritance laws, and provide women access to financial credits to promote their businesses. Some of them have galvanized women groups to form financial and marketing cooperatives to dole out small loans to urban and rural women to purchase consumer merchandise for resale and are helping women traders pull together to form cooperatives to negotiate for fair prices. With time, I see some of these women first building an elaborate network of educated and economically conscious women actors. With time, it is feasible that they can channel this educational and economic progress into political muscle. So there is hope. The task at hand is challenging for these women. A lot is resting on their shoulders. Their relatives look up to them for everything. They always have to give something back to their families for the opportunities some of them have received to travel abroad to be educated. I hope giving back does not hamper their drive toward empowering girls and women. A. B.: It is safe to say that these well-educated African immigrant professionals are the talented tenth who now form the vanguard for social change

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and economic empowerment to uplift blacks in Africa. Oftentimes as had happened also in black America, some of these elites and professional blacks become part of the power structure of society. Maybe they become co-opted and end up losing sight of their culture and heritage. Most of them move away from blacks and settle among whites in the suburbs. There, some become irrelevant as they discover also that they must negotiate and fight for racial inclusion in the predominantly white suburbs. I think a lot of them quietly make their money working for corporate America and other financially well-endowed institutions. Some even join the ranks of the conservative political structure and begin to call and advocate for a limited role for government in providing assistance to the poor. C. B.: Yes, but those blacks are few anyway. They may have a strong voice. But personally, I do not think they have much of an impact in shaping public policy. I think the black churches are taking up the agenda of facilitating the economic and political empowerment of their members. Black churches are starting their own schools. Some have started credit unions to assist their members. They organize seminars to teach about financial literacy, home ownership, and how to create intergenerational wealth. It is a new paradigm. It will work for those who are interested. Some of them have bought old and abandoned houses in their neighborhoods and working within the system, they have succeeded in securing grants for neighborhood improvement, including the establishment of economic zones, sort of economic oasis in the heart of black communities to cater to the economic needs of the population. Some of the churches operate food pantries and soup kitchens to provide assistance to those in need. And mind you, it is not just one church that is doing this. It is a consortium of black churches who are united in their ministries to provide hope and a better tomorrow for the truly disadvantaged blacks in society. They were practicing these faith-based partnerships between community and civic organizations even before President George Bush modeled that idea as part of public policy designed to assist the poor. A. B.: There is a very rich past of black churches doing these kinds of mutual aid and caring for the vulnerable people in their communities. Some of them organize sororities and fraternities to bridge the work of these institutions in the community. I know of several black immigrants who have recently received assistance from these societies. Black people are generally very charitable folks. After more than three centuries of slavery and Jim Crow racial politics, the damage that was done was huge. But so is the energy to make things right again through a community spirit of self-help and mutual assistance. The identity of blacks today is that scores of them are using private organizations to lift up the poor and give them

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a voice in America. The progress is very slow. My hope is that ultimately, self-help will be the key to turning around the current negativities that have come to dominate black identity in the United States today. C. B.: Where do you position the varied forms of black women’s global identity? Are black women’s identities in the West seen through the prism of strength or weakness? Define for me the lens through which we are portrayed? Is this portrayal different from the ways our sons, fathers, and brothers are portrayed? A. B.: As you hinted earlier, black women are portrayed as the caregivers and nurturers, the cultural transmitters, the nerve center of family life, the lynchpin of economic sustenance, and the fulcrum of the church. The global identity of the black woman is that she is not going to sit back and see her children go without food. The black woman is the last in her extended family to forsake her mother and grandmother, let alone her own children. Our identity is that of storytellers. We are always weaving tradition and history to show that we have a strong past. The black woman tells stories that are didactic, intended to uplift and extol the virtues of family, church, and community. Black women may be poor, but they will always cook and leave food on the stove for their children to eat, including feeding others their children bring home. The black woman is very kind. She believes in her children, particularly her boys, even when the justice system says otherwise. She believes in her man even when he may not be around to contribute and shoulder household expenses and the training of the young. We know how to look pretty, beautiful, and very creative. Our hairstyles are creative. We know how to dress and look nice. We like colors. It makes us look radiant and regal. We are pretty. We work hard. With this identity also comes a burden. We hardly have enough time to devote to ourselves. We expend a lot of energy making sure our boys do not fall in the hands of the criminal justice system. They are the reason some of us may work two or three jobs so that we can move to the suburbs or find a safer middle-class community. We have allowed the justice system to destroy the fabric of black youth culture. Their activities often draw the attention of the justice system. We stay up at night hoping and praying that they will come home safe. Our global identity is that we have strong backs. Throughout the world, our image is that of people who are resilient. At the same time, we are portrayed and identified by the rest of society as weak and unable to alter the dynamics of our relationships with our men. The idea here is that we build, nurture, and produce in the service of others. Meanwhile our boys and husbands take away. They diminish us at times by being disrespectful of women in general. The identity of the black woman is that she is the anchor of the black family. We are portrayed as people who give a

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lot but get back less than what we put in. Some of us are also portrayed by the larger society as angry, mad, boiling inside, and carrying heavy burdens and responsibilities. C. B.: The sad reality is that as black women, we continue to serve others other than ourselves. It is the same in Africa today. Whether we perform domestic work in white suburbs or pick fruits and vegetables as migrant workers in the Ozark region, it is safe to say that we are increasingly becoming irrelevant in the world’s economic system. Corporations, foreign and domestic, continue to dominate our lives. In South Africa, our men still continue to board the trains from the black townships that will take them to Johannesburg to work in the gold mines. They leave the women and children behind. In Ghana, our women who weave the famous kente cloth are being displaced by the Chinese who now use modern technology to mass produce the kente cloth, a symbol of the global black identity. In parts of Atlanta, Asians are assuming a greater share of selling Afrocentric cultural identity products. In the heart of the Congo, foreigners from Europe are mining our valuable minerals and shipping everything out to Europe for processing while thousands of youth spend each day foraging for food in the dumps near the white residences in the mining towns. If these trends persist, our sons and daughters will no longer have any identity to define their past let alone their future. We need to create and preserve more of our cultural heritage. It is an uphill task. A. B.: Where do you see black Africa in the next fifty years? What role will black America play in Africa looking ahead? Do you see black Americans flocking to Africa to create a new home away from home in America? Or do you think Africa will fade away in the memories of black Americans? C. B.: The prospects look bright. Once civil societies become entrenched and democratic institutions take hold, black Africa will be rolling. For centuries we have allowed the rest of the world to define us. We just sat back and watched [ourselves] being defined in pejorative terms and we did nothing about it. But now things are beginning to change, albeit rather slowly. We are redefining who we are and no longer accepting the old forms of negativity we have been associated with. We are building roads, hospitals, schools, and I predict the twenty-second century will be ours. But we need to continue building institutions that will support our newfound energies and talents. The creation of stability and public order are essential prerequisites for investors (domestic and foreign) to come in and harness the huge economic potential of the African continent. Great strides are currently being made in education. Literacy rates continue to climb, especially for women. Cohorts of young Africans who were born after their countries gained independence

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become a new source of energy. They are modern and global in their thinking. They watch Cable News Network (CNN), Music Television (MTV), have their cell phones, sending and receiving text messages. They are electronically wired. Some of them are registering to take classes via the Internet offered by institutions of higher learning all over the world. Satellite dishes and mobile phones are proliferating. These media tools eventually will make the place very much livable. Africans are hungry for change. They want a better tomorrow for themselves. They want an end to the tribal and clannish appeasement of the warmongers who incite violence and wage conflicts to the detriment of the common good. In the new Africa that is emerging, the old ways of corruption and lack of political and economic accountability will not be tolerated. Africans are willing to take up arms if need be to resist domination by their own leaders. They are also willing to participate in the political process. Their energies must be harnessed. They will need jobs, improved infrastructure, and resources to stem the tide of diseases. Some might leave to find a better way of living in the West. The majority will stay behind. Returning immigrants will also add their quota to the development process. They will bring ideas, new thinking, skills, and resources as they retire in the West and decide to come home. African-born children are doing well in Britain, Canada, and the United States. African students are excelling in the United States. African intellectuals are making scholarly contributions at prestigious institutions of learning all over the world. The poverty in Africa has kept them from returning home. But some are returning. And yes, I see black America’s role in all of this. Blacks will become reinvigorated to become part of this change in the last region of the world to really become developed. More black African countries will follow Ghana’s lead and urge black Americans to come home and be recognized as full citizens and be given the right to participate in social and national affairs. I can see black Americans buying land to build a second or third home away from America for the sake of posterity and cultural legacy. A. B.: My children and grandchildren will become beneficiaries of this change. Things may be moving too slow now, but I wholeheartedly agree with you that seeds of change have been sown. It will take a long time to reap the benefits. Blacks Americans are feeling buoyed by the incremental changes they see occurring in certain areas of black Africa. There will be hard times ahead. Tribal and clan factions seeking to position themselves for power may resort to war and conflicts because they profit from it. Some of the leaders are warmongers. They thrive on conflicts which seek to divide their peoples. These will have to be contained. Otherwise, the story of the region will continue to be same (persistent genocides, wars, organized thievery, extreme poverty, and underdevelopment). Black Africans must stop killing other black Africans over sectionalism and tribalism. Commu-

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nities and countries do not reach their full potential under these circumstances. The people will have to believe that the changes you spoke about will be to their best interests. Black Americans have a stake in this. Our identities, heritage, and legacies are at stake here. If things work well for Africa, I can see many black Americans going there to visit and probably stay. C. B.: I wait and look forward to that day. A strong wind of change is blowing across black Africa. It is fueled in part by the locals, working in concert with returning immigrants from the West who have no ties to the old powerful but corrupt regimes. These people have lived in the West. They have seen how societies function for the good of all. Most of them will agitate such changes in black Africa. On its part, black America will provide leadership and guidance. It will even be able to provide economic resources. I can see several black Americans going to black African countries to set up businesses as the region becomes the new frontier in the spread of capitalist growth. I can see black American tourists taking advantage of the vast cultural wealth of black Africa. I remain very positive. This will change the image and identities we have for our children and grandchildren. A. B.: For change to occur, I think the black immigrants who are coming to the United States (mainly from Africa and the Caribbean) should not stay on the sidelines of racial and ethnic politics in America.12 They should engage the American system same way that they are active in the affairs of their home countries. They should run for office (for those who are citizens). They should contest the issues that affect welfare, poverty, housing, discrimination, crime, healthcare, education, and everything else. They should not leave the fight solely to black Americans. Imagine the wind that we will have behind us if a lot of the educated black immigrants join with black American to form grassroots coalition for community action? You do not have to participate in everything. Choose an area of interest to you, maybe affordable housing for blacks, and agitate the system for that. A lot of black Americans feel that African and Caribbean immigrants in the United States are too aloof, that they do not engage the American system like they ought to. There is even a prevailing perception that black immigrants are somewhat comfortable relative to American-born blacks and therefore reluctant to agitate and advocate for those who are vulnerable. Is the assertion right that black immigrants segregate themselves, often interacting with their country folks and less inclined to open up to black America? C. B.: These are tough questions. I have heard this over and over again. I have heard that the black immigrants go out of their way to show that they are different from black America. I do not wholly embrace that idea. Black African and Caribbean blacks do engage in the system but rather in

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limited spheres. They are teachers, engineers, doctors, taxi drivers, social workers, migrant workers, police officers, army officers, nurses, and so on. I agree that most of them present a black identity that is somewhat different from black America, having not been born in this country. But in some large cities, they are working alongside black Americans. I reject the notion that they are aloof. No, it is the opposite. They face the same economic and social problems of black folks. They get beat by the police too. Remember Amadou Diallo. They suffer from housing discrimination. They want to identify and connect with black America but some of them may not know how to proceed. I think also some of them do not get involve because they do not plan to stay here permanently. They also tend to focus their energies on the things going on at home. They carry dual burdens, one in far away Africa, the other here in America. Balancing the needs of relatives at home and trying to achieve the American dream can bring pressure to bear on people. And the way some of them resolve the tensions emanating from these expectations can be daunting. Possibly, some of the black African immigrants may feel that black America does not fully understand some of the issues that the immigrants have to resolve back home in Africa. A. B.: I can understand how economic pressures at home in Africa may shape how African immigrants define their identities and adapt to life in America. The problems of Africa are overwhelming, giving rise to what I call the Afro-pessimist school that holds the view that nothing good can ever come out from Africa. But this is where the immigrants come from. It is difficult for them not to focus on what is happening at home. But they could also get to know black America much better. It is for our mutual good and benefit that this apparent divide is bridged. We are bridging it now in our gendered interactions. But we need to bring others in as well. Blackness comes in diverse forms. So are the identities that these forms exhibit. There are several areas of common interests. There are also several areas of disagreements or cultural misunderstandings. For the well-educated black Caribbean and African immigrants, take up volunteering work in the inner cities to assist poor urban youth with their school work. Hold seminars teaching about African cultures. Go to the churches and speak about what is needed to successfully engage the American system of education. Show black America the pathways to educational excellence. Give back some of what have been given to you by America. People paved the way for black immigrants to be here in America. Blacks were shot at and imprisoned for advocating for inclusion and opportunity. Some were even killed to prepare the way for black immigrants to be here today. Immigrant blacks must pay homage to them and follow in their civil advocacy. Black African and Caribbean immigrants can help black America surmount the intractable problem of educating black youths. Education is a cultural resource and capital for

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several black immigrants. Sidney Poitier, Colin Powell, and Barack Obama come from African and Caribbean immigrant roots. Foreign-born black immigrants are doing something right when it comes to the education of their children. The black immigrants can share with the rest of black America what is it they are doing with their children (particularly the boys, most of whom are becoming very successful in America). Your immigrant children go to the same schools our kids do, yet your kids turn out differently. We need to look into this. Maybe it is the cultural values regarding education that you imported from Africa. If it is, we all need to hear about it so that we can adapt some of those themes to address why our boys are failing in school. We send them to school and they end up being tracked by the school system and are taught mainly by white female teachers, some of whom lack any understanding of the pressures on black youths in their struggle for identity. We sit back and allow the school system to kick them out after which the criminal justice system takes over, warehousing them in correctional institutions all over the country. Entire generations are being lost this way. C. B.: Black immigrants are indebted to black Americans and their continued fight and struggles for social justice. I agree with you that black immigrants should do more by working with black Americans to help bridge the educational achievement gap. They also have to join in black America’s struggles to bridge the color line. I teach my children that. We should all be united in this cause no matter whether we were born in this country or not. We must all join this cause because it is a noble one. There is still a lot of grassroots work to be done. The government has a central role to play in ensuring quality public schools and access to housing, healthcare, and jobs. Acceptance of individual responsibility is also a beginning point in this reconciliation and reconstruction process. It cannot be done by blacks alone. Black parents must take an active role in the education of their children. Switch off the television at night during the school week and see to it that the children are doing their school work. Control the time spent on cell phones and texting and divert some of that energy into educational activities led by parents. There is also coalition building to do. We need to have on our side neoliberal progressive whites as well as other immigrants to push for broad and lasting solutions to problems that are still nagging at us, particularly the lack of jobs for adult black males, the hold of the justice system on our male children, lack of capital improvements and investments in our cities and schools. When we change society, we can then change our identities and how we are perceived as blacks. We must also recognize the subtle ways that racism and racist thoughts are primed to appeal to the wrath of middle-class Americans, including the black middle class. Some Americans (a few, maybe) are unrestrained in their vitriolic stance on issues

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of race and racism. We have to all get to the point where we come to believe and trust that the system is working and that it is working for all of us. This will include finding common ground to confront our fears, hopes, and aspirations. Otherwise, the negative identity that marks us as black folks will never be done away with. It is imperative to define new black African and black American identities and consciousness. This identity will be rooted in globally held values such as respect for all and community empowerment to ensure the sustainability of black social institutions. A. B.: As black women, we are all no longer willing to be defined by those who seek to bring us down. I do not want to be defined by the negative and misogynist images of gangster rappers. A few people cannot define what our collective identities ought to be. We should not denigrate ourselves and our culture. The need to maintain a posture of positive selfesteem is critical. Like other people of black descent, I am not willing to accept the subtle messages and references to black women or be defined by these subtle and at times blatant messages targeting and objectifying black women’s sexualities. My experience as a woman of the black diaspora is shaped by a multitude of influences. Music is just one facet. Some of us are teachers, engineers, doctors, community activists, artists, lawyers, and many more. We have come very far. I think if more of us speak our truths to each other and really listen to each other, we will find that for many of us, the racism we feel and experience, the negative ways our sons are portrayed by the media, and the discrimination that has kept some of us down in our places can be transcended and surmounted. And we can get to work building our institutions and the coalitions we need to build to ensure our common good. For all the work we do, it amazes me that we are always at the bottom ranks of society. We should not be at the bottom of the heap. C. B.: I think black people from all over the world are ready for change. They want the economic and cultural oppression against us to end. They also want to see the recognition of black women as promoters of culture and heritage. We have to appropriate our black cultures to find lasting and meaningful solutions to our problems. I believe also that our black men have a long way to go. They have to learn to respect themselves and work hard to regain what they have lost when it comes to providing for their families. This speaks to the issue of respect and responsibility. They also have to educate themselves, build their own institutions to create jobs for themselves, and more importantly earn the respect of black women. A. B.: There are many things we can all celebrate as black women. It is somewhat depressing when you look at how we have been depicted by hip-hop culture. Some if it is our own doing. Black women participate and

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are active consumers of hip-hop culture, often debasing themselves and other black women. We seem to be reflected in the black male angst toward society, particularly their feelings of powerlessness. But that is no excuse for black males to victimize us in their music as they fight and contest their disenfranchised status in America. I like hip-hop. It is a powerful tool of expressing identity. But it has damaging aspects when it comes to issues affecting women’s identities. In the end, I think as black women, we must continue to make the right choices and decisions irrespective of what others are doing and saying. Self-preservation is equally important in the midst of all the negativities in our communities, including what we see going on in Africa. Black women as a group must preserve the social capital inherent in their collective spirit of hard work. This must entail forming strong consciousness about our womanhood and creating pathways to achieve autonomy. Black women must also continue to find ways to enjoy the fruits of their hard work in the midst of all the economic and cultural depression that surrounds them. Hip-hop may not change, but we can change how we appropriate that medium. African leaders may not change, but we can change how we relate to them. C. B.: We must continue to teach and learn from one another. I think for those of us with eyes toward Africa, we have to explore how to create unity among the African countries. Maybe even the creation of a United States of Africa. Even a loose political and economic federation will be a start. The continent’s population is now more than one billion and growing at 3 percent per year. Do you know what we can become if we unite and chart courses that will build our economies, preserve our institutions, cultural legacies, and heritages? I would like for the bigger and wealthier countries on the continent (Nigeria, South Africa, and the Congo) to lead this initiative. African immigrants are setting the pace for Africa’s socioeconomic development through the money they send home and the businesses they set up to ease unemployment. Some of the immigrants use their influences in the United States to advocate for nongovernmental organizations to participate in Africa’s development. Dr. Nkrumah, Edward Nasser, Sekou Toure, Julius Nyerere, and a few others tried this initiative before. It is the right time to reinvigorate the process of unity again. The Chinese are now very visible all over Africa, constructing roads, hospitals, assisting in oil drilling, and some of Africa’s children are starting to learn Mandarin. They are becoming major trading partners with Africa. In due course, they will replace Europe and the United States as Africa’s major economic partner. This will help black Africa a lot by raising economic standards of living. Africans will continue looking to America to deliver economic assistance. If America shirks this responsibility, the Chinese are ready to step in and fill the void. Black America will also have to become partners in Africa’s development.

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A. B.: This means the African countries must close the economic gap with the developed world. This will take a while, but considering the enormous human and natural resources, I do not see how an effective use of these resources will not work in closing the gap of underdevelopment with Asia and the rest of the world. A concerted effort must be made on the part of the governments and the people to harness these resources for the use of their people. If you look at some of the individual countries (for example, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, the Congo), there is no reason why these countries cannot use their resources to better the lot of their citizens. As these countries and others in Africa develop, they must also ensure that the development process reaches everybody in Africa, not just the elites and the politicians. Otherwise, you will create an economic migrant class whose ambitions and aspirations can only fulfilled by migration. That will further aggravate the continent’s brain drain. C. B.: I agree with you. It is the same with blacks in America, including Latinos. We have to close the achievement gap. Otherwise, blacks and Hispanics, including American Indians, are doomed. We have to share in the country’s economic prosperity. One way to accomplish this is to rely on our own institutions and resources to educate ourselves and our children. We cannot share in America’s prosperity if we do not make any meaningful economic contributions.13 This will require an educated black and Latino labor force but judging by current trends in the levels of minority school dropout, we have a lot of challenges facing us. In a sense, our economic and political destinies as ethnic and racial minorities, irrespective of whether we are from Africa, the Caribbean, the United States, or Latin America, are interlocked. I think though, that Africa’s problems are more acute than the problems facing other minority groups. Africans must regain control of their economic and political destinies once and for all. A. B.: Africa is a good place to start. And black America will have to become a more active participant in this process as well. Embracing a united Africa will compel us to face and raise troubling questions about the total black experiences, particularly questions that hitherto we have been too timid to ask. These questions include how to confront the enduring legacies of slavery, genocide, organized violence, human rights violations, and the spread of diseases. We have to engage in these discussions while forging collective solutions. This is the only way we can create and leave a black world that is united in its purposes, visions, and strengths to face the future. This is the future of a black world I envision and one in which I would like to bequeath to my black children and grandchildren. Black Americans will have strengthen their ties with Africa and become active players in the

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development of Africa. The black caucus in Congress can help. They have to work with the Obama administration to continue from where former Presidents Bush and Clinton left off. Both did a lot to fight the scourge of HIV/AIDS in Africa. I was very pleased Obama visited Africa during the first year of his administration. C. B.: I am concerned about how immigrants from Africa and Latin America are used as scapegoats for the country’s worsening unemployment and other economic problems. I am equally concerned about black America’s sentiments that African and Caribbean blacks, including Latinos and Asians, are taking away their jobs. This breeds hostile sentiments and widens the gap of trust among racial and ethnic minorities. How do you feel about my presence as a foreign-born black in the United States who has a professional job? A. B.: You have a good job because you are well educated. A lot of immigrants from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean are well educated, and they do get good paying jobs. I don’t begrudge you. But I am not naïve to the fact that a lot of inner-city American-born blacks are displaced on the job market by new immigrants coming from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. I believe that when it comes to the low skill jobs, immigration has affected the job prospects and the economic outlook for black Americans, especially those who have dropped out of school and have no skills to market. I have noticed also that a lot of blacks are gaining access to managerial jobs because of immigration. This is due to promotion. When foreign-born immigrants enter into low skill jobs where blacks are already found, a lot of the blacks end up getting promoted into higher positions. So immigration’s impact on blacks overall is positive because of the other benefits immigrants bring, especially their culture, diversity, and energy.14 C. B.: The way I look at it is that immigrants contribute a lot to American society, especially those who perform manual labor that most Americans are reluctant to do. And a lot of them support their families at home with their remittances. This, I believe, is good for America because it makes the recipients of these remittances appreciate America and the economic benefits it provides for immigrants. This goodwill sometimes translates into good foreign policy toward America. It makes people identify with America’s causes in world affairs. Millions of Africans and Latinos will not survive without the regular financial contributions of their relatives living abroad. A. B.: Yes, immigrants bring a lot to America, more than they take out. But this is not the view of most Americans. A growing number of Americans

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have politicized the immigration debate by blaming everything from crime, welfare, gangs, drugs, and the deficit on immigrants. I reckon that states have the instrument of power to define their immigration policies and protect their sovereignty. They said the same about throngs of immigrants coming to America from Southern and Eastern Europe. Now they scapegoat Mexicans and Latinos. Some are beginning to blame well-educated African and Asians for taking middle-class jobs away from whites. Unfortunately, the politicians are able to tap into this raw nativism in the name of protecting the economic future of America.15 America’s future without the new immigrants growing and picking the fruits and vegetables, doing the construction jobs, and working in the meat packaging trades will be bleak. The system of capitalism has to have access to labor that is relatively cheaper or inexpensive if that system is to survive, make profits, and be competitive. The Chinese have cheap labor in Asia and that is why their goods are very cheap. C. B.: A lot of my African and Caribbean friends live with this reality. They will work any job so they can have money to send home. Some even endure exploitation and other related hardships (racism, marginality, sexism). But most would rather earn $7 an hour rather than a dollar a day or less working in Africa. Economic issues dominate their agenda. They are aware of their relatively poorer status in America. But they also know that poverty is not something that most people deliberately choose or bring upon themselves. Poverty is sometimes caused by social institutions that unfairly adhere to social injustice. If you are able to change some of these institutions, or at a minimum agitate for institutions to adhere to social justice that can make a huge dent in inequality and poverty. A. B.: I know foreign-born blacks have a work ethic that is similar to Asian and Latinos. Black America must learn from the experiences of the other minority groups. We need to push economic issues, including quality education to the forefront of our political activism. We need to strengthen the institution of the black family. This will position us to agitate for the bigger issues concerning the quality of life. It is also through this effort that we can change our identities as victims to an empowered people. There is a lot of work to be done just to catch up with the rest of America. C. B.: I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you for the valuable insights you have offered. Immigrants teach us a lot. They teach perseverance, how to take risks, and how to believe and hope for something good. A lot of us who are foreign-born can be described as economic migrants.16 We would not be here if economic, cultural, and political opportunities can be had in Africa or the Caribbean. We come because we believe we can find, realize, and fulfill our economic dreams in America.

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A. B.: Are the African and Caribbean black immigrants coming to the United States the top hierarchy and elites in their countries? Can anybody come to the United States if they want to? What distinguishes those who are coming from those who stay behind? C. B.: Not everyone can come using the legal way. Those with educational credentials and employable skills can enter with relative ease. Many enter the country that way. Others come because they are refugees seeking a haven of protection from violence, wars, and conflicts. Others also come to reunite with family members. Others come via unconventional means. They walk from West Africa through the Sahara Desert into North Africa and enter Europe by crossing the Mediterranean. Once in Europe, they can work their way to the United States. A lot of people at home want to come. But not every application to enter legally is approved. Actually, the majority of applicants for United States visas are denied. It takes some a lifetime of trying to enter America. People get educated to improve upon the odds of securing a visa. The African immigrant population is drawn from a crosssection of African society. A. B.: But once they get here, many do go to school or work multiple jobs to make money and that is what black America needs to learn: that education can open up opportunities and the chances of a better life, that work (if one is available) can lift us out of our economic problems. This is what we need to hear more about. I think for some of us native-born blacks, the legacies and trauma of slavery and persistent dehumanization are still with us and have yet to be dealt with. I am not saying we should forget the past and move on as some have suggested. What we need is an alternative model that allows us the space to acknowledge the past in our day-to-day activities while at the same time seeking better ways to improve upon our economic circumstances. C. B.: I agree. We should acknowledge the Middle Passage because it constitutes the black holocaust or what some prefer to call Maafa. We cannot undo it but at the same time we ought to teach our children about it every day and stress the lessons we can learn from this experience. The main lesson, I think, is to work tirelessly to leave our children with a firm economic, educational, and cultural foundation to ensure their survival in America. Africans also need to do the same. A. B.: I agree with you once again. Acknowledge the historical facts of black trauma from slavery and at the same time find hope for a better future by creating institutions that will serve our people and their needs. Thank you for your candor. It is very much appreciated.

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ENCOUNTERING THE CONTOURS OF SHARED BLACK INTERCULTURAL DIASPORIC IDENTITIES What emerged from the narrative is that African immigrant women and native black women strongly identify with and view themselves as an integral part of the American black community and its agenda to promote the empowerment of blacks through self-help and community renaissance. There is a duality of identity shared by the immigrants, one that is uniquely American, and also African in content. There is a widespread sense of collective destiny and shared cultural affinity with other blacks in the diaspora irrespective of their nativity or place of origination. The identities of these women revealed a strong sense of self and awareness of the totality of the shared black cultural presence in the United States. The shared sense of solidarity (ethnicity, race, and gender) is actualized through a commonly defined prism—that of a racialized community that is defined by a common black and African heritage that is steeped in values and normative principles of affirmation and empowerment to deal with pressing social and economic problems among blacks in the diaspora. The identities being forged by the immigrants are reconstituted forms of amalgamation of African and American identities. The identities are thus a composite of homeland identities and the newer forms of cultural manifestations imbibed within the American setting.17 A common strand in the dialogue among the women is how to find ways to lift up black Africa and blacks in the diaspora out of the growing intractable economic and political problems. This means asserting their identities regarding who they are, their values, beliefs, outlook on life, and membership and citizenship in a global community. Labels may be imposed on these women by the larger powerful structures of society. However, these women perceive that they do not have to incorporate these labels as part of their identities. There was a perception also that black women occupy a unique niche in the global black diaspora. This perception was reinforced by the constant reference the women made to the need for them to spearhead the revival of black heritage and identity to reflect core black beliefs about family, church, responsibility, altruism, accountability, selfempowerment, and community participation.18 These values were not seen by the immigrant women as exclusive to American white conservatism. These values have strong affirmations in the black immigrant and black American communities and institutions as well. And for centuries, these same principles have been the foundation and bedrock of black civic and cultural life, and philosophical thoughts. The narratives from the focus group sessions suggested that the foreign and native black women from Africa and the United States share a collective sense of place and space regarding their cultural and historical experiences and mutually held beliefs,

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thoughts, and philosophical outlooks regarding womanhood and the burdens and challenges that may pose for them. The narratives from the intercultural discourse and interactions revealed a broad array of gendered perspectives that are embedded in the panoply and varieties of cultures, beliefs, and normative preoccupations represented among black women in the African diaspora. After all, this is a highly nonmonolithic group. As expected, the sociological outcomes of the ways that the women negotiate and weave their respective strands of identities and forge inclusion into American society were influenced by a host of factors, notable among which include family histories, community structures, nationalism, immigrant expectations, and even colonization. The issues that define the cultural presence of foreign-born immigrant blacks and their black American counterparts in the United States are varied and complex because of the internal differentiations as well as each group’s historical circumstances, political and ideological differences, cultural variations, and value orientations. There were varied strands and interlocking themes that intersect to define the cultural contexts and environment in which black African cultures are nurtured, lived out, and propagated. Common cultural traits and shared phenotypes serve as a marker of racial and ethnic identification and membership of black descent and ancestry. These expectations were fulfilled and elucidated by the vast array of topical issues and concerns that formed the core of the women’s narratives and discourses. The narratives revealed that the black women are very knowledgeable about the internal and external forces that continue to shape the economic, cultural, and political structures of their communities. There was recognition among the women about the pathways to follow to ameliorate some of the pressing problems confronting their communities. Generally, there was unanimity among the women that collective action was needed if they are to improve upon their social and economic conditions. More importantly, the discourses recognized the necessity of forging stronger ties among minority community members to agitate for better economic opportunities for themselves and their families. Etched in the identities of the study participants is the definition of broadbased cultural and ethnic interconnection between African immigrants and native blacks to pursue a politics of resistance against total domination by white superordinate power.19 Part of this interlocking identity and shared cultural essence was the recognition of African and African American leaders who have paved the way in centering black cultural identities in the global arena. The development and promotion of transatlantic connections and ties between Africans and black Americans have ebbed and flowed depending upon geopolitical, cultural, and, economic exigencies. Interests in the shared legacies and the political and economic potentials of the two groups resonated even before the period of the civil rights movement.

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African and African American leaders like Dr. Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Haille Sellasie (Ethiopia), Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Sekou Toure (Guinea), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania), Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King agitated for a new black consciousness and identity based upon the struggles and liberation of black peoples in Africa and America who were under white colonial rule and domination. These leaders recognized that the pathways to black liberation were inexorably linked with the black American and African struggles for political, economic, and civil empowerment. This sense of shared destinies also dominated the women’s discourses on ways to forge black African and black American alliance to work together to bridge the yawning cultural, political, and economic gaps that exist currently among this group. For their part, the black African immigrant women do recognize that the survival of blacks in Africa and the United States hinges upon a concerted effort to define and articulate common goals that will empower and lift all black people. This empowerment will have to begin with educational and economic empowerment. This, according to the women, is the proven pathway for establishing stronger and viable black African and black American communities throughout Africa and the United States. This initiative, according to the women, also calls for the two groups to become self-reliant and not become encumbered by the strictures and controls of the dominant white society. The appreciation of the histories of white ethnic minority groups and their ascendancy to cultural, economic, and political power in the United States provides the blueprint for the attainment and fulfillment of the goals of black empowerment. Recognition of the human and natural resources in the black immigrant and black American community is the starting point for this collective mobilization to achieve economic and political emancipation. The human capital resources inherent in the cultures and institutions of both groups are yet to be fully harnessed for effective and maximum utilization. “The African American and black immigrant communities are resource rich,” as one of the African American women pointed out. Immigrants from Western Europe set up scores of businesses throughout urban America where the majority of blacks reside. These businesses brought their patrons affluence and wealth. Eventually, some of these businesses started to employ blacks. But generally, it was not the preferred wish to recruit and give jobs to urban blacks. In America’s recent immigrant history, urban communities with sizeable black constituents had shops which were owned by absentee patrons. Hispanic, Puerto Rican, Jewish, and Polish immigrants have found that owning and doing business in these communities is profitable. With the money they made, most have been able to move to the suburbs. “The road to prosperity sometimes must travel through the black neighborhoods and communities across the country. When some of these early and more recent settlers encounter discrimination and racism from the Anglos, a

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proven solution is to move their businesses to the African American communities,” a Sierra Leone immigrant opined. With the wealth that they acquired, this immigrant reasoned, “Many immigrant groups, previously and now, have been able to gain access to political and economic power. With this power base in place, these immigrant groups were able to negotiate entry into the core fabric of American society, translating their economic power into political power.” As these ethnic transformations and economic realignments occurred, “Black Americans in the inner cities became the net losers as the income generated from operating these businesses were reinvested in the suburbs,” according to another female immigrant. As already stated, old and new immigrants moved to the suburbs leaving behind impoverished and marginalized African Americans who were still struggling to gain civil rights and full participation in the affairs of the United States. Waves of Eastern European immigrants also followed the tidal wave of immigration from Western Europe. More recently, it is Asian and Hispanic immigrants, particularly Chinese, Korean, Indian, and Mexican ethnic enterprises, that have established restaurants, jewelry shops, corner grocery stores, and mini-marts in densely populated urban centers with large black populations.20 Like the businesses that preceded them in the black communities, these businesses are less likely to employ black workers. Jewelry stores, hair and cosmetic establishments, payday loan stores, pawn shops, and laundry marts have formed in predominantly black communities marketing their products to blacks. Meanwhile their owners do not reside in the black communities. According to one immigrant woman, “Some of these establishment[s] use black workers as fronts to attract more blacks to come and do business with them. Blacks must empower themselves by setting up small businesses in their communities to provide employment and the capital needed to develop the black communities of America. The empowerment must come from within.” Despite the shared cultural heritage and the affinities that foreign-born and native-born blacks have appropriated to themselves, there are strands and themes of exclusivities and divisions among the focus study participants. This apparent tension simmered throughout the sessions but did not hamper the interactions and interchanges among the study participants. Some of the participants nudged for attention to have this concern discussed. The American-born blacks wondered why the Africans have not taken a keen interest in the racial politics that have characterized the history of this country for the past 300 years. The view once again from some of the American-born black women was that foreign blacks are distant, almost always on the sidelines when it comes to tackling the racial divide between blacks and whites. On their part, the African immigrant women contend that much as they remain aware of the racial politics of identity, they are faced with a gigantic

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task of nation-building at home, assisting in the building of democratic institutions, civil society, rule of law, and economic institutions to emancipate the tens of millions of their co-patriots who are wallowing in abject poverty, inter- and intra-clan and tribal violence and warfare, and diseases. In other words, there is a strong preoccupation in affairs of the homeland almost sometimes to the exclusion of full engagement and participation in the affairs of the new homeland where the immigrant women are currently domiciled. As indicated, being in America has given the immigrants a fresh and safer voice away from home to offer their contributions to the development of their respective countries. The majority of the immigrant women indicated that while at home, they never took an active part in political activities due to the fear of reprisals, violence, and even the possibility of death. But being in America has given them a voice to freely engage their countries due to the political security and the freedom from political recriminations that America accords them. Their deep involvement in the affairs of their home country insulates them from participating and taking a keen interest in the civil and political affairs of their respective home countries. Efforts of the immigrant women to become visible in the affairs of black America have yielded limited outcomes. There is no sustained grassroots political assembly or mobilization among the immigrants for specific causes pertaining to their American experience. Ephemeral grassroots and collective resistance movements may form on a temporary basis to address police brutalities, discrimination in housing, and employment. But these movements do not develop into full-fledged sustainable social movements, political or social. In their collective voices, the immigrant women rejected the institutionalized notions whereby black women are portrayed through the lens of passivity and victimhood. They decried the penetrating force of race in American culture and politics, echoing in a sense the notion that immigrants from Western Europe had more social capital due to their Europeanness compared with immigrants entering the United States today from non-white countries. Being white opened the door for Europeans.21 The whiteness of Europeans opened what Jacobson (1998) called the Golden Door to the United States. For the new immigrants of color now flocking to the shores of the United States however, the remnants of institutionalized segregation and discrimination still persist. Most therefore must find ways to negotiate the complexities of the consequences of de facto segregation and discrimination in their day-to-day activities. The immigrants highlighted in their discourses the entrenched class and economic systems that have undervalued their lives as minority women who are often exploited and marginalized in local and global labor markets. And irrespective of their status (class, power, ethnic, and gender) in America, these women have experiences that cannot be marginalized by the

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rest of American society. Their total incorporation into the social, economic, and cultural production of American society as well as the global society is highly warranted. Their objective as well as subjective discourses provided fresh insights into how to change the global identities of blackness. Despite living on the margins of American society, the women presented a portrait of black Africa and a black America that is reinvigorating, energetic, and poised for action to correct some of the self-imposed burdens that it is compelled to carry while at the same time creating new hopes, aspirations, and a fresh path that black youths can follow to become successful in a competitive environment. A component of the above theme is the willingness and sometimes eagerness among the women to transform and adapt multiple aspects of the broad range of African and African American diaspora identities and cultures to enrich their lives and those of their children. The focus group and social exchanges among the women elevated and brought into focus the heritage and richness of African culture. It also brought into sharp focus how African countries and blacks in America can harness their collective resources to develop and sustain social and economic development of Africa. There was an unflinching hold and attachment to what makes black African identity a meaningful aspect of the black experiences in the United States. The discourse was encompassing, touching every aspects of the women’s lives. Family and community organization and improvement, coupled with the women’s sense of how to raise the standards of living of black folks seems to have a strong resonance among the black women. For these women, the black family is seen as the vital force in assisting the women to meet some of their economic and social needs in a world that they characterize as being very oppressive and unforgiving. Certainly, the global transformations brought upon by the growing free movement of people and goods certainly have impacted the cultural, economic, class, and gendered identities of the black women. The interdependency that this transformation has brought about is considered laudable by the women. However, they seem to decry the fact that peoples of black African ancestry continue to face economic, political, and cultural problems on an unimaginable scale relative to other peoples of the world. The socioeconomic and political ravages and problems confronting blacks as a group are daunting and pernicious. Nonetheless, the women seem to agree that self-empowerment and the establishment of civil order in which basic human needs are recognized and met ultimately holds the key to the future manifestation of black African identities in the global culture. The energies that these women collectively exhibited supported their aspirations to promote and nurture possibilities and dreams for all blacks in the global diaspora. Buoyed by their traditions and strong sense of selfhelp, the women affirmed that the obstacles and challenges they face can be surmounted and effectively tackled. In the end, the lesson from this

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discourse was that black Africa’s woes are also black America’s woes, that two groups rendered powerless by colonization and voluntary and involuntary migrations can unite and formulate ideas to change the unequal relationships that continue to characterize their relationships with the dominant white society. Certainly, as one of the black American participant in the focus group stated, the voluntary and involuntary immigration of peoples of black African ancestry to the United States is important in many ways. The lived experiences of the black immigrants are a manifestation of the continuities of the African diaspora in the United States. By their presence and the relationships they establish with American blacks, these immigrants add to the tapestries and forms of black identities and cultures represented in the United States. And though some of them occupy the lowest rungs of a highly stratified society, these immigrant women and their American-born counterparts continue to manifest cultural orientations that are interrelated and very diverse. As they seek to engage America and create their shared and at times different cultural identities, these women give currency to the issues confronting them as a collection. In their voices and narratives are exemplifications of their competitive spirits and struggles to achieve their American dreams. The unraveling of the identities of the immigrants and the relationships that they seek to forge with black America will be influenced by the willingness of the immigrants to highlight every aspect of their African identities and heritage, including in particular their respective colonial and postcolonial European legacies and heritages. It cannot be denied that the immigrant’s identities and cultural transformations have been affected by their contacts with European powers, chiefly France and Britain, including influences from Arabian cultures. The multiple forms and aspects of their European intercultural connections and the identities they manifest have yet to be systematically analyzed. Similar experiences can be pinpointed for black Caribbean immigrants in the United States who also bring to the discourses on black identities their colonial legacies formed by contacts with Britain, France, Holland, and Spanish colonial hegemonies.22 In the end, the forms of identity that will emerge will largely reflect the intersections of these multiple influences. Again, it is stressed that the resulting identities that will be forged will be varied, contextually rich, and transnational as well as transcontinental in scope. Though the cultural forms that will underpin these identities are not fully known, it is important to note that the outcomes of these identities certainly will be representative of the cultural kaleidoscopes of the peoples who represent and are represented by these dynamic and varied black cultural forms. The social and cultural processes involved in the negotiation and construction of these identities will be daunting. The final chapter of the identities that will be constructed from these interactions and intercultural exchanges will result in blended black

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identities of which no one specific group or groups can claim ownership because of the global depth and scope of what it means to be black.

DISCUSSION OF NARRATIVES: FINDING COMMON GROUND ON BLACK IDENTITIES Though yet to constitute a migratory wave, the Africans who come to the United States are visible in the large urban communities of the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, and the Midwest. As foreign colonization and domination of Africans by Western Europeans ended after early 1950s, Africans started becoming visible as some of their citizens started to look to Western Europe and the United States to fulfill their cultural and economic goals. The agitation for civil rights and the demand for full inclusion by blacks in every aspect of life in the United States gave black Africans the hope and raised the possibilities that sooner rather than later, some of them would be heading to the United States in search of better opportunities. While some Africans migrated to Britain and France in particular, others sought to migrate to the United States, which, for most black Africans, was seen as a potential destination because of the gradual progress in civil rights legislations, equal opportunity provisions, and favorable immigration policies. As immigration to Western Europe became tighter and tighter, many black Africans, like their counterparts in the Caribbean, cast their eyes on America where blacks of African descent constitute 13 percent of the population or roughly 34 million. The presence of the Africans who continue to settle in the United States speaks to the wide variations in the composition of what constitutes blackness in America. The internal diversity within this group is phenomenal. And upon making contacts with black America, the black immigrants discover as well that the American-born blacks they encounter are not monolithic but varied in aspects of their social, cultural, political, and economic characteristics. Both groups affirm the cultural ties that bind them to a common heritage and traditional and normative systems whose roots are African. The voluntary migrations of African and Caribbean blacks provides an opportunity for social scientists to document the continuities in the remaking of the new black African ethnic tapestries and identity forms in the United States. The number of African-born blacks who have migrated from Africa to the United States has now exceeded those who were captured and involuntarily brought from Africa to the then–New World as slaves. Also, despite being one of the most highly educated groups in the nation, African immigrants remain disconnected from civil engagement, and more importantly, remain divided from their black American counterparts on a wide range of issues, including how to achieve racial and ethnic solidarity.

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The need to understand the cultural interactions and relationships that are created among this diverse body of blacks is imperative. Among blacks in the American diaspora, questions about the expressions of racial and ethnic identity, perceptions about what it means to be black, community membership, social integration, and relationship with white Americans are just a few of the topical conversations that frequently dominate the social and cultural discourse among black Americans. For African immigrant blacks, this discussion assumes an identity of its own due to four factors. First, for immigrants of black African ancestry domiciled in the United States, racial and ethnic identity formations and expressions have become an important and dominating aspect of their migratory experiences in America. Second, whether or not they desire so, these immigrants have been compelled to join in the discourse because of their shared physical and cultural traits with black America. Third, America’s fixation with discourse on race, ethnicity, and class membership or status has an overwhelming influence on these black immigrants considering that most of them come from countries or nation-states where racial categories and their distinct forms are not as poignant as they are in the United States. For these black immigrants, class status measured by educational attainment, income, family assets, and occupational prestige, including ascribed traits such as tribal and clan lineage, are far more salient determinants of social stratification and mobility than skin color. Fourth, try as they might, the black immigrants can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines and watch these divisions escalate to the point where they become characterized as outsiders or foreign and become marginalized and peripheral at the table of discourse regarding the continued formation of racial and ethnic alliances and coalitions among native-born blacks, whites, Asians, and Hispanics. The ever-changing face of America due to rapid immigration of nonEuropeans into the United States necessitates black immigrant involvement in shaping the outcome of race and ethnic relationships in a mosaic culture. Becoming visible partners with their native-born black counterparts is seen by the majority of black and foreign immigrants as a way to participate in the intercultural affairs of the United States. The creation of intercultural contacts between immigrants and members of the host society forms an important aspect of immigrant integration and inclusion into the affairs of the host country. Identification with a subgroup of the supranational body polity is a form of adaptation of the migratory experiences of newcomers to the United States. Group and individual forms of intercultural and inter-ethnic contacts are critical in defining the extent and degree of immigrant assimilation, identity formation, and acculturation. These intercultural contacts and assimilations may not be possible in the absence of deliberate cultural immersion into the group one is seeking to embrace. As more and more immigrants of sub-Saharan African ancestry

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continue to arrive in the United States, particularly since the 1980s and 1990s, their cultural presence and contributions to the ethnic fabric of the United States are being felt at all levels of society. Black African institutions are flourishing in America’s urban and metropolitan centers. African immigrant–owned shops, houses of worship, cultural centers, restaurants, hair-braiding shops, cabarets, import-export companies, and grocery stores are now commonplace. Some of them have created communities where they replicate their black African identities and institutions. Others mix and blend and create a hybrid of identities based on transnational meanings they have come to learn to associate with international migration. By no means culturally or socially monolithic, the new black Africans who are now entering the country are vibrant, energetic, economically motivated, and driven to become successful in the United States. Whether they embrace a Pan African identity or a black American identity, their presence adds to and enriches the tapestry and cultural quilt of African Americans in the United States. A central aspect of African immigrant identity formation is rejecting the mainstream perceptions associated with being foreign, black, and female. The immigrant lives of some of the immigrant women are structured in such a way to demonstrate their strong intra-tribal and clan networks which function as benevolent societies designed to provide the immigrants with an affirmation of their black African cultural roots. At times, the women’s conception of gendered identities may span and intersect with other cultural and social groups or organizations whose goals and values they have come to embrace as a result of living in the United States. Several of the women tend to rely on community civic and cultural organizations including churches and faith-based institutions to supplement family-based activities for their children. When they use these organizations, the principal purpose is not to totally embrace new ideals and ways of thinking different from their African-based values. Rather, it is to reinforce what they already believe about family life, the raising of children, and community participation and involvement. Activities at some of these centers are chosen to reflect a black or African theme. Where such programs do not exist, some of the women join to organize and plan their own activities. These activities, such as learning and playing African games and entertainment with their children serve a dual purpose—first, it teaches their children about African culture and identity, and second, it provides an opportunity for children from multiple immigrant households to interact with each other outside of the home while fostering bonds of friendship. To broaden their cultural perspectives as well as those of their children, some of the families may join with Hispanic and Caribbean immigrant women and children at these centers to engage in intercultural activities (could be storytelling) as a way for their children, including the mothers, to learn about the cultures

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of other minority groups and their customs or ways of life. And irrespective of which forms or types of intercultural activities are chosen, their goals and outcomes are always geared to promote intra- and intercultural accommodation while seeking to reinforce traditional black African ethos. Another goal is to build bridges to connect and promote racial and ethnic cooperation and understanding with other blacks in the diaspora. The genre of cultural accommodation that the immigrant women strive to establish in the United States is based on the immigrants’ notion that culture has to be contextualized to reflect adaptation and dynamism. After all, the women reason, inter-ethnic and cultural symbiosis become poignant in fostering interdependent interactions among groups with similar histories and experiences.23 What emanates from the discourse among the focus groups is a solid commitment and attachment to the principles of self-reliance and the affirmation of a very strong family and community orientation to achieve economic empowerment, autonomy, and self-determination. Etched in the collective aspirations of the women is how to use community and individual resources and initiatives to close the gap in economic and educational inequalities between minority and majority groups in the United States. As one immigrant woman stated, “It is only by closing the achievement gap that peoples of black African descent and ancestry can create the conditions necessary in ensuring that the next generation of blacks will have a standard of living much higher than that of their parents or grandparents. Mobilizing resources to facilitating intergenerational mobility is the key to the closing of the gap of inequality between whites and blacks in the United States.” To one American-born black woman, the goal of this intercultural black cooperation centers on the critical need to “foster economic and cultural interchanges to promote and advance the economic and cultural interests of blacks as an oppressed minority group.” Both groups are seeking to find ways to alter their economic, social, and political identities and legacies in the United States and Africa. For many of the immigrant women in the diaspora (as well as their black American counterparts), the quest is to persist in the struggle to achieve total emancipation and self-determination coupled with the ability to be able to chart its present and future course. In the process of this cultural and identity reconstruction and cultural revisionism, immigrant blacks from Africa and their counterparts in the United States are speaking with multiple voices. Part of the struggles in identity negotiation is also about affirming a sense of nationalism and black nativism. This nationalism stems from the multiple nation-states in Africa from where many American blacks trace their heritage. The perception is that this struggle in identity and racial politics is a significant consideration for blacks in America because like European Americans, this struggle affirms the need among blacks to trace their ethnicities to countries such as Sen-

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egal, Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Sierra Leone, and many others in just the same way that European Americans assert their heritage in the countries forming continental Europe. To most black Americans therefore, the idea of linking their past to nation-states in black Africa imbues in them a sense of nationalism and pride. For both black African immigrants and their native-born counterparts, increased acculturation and assimilation in the United States and acceptance of a common culture that is purely American is seen as unavoidable. What is important is that the intercultural blending recognizes the current and past differences in cultural traditions and experiences and seeks to preserve the institutional forms of that legacy. The strong ethnic and racial affinities and identities evident among black African immigrant women and native-born black women speak to the dynamism of black culture in general. African American or African black, these black women seem to speak in a common language and voice as they seek ways to transpose the contents and meanings of contemporary African and black culture in the United States to make it have resonance and purpose in the lives of black folks. Both groups recognize the vast array of the richness inherent in their cultures and the imperative to preserve this heritage. Both the African immigrant women and their black American female counterparts spoke eloquently about the intricate and complex roles that black women play in defining the contents of what constitutes ethnic and gender boundaries. For the American women, the formation and maintenance of ethnic and gender boundaries rest on the belief that American society has relegated them to second- and third-class citizens. Feelings of marginalization, alienation, and weak integration into social affairs, and inability to influence decision-making at every level of social, cultural, economic, and political organization were highlighted by virtually all the women. Their exclusion from community decision-making has fostered a sense of social rejection polarity. They view their communities as isolated entities that are different in function and social processes from the mainstream society. As both groups try to reproduce the ethnic, racial, gender, and transnational features that define their lives, these black women discover that they have to navigate and straddle complex and entrenched interests that sees the lives of these women only in terms of their ability to offer cheap and abundant labor to economically well-positioned systems and organizations dominated by a quest for profitability and exploitation of vulnerable workers, immigrant or native.24 A constant sociological refrain from the focus group exchanges and discourses was the strong assertion from the women that irrespective of their cultural, political, and or economic differences, black women, whether foreign or native-born, form part of the American ethnic and cultural landscape. The historical heritage defining their shared experiences in a race-conscious American society is underpinned by the belief that it is imperative for blacks

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of African descent to preserve their rich cultural traditions and legacies. At the core of the immigrant women’s belief is the concept of cultural appropriation. This term is used in referring to the ability of the diverse groups of blacks represented in America to be able to tap into and utilize African cultural principles and products to improve upon the quality of their lives. Also embedded in the notion of cultural appropriation is the understanding among the immigrant women that African culture is often misappropriated and exploited by non-Africans for economic gains sometimes without any tacit acknowledgement of Africa’s immerse contribution to global culture. A related aspect is the institutionalized forms of denigrating African culture and the peoples of black descent. This is often accompanied by the negative portrayal of Africans in every aspect of global culture. According to the immigrant women, despite the fact that the core values of black societies (freedom, self-determination, liberty, human dignity) are also shared by many cultures and societies in the West, blacks in Africa still have to contend with negative connotations and often a disregard of their inherent rights to determine and shape their own destinies or futures. A majority of the women contest the racially imposed stereotypes and prejudicial attitudes and beliefs that dominate black-white relations in the United States. To contest this binary paradigm of racial and ethnic division, the women stress the need for black women in the diaspora to build and strengthen black institutions, particularly the family, as they grapple to find new meanings and ways to affirm their black and feminine identities. For the female black foreigners and their American counterparts, the distinctive gendered identities that are fostered emphasize economic and cultural empowerment as vehicles for engaging and ameliorating the problems posed by racial and ethnic denigration, black economic stagnation, and affirmation of black heritage and cultural capital.25 As they bring their social and cultural institutional fads such as traditional clothing, hair braiding, music, food, religious rituals, birth and death rituals, and strong family orientations, to their interactions with black America, these immigrants have succeeded in establishing strong kinship bonds with their fellow American black women. Eunice, a female immigrant from Ghana, teaches her African American women friends about cooking joloff rice and peanut butter soup. Abigail teaches a group of American black women living in her community about childrearing techniques and age-graded expectations for adolescent boys and girls. Conversations about how the women can reduce and find new ways to confront the cultural stereotypes associated with black youths dominate the conversations of the women. Cultural sessions involving how to tie headgear also dominated the women’s interactions during the focus group sessions. For some of the women, the interactions also served as an opportunity to do some business, selling African wax prints, authentic shea butter, and

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African soaps. Hair-braiding parties are also common among the women. A group of African American women recently spent the weekend at the home of a Senegalese female immigrant learning how to braid hair. But as the women interacted with each other, the structure of the conversations changed. As they braided each other’s hair, they talked about what it takes to be successful in America, steps to take to own a home, and the education of their children. Margaret, one of the African American women who joined the group later wanted to know from the Senegalese and other African immigrant women how to motivate her middle-school-aged daughters to improve upon their grades. “I have tried every possible approach and nothing seems to work. What am I doing wrong? I have had meetings with the teachers and that was to no avail. My kids said the African, Caribbean and Asian kids get all A’s,” said Margaret. One of the African immigrant woman said, “I make it a point to read to my children. Then I ask them to read back to me. I have a structure at home during the weekend when they are home. For every two hours they spend playing or chatting on the phone or watching television, they have to spend another hour reading or doing schoolrelated activity. The summer holiday is the key.” Continuing with her stress on the value of education, this immigrant stated further: “To maintain my children’s interest in their schoolwork, I drop them off at the library during the long summer break every morning on my way to work. I will assign them school-related work. At lunch time, I will go back and eat with them and then go back to work. I pick them up around 5:00 PM after work. I also buy the textbooks they will be using at the next grade level ahead of time. This gives them a head start. I do not wait for the teachers to send them home with their books. The result is an astonishing performance. I also reward them by relaxing the rules when I get the results that I expect from them.” Listening attentively, Margaret said, “I think it is the structure you created in their lives and your insistence that they comply. I think a lot of our children go through the public school system expecting not to do well because of the labels that are assigned to them. Some of them come to believe that it is not a cool thing to be smart. We cannot blame the school teachers. We have not become involved in their educational work.” Adoley reacted to Margaret’s statement, saying, “A lot of black children are becoming dead-end kids. You have to drum it inside children’s ears that they will not prosper in the United States if they don’t take their schoolwork seriously. You have to tell them that education is a lifelong commitment and completing high school is just the start. We as parents need to prepare them for postsecondary education and goad them to aim higher, at least past the first degree, if need be.” Six hours or more after they had completed the hair braids, the women started chatting about fashion trends. A black American woman wanted to find out how to get authentic African clothes. She also wanted Adoley

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to teach her how to use a piece of cloth or scarf to make what West Africans call a headgear. At this point, a heated discussion ensued concerning black women’s headgear. After a lengthy exchange, the women agreed that maybe Nigerian women make the coolest headgears, followed by Senegalese women. Ghanaian women were ranked near the bottom. Not to be outdone, an immigrant woman from the Ivory Coast said, “But we make the best palm nut and groundnut soup.” This last statement shifted the conversation to palm nuts, palm oil, palm soup, and palm wine. The black American women listened intensely, never interjecting. After a while, Margaret asked, “What is palm wine? What is palm soup?” Margaret was excited about this conversation and continued to beam with a smile. Finally, to show her Louisiana Cajun roots, she said, “I bet none of you know how to make crawfish étouffée, shrimp étouffée, and roux.” To which a Sierra Leone immigrant replied and said, “These are blended foods with a little bit of French, African, Spanish, and Creole finesse. We have roux in Sierra Leone, including a gumbo-like meal with okra, Cajun sauce, dried fish, and white rice.” Twelve women representing seven countries in Africa and their five African American counterparts agreed to organize a buffet to showcase the different kinds of black African ethnic cuisine they each represented. “Maybe someone can bring high life music so we dance as well,” Adoley said and proceeded to laugh. “Maybe some palm wine too,” another immigrant woman said. “If we have palm wine, some music, then we’ve got to have eba and okra stew as well,” another woman said. “I hope one of you will bring black-eyed peas cooked in palm-nut oil, gari, and fried plantain. All my Ghanaian friends swear by it,” said Margaret. A Senegalese immigrant woman was curious to know more about this West African cuisine. For the moment, time stood still as the women continue to reminisce about being away from home, the foods they have always enjoyed cooking and eating, and their kin folks. Margaret looked at everyone gathered and said, “All of you remind me of my girlfriends from Louisiana. They like to talk about their food, their children, their sexualities, fashion styles, and above all, being black and a woman.” Margaret’s black consciousness and heritage as a native-born black woman is affirmed by her interactions with the black immigrants. She opines, “My black African-ness comes out through you all. I feel like I grew up with each and every one of you here. I feel like I am home somewhere with you all in Africa. We were all the same before the Atlantic separated us. It is amazing how I can see commonalities among all of us. If my grandmother was here, she can specifically relate very well to all the cultural genres manifested here in this room,” said Margaret. Her sociological insights blended into black cultures and the mixing of multiple cultures to create a hybridity or mélange of identities is immense. In the end, she seemed to be emphasizing a basic tenet of cultural adaptation and ap-

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propriation.26 That is, the blended and interlocking ethnicities and racial identities that unite black Africans with black Americans. For Margaret, the visual symbols of this cultural and ethnic affinity among immigrant blacks and black Americans and its manifestation can be found in the forms of speech patterns, voice, intonation, specific words and terms, dress, food patterns, hairstyles, mannerisms, including and yes, notions of beauty and sexuality. The encounter with other black women from Africa was, for her as she described it, “A sort of homecoming and a very deep spiritual and racial interconnectedness.” She could feel the pulse of the black African immigrant women. She felt their cultural pulses, their dreams, hopes, fears, and aspirations. She found a place in that community where her values and beliefs are grounded and reaffirmed. This experience she later described as “healing and very spiritual, further reinforcing my blackness, femininity, and ethnicity as a black American-born citizen. Our identities intermesh and are beautifully interwoven with multiple parts that fit so well. I would like to broaden this identity with other black women, notably Caribbean, Afro-Brazilian, Maori, Aborigine, and black Spanish women. It will be a beautiful interaction to behold. I bet you will encounter more commonalities and universal black women’s traits.” What this interaction affirmed once again is the shared kinship and cultural affinities that binds the women together, their nationalities and identities notwithstanding. In the process of these exchanges, new friendships are formed and existing ones strengthened. More importantly, the interactions speak to the issue of how problems that are common to the women become contextualized and given appropriate meanings. In their circles of friendship, issues of marginality, discrimination, and racism confronting the women become second place. In their conversations and laughs, one notices a strong sense of black pride and sure-footedness. These were beautiful black women speaking in their own voices about their own shared and lived experiences regarding gendered marginalities and about what it means to be female and black.27 In the end, what was affirmed was that there are very painful experiences which have been very difficult to share, such as experiences with violence, wars, slavery, genocide, struggles to raise their children, educating them, and undoing the harm American society and institutions continually inflict on their children by branding them as trouble-prone, averse to school, gun-touting street predators, and therefore to be feared. Each of the women had a story to tell. One of the tension points was their discussions about slavery. “The black struggle for social and economic justice must start with a dialogue on this issue,” Margaret said. “I do not want reparations from anyone. Sometimes just saying you are sorry is enough to restore and to heal the pain. Again, I stress that collective empowerment is the key to changing the urban black predicament. It starts with education, having a job, raising one’s children,

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loving our families, teaching children to obey the law, and teaching especially young black males that violence does not pay. If only we can follow this simple maxim, we will be fine,” Margaret concluded. Adoley rightly acknowledged Margaret’s statement and gave her a big hug. With tears coming down Margaret’s cheeks, the other women drew closer and without saying anything, took a hold of Margaret’s hands, formed a circle, and prayed. After acknowledging black African complicity in the trade in human cargo, the look on the women’s faces, their eyes, and body language seem to speak eloquently and declare the time is now to move on and not become trapped again by victimhood mentality. The challenge and call to collectively move on meant that while it was acceptable to speak and dialogue about the pains from the past, it is equally significant that blacks find ways to tell this story to their children. Sharing their stories about slavery’s impact is not an affirmation of black powerlessness. Instead, it is intended to affirm that as a group, black people have a history and a cultural force whose legacy must be cherished due to its timelessness and enduring powers. Looking beyond skin color to unmask commonalities in their expressions of racial and ethnic identities among the black immigrant women and their African American counterparts reveals contrasting notions about place, cultural images, nationalism, and tribal manifestations and meanings of what it is to be black. For the black African and American women, place and identity are inextricably linked to foreign colonization, articulation of African cultural values and symbols, the centrality of Pan Africanism in defining and interpreting world events, and the impact of clan and tribal membership in shaping outlook on how black identity is expressed or negotiated. Among the immigrant women who have formed a strong sense of having a racialized and foreign status in the United States, cultural identification, affinity, and affiliation with black America is seen as necessary and pivotal in fostering an environment that encourages the creation of a contrasting culture between white and black Americans. In the cultural worldview of these women therefore, the collective experiences of blacks in the diaspora and the relationships that they forge with native-born blacks cannot be reduced to cultural and normative separateness. Instead, the forging of cultural alliances among all blacks irrespective of their national origin or foreign status takes on diverse normative systems oftentimes not shared by every person of black descent. In defining the continuity of the collective black American experience in white-dominant America, there is a black consciousness that transcends space, geography, and locale. The distinctiveness of black culture and its normative principles rests on the firm belief that blacks in the diaspora should preserve their distinct identities and ethnicities. Total assimilation

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is therefore not the norm. Acculturation may be preferred but such a process must incorporate only selective aspects of the host society’s normative and cultural systems. Added to the imperative of preserving black heritage and institutions is the belief by some of the immigrant women that there is a lack of historical knowledge about black America. This problem is further exacerbated by the fact that many Africans rely on white lenses to position black American culture. “Relying on this lens has tainted how African blacks see their black American counterparts,” one immigrant admitted. The contention is that black American history is different from African history. The immigrants acknowledged that the present-day lives of both groups have been shaped by multiple historical heritages and African, European, Arabic, and American societies. An immigrant woman from Sierra Leone (Elizabeth) excoriates her fellow black African immigrants “for sitting on the political sidelines almost near oblivious about the structural effects of discrimination and racism that African Americans have endured for well over three centuries.” African and Caribbean immigrants, she asserted, “Are so much preoccupied with ‘fixing’ matters at home in their respective countries that they sometimes end up immunizing themselves from the racial denigration of blacks in America. They are passive actors when it comes to engaging the historical legacies of racism and discrimination in the United States. Many of my friends think the race conflict is not theirs to wage. The result is that many black immigrants are visibly absent when it comes to identifying with the African American cause(s) in this country.” The projection of the status as foreigner, transnational immigrant, or even an outsider looking in enables most of the Africans to encapsulate themselves from the political and social aspects of American society and thereby minimize their co-mingling with African Americans. According to Edna (an immigrant woman from Ghana), “The heritage foreign blacks present in the United States is one that is completely different from their African American counterparts. Physical traits aside, I have little in common with my fellow African American. I encounter African Americans who discriminate against me on account of my accent. They tell me they cannot understand me though I speak English very fluently. I do not share the African American cultural heritage in the United States. I was not brought up in that culture. I answer to African and Pan African cultural heritage, history, and legacy. That’s my identity as a black woman.” Despite her apprehensions about appropriating black American cultural forms and ethos, Edna nonetheless is open to “learn about black American culture in all of its vastness and forms. This is important because of the common heritage and legacies we all share. We need to come together to educate ourselves about our shared common legacies and place in the global community,” Edna concluded.

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NOTES 1. Marilyn Halter (2007) noted that the history of the relationship between native and foreign-born black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean has been an uneasy one. The foreign-born blacks are said to assert their cultural differences and look to the numerous associations that they form to minimize the deleterious effects of discrimination and racism. As Halter aptly stated, the foreign-born blacks come to realize that their cultural distinctiveness does not shield them completely from racism and discrimination. Their black skin color marks them for discrimination and prejudice from the wider society. 2. See Dodoo’s study of income earning differentials between African immigrants and black Americans. Information provided by Mary Waters (1999) and Milton Vickerman (1999) points to cultural capital differences (educational attainment, expression of racial and ethnic identification) between the two groups. 3. In general terms, the African immigrant diaspora can be subsumed under two broader categories using Cohen’s (1997) typologies of diasporas. These two categories are cultural and labor diasporas. African immigrants set up a complex system of networks to sustain their cultures. In addition, the primary motivation behind their migration can be characterized as labor (economic) migration because many of the migrants travel in search of better employment or economic opportunities. 4. See Nancy Foner. (1979). Jamaica Farewell. Jamaica Migrants in London. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 5. Research carried by MacGaffey and Bazenguissa-Ganga (2000) suggested that African immigrants in France and other parts of Europe are faced with similar racial and ethnic exclusions on account of their skin color. This discrimination is a major hindrance to economic and social integration of the immigrants. 6. See Lenoir and Kidane. Not dated. The Black Scholar. Volume 37, Number 1. 7. For the importance of ethnic and racial borders in migration research, see for example, Donnan and Wilson (1999) and Greenbaum (2002). See also Cohen’s (2008) research on how immigrants, then and now, create diasporic identities in transnational social domains. 8. According to Cohen (1997), diasporic identification and ties come about as groups with similar histories and cultural experiences come to identify with each other’s experiences over a period of time. This is no different considering the bonds of cultural affinity, kinship bonds, and geopolitical experiences of African immigrants and native black Americans. See Cohen’s (1997) nine point types of diasporas. 9. As a researcher, I defined my role in this interactive exchange mainly in two ways. First, to illuminate the discourse by making broad statements about the gendered contexts of African women’s migration by stressing the active roles that black immigrants are playing in defining and redefining black cultural forms and identities. The second is to listen and record the interactions, often allowing the participants to modify my questions or introduce other pertinent and related questions to reflect their own experiences and understanding of the social and cultural processes shaping the lives of black women in the diaspora. The participants are an African American woman born in the United States who is identified as A. B. and C. D. who is an African immigrant woman in the United States.

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10. This focus group participant referenced the role of the European colonial powers in their arbitrary demarcation of Africa’s borders during colonial rule. The European scramble for Africa, which commenced in the 1880s, changed the ethnic and cultural boundaries of Africa. The arbitrary nature of the scramble is often blame for the persistence of inter- and intra-ethnic tribal and ethnic tensions in Africa today. 11. The sentiments expressed by this focus group participant are shared by many scholars who have examined Africa’s postcolonial problems. For example, writing about the region, Spellman (2008) noted that debilitating internal conflicts, ethnic and religious pogroms, and violent regime change became a troubling feature of postcolonial life in most parts of Africa. These problems stymied sustainable economic growth resulting in chronic urban unemployment and a myriad of other problems, including corruption, political patronage, and instability. 12. Obiakor and Grant (2002) expressed this sentiment as well. See Obiakor, Festus, and Grant, Patrick. (2002). Foreign-Born African Americans. Silenced Voices in the Discourse on Race. New York: Nova Science. 13. See Martha Tienda and Faith Mitchell. (2006). Multiple Origins, Uncertain Futures. Washington, D.C.: National Research Council. 14. See Tienda (1999), Rosenfeld and Tienda (1999), Reed (2001), and Partridge, Levernier, and Rickman (1996) among others, about the effects of mass immigration on income inequality and job prospects for American citizens. 15. This immigrant references former CNN’s Lou Dobbs and conservative Pat Buchanan’s vitriolic attacks on immigrants blaming almost everything that is wrong in America on illegal immigrants without any consideration of the economic contributions that immigrants made to the economic development and global competitiveness of the United States. 16. For a detailed discussion on economic and non-economic migrants, see Caroline Brettell and James Hollifield. (2008). Migration Theory (eds.). New York and London: Routledge. 17. The women shared more than a sense of symbolic identity. They share as well the identification of having a minority and a marginalized position in America’s social hierarchy structure. Part of the identity that these women share also relates to their mindset, attitudes, feelings, emotions, and thought patterns about what it means to be black women in America, notwithstanding national origin or place of birth. 18. According to Joseph White and James Cones (1999:22), “African cultural life forms and philosophy is based on a humanistic conception of life. The rules of living, they contend, are geared toward mutual aid, collective survival, and interdependent relationships. People exist to benefit one another in an altruistic fashion. Maintenance of positive relationships with others is more important than power, control, competition, or acquiring material possessions.” 19. Carroll, Joseph. (1938). Slave Insurrections in the United States, 1800–1865. New York: New American Library. Carroll noted that black identities in the United States have been based on resistance during slavery, post-slavery, and beyond. 20. African immigrants are part of the foreign-born population that has settled in immigrant-rich states like Texas, California, New York, Florida, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Georgia. For detailed discussion of the foreign-born population, see

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William Clark. (2003). Immigrants and the American Dream. New York and London: The Guilford Press. 21. See Portes and Sensenbrenner’s (1993) discussion on how different immigrant groups (particularly those from Europe) successfully embedded themselves in the body politic of American society. 22. See Vickerman’s (1999) analysis of racial and ethnic formations among West Indian émigrés in the United States. 23. The interactions that the immigrants seek with other immigrants of similar experiences are culturally significant because they allow for the actors to learn about other cultures without necessarily having to give up their own beliefs. This is a form of liminality as described by Bhabha (1994). According to Bhabha, it is in the course of cultural interactions that new cultural forms and meanings are articulated and given resonance. See Bhabha, H. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. 24. In a sense, the voices of these black women resonates also among the U.S.based South Asian immigrant women whose lives were chronicled in Shamita Das Dasgupta’s (1998): A Patchwork Shawl. Chronicles of South Asian Women in America (ed.). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. This book casts the identities of Asian women against the backdrop of immigration to the United States, formation and expression of gendered identities, sexuality, and the contestations of marginalities, discrimination, and exclusion. 25. The gendered solidarity, including racial and ethnic cooperation, that these women seek to forge to overcome their marginalities is an expected response to what most immigrants groups in the United States go through upon arrival. As Portes (1997) reported, immigrant collaboration and solidarity is intended to minimize the deleterious impact of immigrant alienation and marginalization by members of the host society. See also Portes and Jensen (1987). 26. According to Herbert Gans (2007), expressions of identity may assume multiple forms. Core to these forms are expressions of thoughts, feelings, marginality, and activities. In the course of the focus group discussions, all these elements came out in the intercultural discourses. 27. As a researcher, I could only stand back listening to and watching attentively (at the same time recording the interactions of) the ease with which the women changed the subject-matter to reflect their identities as they relate to their immigrant or American experiences. More importantly, the intercultural exchanges refocused my attention to some of the issues dominating the lives of minority women of color in general. Listening to the interactions among the women, my initial fears and consternation about bringing these women from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds together to talk about black womanhood, race, politics, kinship, and immigration disappeared. These women already had their voices and themes programmed in their minds. I was just a facilitator who brought about a medium for this gendered intercultural encounter to occur.

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7 Imagining the Future of African Immigrant Identities in Migration Studies

A culture of migration (internal and international) is dominant in Africa, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The culture of migration dated before the precolonial period and became more pronounced with the advent of colonization and the postcolonization eras. Considering past and current economic and political trends in the region, the premium Africans attach to migration will continue to be high. Economic reasons (trade and commerce), rapid urbanization and over-urbanization, and internal and regional conflicts are a few of the causes of the population mobility in the region. In the postcolonial era, internal or inter-regional migration is inextricably linked to migration outside of Africa, particularly to Europe and the United States. When they have engaged in internal migrations, Africans have always found ways to replicate their cultural and normative systems and identities in their new locations.1 Africans are now a visible part of the transnational and global migrations involving more than 191 million migrants in the world who are living outside their country of birth.2 For many of Africa’s migrants, the preferred destination is to migrate to the United States. Many of them see America as the epicenter of globalization and world commerce. It is also a place where migrants perceive industry, courage, risk-taking, and determination are rewarded. Upon entering the United States, these immigrants construct and restructure their identities to reflect the new realities of living in race-, class-, and ethnic-conscious American society. Their subordinated, minority, and racialized black and foreign status means that as long as they remain in the United States, they have to undergo a lifelong process of negotiating individual and group identities within the context of their new setting. 253

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A number of questions often arise as America’s new blacks constitute the panoply and genres of their social and cultural identities in the United States. These questions include but are not limited to the following. What forms and types of identities are African émigrés going to manifest as they seek and forge global incorporation via the instruments of migration? Are there specific factors operating in the United States, Africa, and the global community that will shape and give content to how these immigrants define, articulate, and give essence to their migratory identities? How will these identities transform the host societies and the countries of migrant origination? Given the continuity and dynamic nature of the neo-African diaspora in the United States and other Western societies, the unraveling of new forms of African immigrant identities is bound to be complex and intricate. The multiple cultures and mélange of belief systems discernible in African cultural patterns makes it difficult, if not impossible to demarcate the trajectories of the identities that are going to be formed. Migration continues to be a potent force spurring sociocultural, economic, and political changes in Africa today. The outcomes of these social changes will occupy the attention of policy makers and international development experts for decades to come. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the salient aspects of these identities, showing in particular, their importance in structuring new roles and places for African émigrés in the overall tasks of national reconstruction and development. This approach is theoretically significant because it highlights the formulation of specific paradigms that seek to explain and show the place(s) of transnational migration in Africa’s socioeconomic and cultural development. Irrespective of how they negotiate and manifest their identities, what we anticipate in the end are the formation of identities that are constructed principally with African-centered orientations and perspectives in mind, and secondarily, the selective incorporation and imbibing of a broad-based, transglobal ethos and cultural value system which proposes to seek solutions to the myriad of problems facing the continent of Africa. The narratives depicting the contents of the African migrant identities are going to be produced and reproduced within the nexus of how the immigrants imagine and live out the meanings of their Africanness not only in their respective host systems but also in the contexts of how the immigrants structure and articulate what goes on in Africa. The dialogical contents of their narratives are going to be underpinned by how, individually and collectively, African immigrants in the West are able to use the agencies offered by international migration to create autonomous and self-sustaining and robust institutions to usher and bring about social change(s) in Africa. The African immigrant in the West projects an identity that is global and transnational. This identity is anchored in African cultural and traditional or normative systems. The centeredness of African culture in the lives of

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the immigrants is premised on the cultural philosophy that the making of identities in global spaces (particularly in the West) requires that one have a frame of reference to ground their ideas, beliefs, and normative principles. For the African immigrants, the formations of identities are often structured with one objective in mind: the imperative of learning new values and beliefs in the host societies without shedding completely the values imported from home. In that respect, it can be surmised that African immigrants are open to learning and embracing new values and belief systems only if those values can be incorporated and rationalized within the broader spectrum of African cultural and social organization. The transnational migrant identities are intended to define and transform the sociocultural and economic contexts within which different and imaginary genres of African behavioral forms are replicated in foreign public domains. The sites of the propagation of African immigrant identities in the West, generally, are approached with the belief that over time, Africans too, like other immigrant diaspora groups (notably Indian, Irish, Chinese, and Korean), can utilize migration as a vehicle to reshape their collective destinies in consonance with the realities posed by continued globalization and the ascendancy of democratic governance structures. The use of the diaspora to create cosmopolitan and transnationalized global identities is, in and of itself, a bold manifestation and affirmation on the part of the immigrants that African social and cultural forms can be replicated successfully in global domains.3 The continued adaptation and integration into their host societies may be articulated by the continued creation and establishment of immigrant institutions within which African cultural and social identities can be appropriated. The ways and processes whereby African immigrant identities are given meaning in the home societies ultimately will continue to be a potent force in shaping the outcomes of transnational African immigrant identity construction and its negotiation in non-African settings. To the extent that these African immigrants are able to create institutions to reflect the panoply and mélange of cultures they represent, long-term expectations are that the social processes underpinning their cultural institutions are going to be influenced by the fluidity of the cultural boundaries within which these identities are nested. If they continue to project tapestries of cultural identities and beliefs that are embracing of other visible minority cultures in and outside of the United States, then the expectation is that the cultural continuities in these identities are going to be shaped by forces outside the control of the cultures that the African émigrés currently manifest. Africa’s immigrants in the United States will continue to find ways to enhance their human social capital via postsecondary educational pursuits and attainment. This aspect of their identities is significant because it has given some of them access to high-paying jobs and sustained migration to America’s residential suburbs. The identity to become successful is borne

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out by census data since 1990 which showed that African émigrés in general “are the most educated group in the country, outperforming other immigrant populations as well as native-born whites and blacks.”4 For those who enter as asylees or refugees due to displacements, educational attainment levels remain low, and for this group, acquiring new skills and engaging in continuing education has become the proven means whereby some are able to achieve social mobility. The process of seeking new forms of integration and incorporation in key sectors of society (education and labor force participation) will continue to pose challenges for the refugee immigrants as they have to deal with the trauma of statelessness, violence, and war. Secondary structural assimilation of this group may be hampered by cultural and religious impediments such as language difficulties and also by the fact that some of the refugees are Muslims.5 The formation of African immigrant diasporic cultural communities will hinge on the sustainability of the identities the immigrants are able to project. In the absence of assimilation into the host society and its social and cultural institutions, it is envisaged that these immigrant sojourners will continue to manifest identities that reflect clan, tribal, ethnic, national, and Pan African affiliations. Partial or complete assimilation will be influenced by the host society’s willingness to implement social and cultural programs designed to incorporate and integrate immigrants into the core society. By all accounts, recent histories of immigrant minorities in the United States, for example, reveal that this proposition is far-fetched and implausible considering the upswings in anti-immigrant fervor and continued racialization and politics of exclusion of immigrants in cultural and economic affairs. This will compel African immigrants to hold on to and strengthen their African-centered identities and participate selectively in national affairs by limiting their social domains or activities to economic and educational productions. Improved media technologies and efficiencies in communication and transportation will enable these immigrants to continue to maintain stronger ties with the countries of origination thereby making it possible for them to straddle between two polemical entities: their invisibilities in the United States and their visible involvement and engagement with Africa. Recent immigrants have seen declining economic prospects caused by the 2007 recession. Jobs are now hard to come by and for immigrants as a group; this means that for those who are fortunate to find jobs, wages will sputter or even decrease depending on region of country and employment sector. The well-educated immigrants are going to feel the economic pinch as well due to the decline in jobs that require higher education.6 For recently arriving immigrants, the future looks bleak for those who do not possess valid working documents and who are in the country to work and repatriate their money home to start a business or build a house.7 This will

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have ripple effects on remittances. By all accounts, immigration enforcement regimes have tightened considerably since the start of the recession. Public antipathy toward illegal and undocumented workers continues to be heightened by double-digit unemployment rates throughout the country. African immigrants will expect to face stiffer job competition from native blacks and Latino immigrants. The informal immigrant networks and associations will continue to play a pivotal role in assisting the immigrants to locate employment. The resources of these networks will be stressed by high demand for economic and noneconomic assistance. Some of the immigrants may have to engage in more secondary migrations to places in the country where job prospects are relatively better. By all accounts, these immigrants are willing to engage in post-arrival migrations to seek better economic opportunities. The caravan of skilled and unskilled Africans thronging to Western metropolitan capitals, towns, and cities in search of economic and cultural opportunities started nearly five decades ago. Today, the processes driving this social change continues to unravel. Dynamic and highly fluid in its forms, the use of international migration as the principle vehicle of recreating black African immigrant identities in the West has come full circle. Africans have come to understand and embrace globalization in all its complex forms. For both the skilled and unskilled, globalization is seen as an economic and cultural opportunity to link Africans to the international community. This linkage is construed as a meaningful and effective process to ensure economic integration. For many Africans then, globalization facilitates and enables several of them to raise their standards of living by looking outside of the region to carve multiple economic and cultural niches for themselves. Globalization does for many of them what their respective governments have not been successful in accomplishing: creating the necessary infrastructures and economic institutions to enable them to have access to better opportunities. Today, cultural norms and expectations are that most Africans will look outside of the continent for fulfilling their economic and cultural goals. Fluid immigration laws in host societies will continue to attract more and more Africans to the West. Stiffer immigration controls may curb the number of Africans who will be able to make it to the West. Rising public anti-immigration sentiments in Europe and the United States may tighten visa regulations and entry requirements. Cyclical economic fluctuations and global economic downturns may further impact the overall volume of skilled and unskilled African immigrants who will be allowed to enter the host societies. However, restrictive immigration policies and laws introduced by the receiving countries may not be sufficient in curbing the motivations of the thousands if not millions who ultimately will prefer to come to the West in search of better economic or cultural opportunities.

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Policies promoting family reunification will continue to be the principal form of African immigrant incorporation in the West. Equally salient are the pressures from anti-immigration groups in the West to push for legislations requiring stringent financial requirements for prospective immigrants to prove that they will not become a public charge or receive social welfare assistance if granted entry visas or permits. This will undoubtedly affect immigrant families that are not able to raise enough money to show proof of financial resources to secure visas to travel to the West. The continued segmentation of immigrant labor markets in the advanced economies will directly impact the composition of immigration flows from Africa to the West. The service sectors of the economies of the destinations countries of African immigrants (United States, Britain, and Canada, in particular) will continue to draw and attract a large pool of unskilled, low-wage workers from the poorer economies of the southern hemisphere, including Africa. Agricultural work, meat packaging, food processing, construction and manual labor, domestic work, and garment factories in the immigrant-receiving countries of the West will continue to attract a surplus population of unskilled and low-wage workers to bolster profit margins and maintain sector-specific competitiveness. For sectors that have an export-driven market niche to guard, pressure for liberal immigration laws to allow foreign-born workers to apply for temporary and later permanent work permits will also influence the number and composition of Africans who will enter the West. Gender-sensitive sectors of the economies of the migrant-receiving countries (garment, domestic service, tourism, janitorial services) may impact the gendered composition of Africans who will be approved for legal entry. For prospective African women who desire to enter the West to perform any of these services, visa regulations may favor them over their male counterparts. Currently, visa regulations continue to favor African women who apply to enter the United States and the United Kingdom for the sole purpose of working in gender-sensitive sectors such as paid domestic work. Skill-based jobs in science, engineering, and medicine will continue to favor African men even though the proportion of women who are entering these highly specialized and professional fields continue to surge in Africa. The patterns of gendered selectivity in African migrations to the advanced countries will continue to persist. With time, however, the gender gap between the proportions of African males versus females who are going to migrate to the West will begin to show a convergence with a slight edge to male migrants. African women continue to close the gap in terms of their migratory flows to the West. The competitiveness of African women migrants to initiate and implement their own migration to the West is being shaped by the proliferation of women entering secondary and tertiary institutions of learning on the

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continent. For African immigrants who are able to acquire marketable and professional credentials, prospects for migration to the West are enhanced. In the long term, many of Africa’s professional class, including women, will continue to flock to the West as several of them continue to be faced with unemployment, underemployment, poor salaries and conditions of work, lack of fringe benefits, and general problems emanating from the social and cultural environment (for example, erosion of civil regimes, upswings in crime and violence, political tensions, and institutional dysfunctions). The effects of these conditions are already being felt in the brain drain of skilled Africans who are now looking to the West to fulfill economic and cultural advancements. This trend will continue until meaningful measures are implemented by the central governments of Africa to stop the hemorrhaging of thousands of well-educated workers who are fleeing in droves to the Western countries. This challenge is an enormous undertaking requiring a robust macro-structural realignment of social and political institutions and the physical improvements in infrastructural services. Time will tell if the governments are capable of meeting this expectation. This assertion rests on current trends in immigration laws and policies throughout the West as emphasis shifts from unskilled workers to more skilled and highly credentialized applicants. Integration into the polity of their host societies is a possibility for the cadre of African immigrants who are able to find good jobs in the West due to their skills and professional status. For this group, assimilation and or acculturation are feasible though most of these Africans are likely to also maintain African-centered racial, ethnic, and class identities. For Africans who enter the West without any internationally recognized credentials, social mobility will be stalled as several of them will continue to be confined to the low-wage sectors where fringe benefits are hard to come by and opportunities and the prospects of gaining access to political and cultural participation are going to be difficult if not impossible. Discrimination, alienation, and exclusion will continue to dominate the lives of these immigrants. Not desirous of becoming citizens, this cadre of African immigrants will repatriate home once they are able to save enough money to start a business or build a home. Their sojourn is temporary and equally unlikely to forge integration into their host societies. When they forge inclusion and integration, it is going to be limited to selected economic and cultural domains of the host society, for example, occupational participation and the formation of secondary group relationships with other minority, racialized, and powerless groups with whom they share class or cultural attributes. As a group, it can be ascertained that the African immigrants seem to have rejected total linear assimilation into American society. Assimilationists have contended that with time, many immigrants to the United

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States adjust and adapt to an American cultural and social ethos to ensure their long-term survival in the host society (see Gordon, 1964; Park and Burgess, 1921). A more salient interpretation of African immigrant identities is more likely to be reflective of the emerging transnational and multiple social spaces identities that are currently being formed by new immigrants all the world over. Resistance to total assimilation is evidenced and exemplified by the continued attachment and manifestations of African identities that have elements of identities that are global in nature. It is significant to point out that the articulation of immigrant cultural identities among the African immigrants is also positioned on the belief held by many of the immigrants that African cultures are unique and that their replication in foreign spaces is best approached with the understanding that these cultures are not only diverse in their forms and structures, but more importantly, that they are being transformed internally in Africa and externally by globally induced forces, so that Africans may have little or no say in determining their final or eventual outcomes. African immigrants are receptive in embracing new cultural values and normative systems. However, such an acculturation does not imply or suggest the abandonment of the cultural values and belief systems that they have brought with them from Africa. New ideas and cultural systems are intended to supplement and reinforce African cultural heritages and cultural forms and not replace them. African culture will continue to form the center of immigrant normative orientations. Even when they manifest hyphenated identities, the immigrants still hold on their sense of panethnicity, nationalism, and continental affiliation which stresses Africa’s philosophical and cultural thoughts as the center or fulcrum for referencing and positioning their behavior. The creation and sustaining of multiple transnational circuits of ethnic networks, immigrant mutual aid societies, and national and cross-national associations by African émigrés will continue to influence their identities and impact on the formation of their cultural communities in the United States. This will render the construction of African immigrant identities and their associated meanings more complex and obfuscate the trajectories of citizenship and migrant sense of place and belonging. Flores and Benmayor’s (1997) concept of flexible citizenship will be put to the test by some of these immigrants. Equally complex will be how changes in African immigrant identities in the United States will intersect and affect happenings in the migrant home countries.8 Like their Latino immigrant counterparts, the social construction of African immigrant identities will hinge on the confluences of racial, class, gender, and ethnic relations and politics in the United States. Immigrant advocacy and assertion of rights and inclusivity will be affected by whether these immigrants will be able to coalesce along cultural, ethnic, class, or broad-based economic themes.9

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An evolving feature of African immigrant identities in the United States is the continued deconstruction and contestation of racial and ethnic membership in defining the politics of identity and one’s place in the American mosaic. For several African immigrants, ongoing transformations in America’s racial and ethnic systems of stratification will continue to be reflected in how these immigrants articulate and position their cultural identities. Encounters with discrimination often are resolved by isolationism and a tendency to gravitate toward the homeland society or to the affairs of the country of origination. This nostalgic and sentimental attachment to the homeland is a temporary measure to assuage immigrant’s fears and concerns about racial and ethnic exclusion from the host society.10 What this means is that articulating black immigrant identities in the United States in particular may be reflected by how the immigrants give meanings to notions of fairness and issues concerning social justice and equity. To the extent that they perceive their identities to be based solely on African cultural identities and cultural symbolisms and concrete manifestations, the expectations are that integration of their identities into mainstream American society will not materialize. A pluralist and diversified identity based on the amalgamation of several identities will add to the richness of the black American mosaic and its multiple depictions in the United States as well as globally. Their ability to forge relationships and inter-immigrant alliances with other minority groups will test the long-term viability of African immigrant cultures in the United States and elsewhere. The degree to which the African immigrants are able to hold on to their cultural identities and enclave communities will continue to influence and impact the forms and contents of identities that they will manifest. Their evolving identities will be more cosmopolitan, diverse, and dynamic. In a sense, their transnational diaspora identities will be perennially shifting thereby blurring the distinctions between living in Africa and the United States. Some of these immigrants will reflect a range of identities dictated according to how some of the immigrants construct and interpret the nation-state, citizenship, transnationality, conceptualization of globalization, and the influences of media and technological innovations on migrant normative value and belief systems. The levels of economic and social developments in the immigrantsending countries of black Africa will shape the magnitude, volume, scope, and the direction of the westward drift of Africans. Stymied economic and political systems in the region will continue to serve as push factors defining the motivation to leave. Sustained and holistic macro-structural improvements in overall quality of life of Africans may help stem the tide and stabilize the migratory flows outside the continent. Several of the countries are far away from developing robust economic and social protocols to help stem the tide of the brain drain, including the unskilled. Development of

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social capacities to effectively manage the migration and the repatriation of Africa’s diaspora abroad (particularly the professional classes) has proved intractable.11 Recognition of this imperative in national and continental development planning initiatives has been recognized by the central governments of Africa. Modeling African migration and identities in the West will hinge on the sustainability of economic and cultural programs that African governments are able to implement to arrest the persisting and grinding poverty dominating the lives of many citizens. As national investments in the postcolonial secondary and tertiary structures continue to deteriorate, impacts will be felt on the quality of the migratory stream that can afford to travel to the West. In the near term, many Africans (particularly the unskilled) will continue to engage in South-to-South migration by migrating from a developing nation to another destination with similar socioeconomic and cultural systems. Migrating from one developing country to another is conceived as a temporary fix to a long-term goal: to live and work in any of the Western democracies, including the Pacific Rim democracies. This form of migration may exacerbate the worsening infrastructural problems and impediments facing several of the developing countries of Africa and elsewhere. These countries lack the capacities to fully adopt policies that will incorporate a diverse pool of surplus, low-wage, and unskilled labor into their societies. Within the continental subregion of Africa, migratory streams from the Sahel basin may drift to the Southern and Northern regions. This will include countries like South Africa, Botswana, and northern-tier countries such as Libya and other Maghreb countries. Temporary migration to these destinations is important because of proximity to the Mediterranean and Western Europe. Once here, entering the European Union is relatively easier for those who are able to pay local fishermen, lorry drivers, and migrant smugglers to transport them to Europe. South-to-South migration among unskilled Africans may ultimately be transformed into South-North migration. This expectation is based on the economic reality confronting most of Africa’s unskilled population. As stated, the long-term goals of these immigrants are to enter the European Union, the United States, or Canada where economic conditions are better than in the countries forming the South. The time spent in a South-toSouth country or region is time well spent. For many of the immigrants, the time spent in a non-Western country is geared toward saving money to qualify for a visa to the West. This is also the time for these Africans to contact kin groups, family, and associates who have already settled in the West to assist with travel plans. These networks assist by coaching the prospective immigrants about visa, travel, and immigration policies at the intended place of settlement. They prepare letters of invitation for family as well as non-family members for presentation at American, Canadian, or British

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consular offices to facilitate the entry process. Some of the migrants who engage in the South-to-South migrations will also rely on these networks to provide evidence of financial statements, from a financial institution to show that the visa applicant has ample resources at their intended place of destination or settlement. But as visa regulations to the West are tightened, it is expected that for some of Africa’s South-to-South immigrants, the longterm prospects of securing valid visa and traveling documents to enter the West will prove very difficult if not impossible. This means that these prospective migrants must find alternative routes and means to enter the West. This raises the odds that several of the South-to-South African immigrants are going to find ways to enter the United States and the West illegally. One question is whether continued globalization and the international segmentation of labor or work will lead to a rise in the number of Africans and residents from other developing countries who will be allowed legally to enter the core and advanced countries in the Western hemisphere. It can be asserted that demographic and economic exigencies in both migrantorigination and -sending countries ultimately will shape immigration policies and laws. As Western Europe inches toward the eventual elimination of national border controls with the expansion of the European Union, issues about national identity, sovereignty, and cultural groups may become less salient in shaping immigration policies. However, factors such as population characteristics and composition (age ratios and distribution, ethnic identities, gender composition, and labor force attributes) may converge to influence laws regulating the free movement of workers, goods, and services. Decline in the quality and quantity of the workforce may lead to an adjustment of immigration ratios and visa rules pertaining to the specific groups of immigrants who would be allowed for legal entry. The reliance of labor market sites such as construction, janitorial services, hospitality and tourism, and agribusiness and food packaging and processing factories on immigrant labor means that more liberalized policies in the receiving countries can be relaxed to allow for guest workers (temporary or permanent) to enter the advanced countries expressly for work. Such migrants may not be permitted to emigrate with relatives. This too can affect the destinations and choices that will be available for African immigrants in the long term. Countries may want to protect specific sectors of their economies to maintain a competitive or comparable advantage. Such protected approaches have the potential to impact national policies dealing with migration policies. Targeted sectors may prohibit foreign-born workers from seeking employment in selected sectors due to security concerns. Specific migrant-receiving societies may formulate immigration laws based upon global labor market concerns, including social, cultural, and normative beliefs dominant in the migrant-receiving country. An expansion in the roles of private investment capital in advanced and developing nations will also play a major role in determining the size,

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composition, and directional flows of immigrants. Private capitalist investments may create the need for certain types and forms of skill level needed to provide access to an abundant supply of cheap labor. Household structure and dynamics will continue to shape the future of African immigrant identities in the West. Families as economic production units in Africa will continue to search for optimum economic opportunities for its members. For many African families, it is expected that this optimization is going to be achieved via family-sponsored migrations of specific family members with professional and marketable skills in demand in the destination sites. This means that for African families, international migration of selected family members will continue to be the principal vehicle for implementing and fulfilling economic objectives that cannot be obtained in the sending countries. The outcomes of family-induced migrations of Africans to the West has become one of the important social changes occurring within familial units and extended relationships. Families will continue to organize their resources to position their members for maximum economic gains from transnational migration. The added value that international migration brings to entire family units cannot be overlooked. Economic gains via remittances continue to redefine new opportunities for scores of families with relatives abroad who continue to remit home. Remittances have become an institutionalized component of African migrations. They form a principal conduit for ensuring that families are able to weather short- and long-term economic cycles at home, implement business and entrepreneurial activities to maximize total family income and resources, and position households to become plugged into the transnationalized and global resources. This aspect of African migration will continue to push many young Africans abroad because it offers the prospects that economic goals thwarted by deteriorating conditions at home can be remedied for the short and long terms. It may also open up the prospects of sponsoring other family members to travel to the West to live and work once prior family members become established. As they continue to grow in numbers, African immigrants living in the West will continue to play a major role in reshaping the social, cultural, political, and economic directions of their respective countries. Many of the immigrants take an active interest in the home affairs of their respective countries. To agitate for political changes and have a voice in political decision-making, some of the immigrants are going to channel their remittances to support political parties and candidates with whom they share common political orientation. Political remittances may enable some of the immigrants to engage in advocacy politics and influence the course(s) of political activities at home.12 The economic remittances which now dominate the migrants’ profile in the West may intersect with migrant political initiatives to devise new strategies to ensure or promote accountability of

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Africa’s leaders. According to Munck (2009:11), migrants do much more than send money home. Their ideas, skills, knowledge, values, and identities are ultimately exported to their respective home countries.13 In sending remittances home regularly, forming nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to provide pipe-borne water and electricity for their villages and towns, building a school, providing used clothing, or sending medical supplies to aid the sick, African immigrants are always at the forefront of the issues facing their respective nations. These immigrants can be characterized as agents of social change, seeking to find ways to ameliorate the sufferings and plights of their families. In doing so, the immigrants are also promoting nation-building and development. The economic and social dividends accruing from their transnational migrations and global incorporation are shared with relatives and communities alike. This sense of collective altruism is unparalleled. Providing economic assistance to relatives is considered a social obligation. Relatively well-to-do family members share their resources with immediate and extended family members. This assistance is premised on the cultural belief that cooperative spirit and community mobilization are best accomplished when families and groups share in the task of providing for those who are not capable of fending of looking after themselves (especially children and the elderly). In the African psyche, this form of collective assistance and mutual cooperation is not construed as welfare dependency. Rather, sharing is conceptualized as “giving back” to those who once had to work and provide to their children and other relatives. Group rather than an individualist approach and ethos sustains family bonds and becomes the fulcrum upon which decisions are made to maximize the economic and social interests of the entire family unit as an institution of cultural production and organization. The status of being sojourners, while applicable to some Africans, may not be completely valid considering the myriad of identities that African émigrés are forming within the nexus of international migration. Although more than half of the Africans indicated that they intend to repatriate home when economic and political conditions begin to improve at home, only few are able to implement and put in place measures to facilitate their repatriation. As many have found, the high standards of living that they have become accustomed to in the United States and the West in general relative to what obtains at home is very difficult to forgo or abandon. The majority of the immigrants are able to buy land, build a house, or start a small-scale business as part of the preparatory steps toward eventual repatriation. Particularly for those who have acquired citizenship via naturalization or have obtained a permanent residency status, living and working in America provides a layer of economic and political security. For the vast majority of the Africans in the United States, the intent to repatriate is construed as an evolving process whose end goal may never result in complete or actualized repatriation. As

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pointed out by Arthur (2008), eventual return home is contingent upon a myriad of factors, not the least of which are amount of money saved, the age of children, marital status, frequency of remittances, type and form of occupational and labor force participation, perspective about prevailing conditions in the country of origination, immigrant’s attitudes about racial and ethnic discrimination, and immigration status. The emerging trend among the émigrés is that going home for a permanent settlement, while preferred, may not materialize as Africans continue to project transnational identities which connect them to both the host societies and places of origination. The identity that African immigrants will assume and pursue is one that will be fluid and dynamic and structured on the assumption that maintaining a global posture optimizes the economic and cultural advantages that immigrants accrue from migration.14 African immigrant identities in the transnational migrant communities and localities are going to become more visible in terms of human capital accomplishments but only to the extent that the African immigrant groups continue to pursue economic and cultural empowerments through advanced education. Their credentialized and educationally endowed statuses will continue to be poignant aspects of their transnational foci and identities in the West. However, as competition intensifies over access to high-paying jobs and the devolution of the middle-class suprastructure of American society enfolds, public sentiments of anti-immigration and loathing of foreign-born nationals may cause strong headwinds that African immigrants, including other minority groups, will have to contend with. This possibility is not far-fetched because the standards of living of the predominantly white American middle-class continue to be hammered in core sectors such as employment, Social Security and retirement, housing, and college affordability. In such times, feelings of nationalism are aroused and scapegoating become an identifiable aspect of the social and cultural landscapes. For the immigrants, this may also heighten their Pan African and trans-migrant alliance to weather and deal with these uncertainties. While the mood of the American populace may affect the formation and expression of transnational black African immigrant identities, it alone is not sufficient to warrant a change in the long-term perspectives of these immigrants. At worse, it may impinge on immigrant decisions regarding repatriation and resettlement in Africa. Other structural and individualistic variables such as immigrant length of stay in the United States, amount of money saved in Africa, age of children or grandchildren, socioeconomic and political conditions in Africa, and the relative ease of transferability of immigrant assets to Africa may all converge to explain the future long-term plans of the African immigrants. In addition, even when they are able to articulate a firm intention to repatriate, the data indicate that only a small proportion of the immigrants

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are able to implement repatriation. For the majority of the immigrants, the norm is to continue living in the United States even when they have managed to build a house in Africa. There was a sense of temporality when it comes to going back home. On the one hand there is a sense that the social, cultural, political, and economic problems at home are surmountable; that with vigorous planning and discipline, the majority of the African countries can rise above their current predicaments of underdevelopment and its associated problems. However, continued stay in the United States makes it difficult to uproot for resettlement, no matter the lasting effects of the recent economic downturn. The realization is that continued stay in the United States is empowering and necessary if one is to continue to maintain the level of material and economic support for immediate and extended relatives in Africa. Several of the immigrants therefore find themselves in “limbo” and somewhat ambivalent about the decision to repatriate. Resolving this uncertainty about whether or not to repatriate has an impact on the identities of the immigrants. It refocuses the immigrant’s attention and energies toward the streamlining of identities to reflect the possibilities that one does not have to be at home in Africa to engage one’s home societies. Being in the United States brings with it a comparative advantage relative to living in Africa. For those desirous of forging transnational identities, staying in the United States permanently interspersed with occasional trips home is more preferred than returning home for a permanent sojourn. For other immigrants, the continuity of their transnational identities is posited on sponsoring their immediate and selected extended family members to come to the United States. Either way, these immigrants do not intend to completely sever ties with their homelands. In this regard, the formation of identity will hinge on how these immigrants and their families are able to achieve full integration or incorporation particularly at the economic levels. For other African immigrants, the continuity of their immigrant identities will be predicated upon how they are able to articulate and give meaning to core issues such as racism, discrimination, and minority status. Their ability or lack of resolve to filter out the continued impact of racism and discrimination in their lives will ultimately determine whether or not they will continue to define their perceptual and social fields in terms of transnational foci. Having to grapple with marginality, minority status, and continued social alienation proves to be major constraining forces inhibiting African immigrant identification with the United States. The ability to develop coping strategies, including social network bonds to minimize the harmful effects of racism, discrimination, and other problems, will play a large role in determining the long-term formation of trans-migrant identities by some of the immigrants.

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Africans who enter the United States and structure their identities solely on economic or labor force participation with minimal incorporation into other spheres of social and cultural activities may narrowly define their worldview to reflect the imperative of work. These groups of African immigrants are going to repatriate after attaining pre-defined economic goals such as saving enough money to build a home, buy a number of cars to use as taxis, or start a business. Less likely than other Africans to have legal and valid work authorization, this new cadre of Africans now entering the country are less positioned to define and negotiate career-based identities in the United States due to their lack of educational credentials either achieved prior to migration and post-arrival. For this group of African immigrants, there is a sense of economic urgency to fulfill financial goals to possibly aid their early repatriation to Africa. In other words, those who enter with weak human capital potential and credentials are going to face grim prospects of long-term employment. Where employment is available, it is more likely to be seasonal or short lived due to the tightening of immigration regulations for undocumented workers. Less-educated African immigrants stand the chance of being discriminated against at every level of the employment and hiring process. Legal protocols for addressing these structural problems are hard to come by. Charitable foundations and social welfare organizations catering to the well-being of immigrants are often over-burdened by the caseloads of immigrants in need of diverse forms of assistance. These immigrants are also likely to be faced with wage depression as competition for scarce jobs intensifies with the continued migration of immigrants (legal and illegal) from Latin America. Considering that the bulk of these Africans are at the economic and political margins of society, they are bound to compete with poorly educated and unskilled Hispanics and Asians for low-wage and fringeless jobs offering little or no guarantees for continued employment security. The inter-immigrant competition will intensify as state, local, and municipality governments trim their budgets in key areas such as public transportation, aid to families, child welfare programs, education, housing, and healthcare. Though these immigrant and minority groups are likely to gain political representation through congressional districting and apportionments, any gains they make are likely to be fleeting as conservative groups are going to hold firm and push back any gains immigrant coalitions are able to garner in Washington. The African immigrants who are joining the ranks of the African diaspora in the new millennium are people who are resilient, actively engaged in pursuing empowerment, and keenly invested in the well-being of the peoples of black descent and ancestry. Most are resolved to change the global depictions and representations of Africa as a place of failed dreams, stymied development, and mired in social and political problems the rest of the world has yet to fully comprehend. As a group, African immigrants living

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in the West have become valuable human resources for their respective countries. Their individual and collective contributions toward the social and economic development of their home countries cannot be disputed. A central question is the role(s) that the African immigrant diaspora communities abroad should play in the task of social and economic development. Currently, these immigrants constitute an untapped resource. There is need for an effective mobilization of the diaspora communities by their national governments.15 Spiraling social and economic problems continue to impact every fabric of African life. As affirmed, the governments of the region must initiate bold and workable policies and programs designed to ensure the reincorporation of African diaspora community resources into national development schemes. Currently, several of the diaspora communities have launched their own programs to assist in the development of Africa. What is needed is government assistance to identify and channel this assistance to the appropriate sectors of Africa’s economies. The anchoring of African immigrant identities in the United States and immigrant linkages with home via the instrument of remittances will continue to be a dominant theme in African migration. For the immigrants who continue to remit home regularly, the appropriation and utilization of the funds and non-monetary contributions will continue to boost the standard of living of recipients, albeit minimally considering that the largest share of remittances are expended on immediate consumption needs rather than to fulfill long-term economic production. Families may become overly dependent on these remittances with the potential to stifle and promote self-empowerment and responsibility. Remittances may also widen the gap in well-being among households with relatives abroad and those without. This may result in the creation of a two-tier stratification system where economic advancement and survival will depend upon whether households have access to foreign remittances or not. For those without such support, reliance on government welfare programs and support must be pursued. Unfortunately, the African governments have yet to put in place a comprehensive social welfare safety net to assist the most vulnerable segments of society. In the short and long term, the economic pressures on families and households will continue to trigger migration to the advanced countries. Families and households will continue to rely on international migration as a means of facilitating and enhancing their living standards. The recent global meltdown has impacted already impoverished households and families. Persistent upswings in fuel prices have affected family total income and resources. The cost of staple food prices, housing, and transportation has skyrocketed beyond the reach of the average person in Africa. Both rural and urban masses are affected. Meanwhile, the central governments of Africa are unable to afford the cost of providing subsidies for food, water, electricity,

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housing, and transportation. For families and households who do not have relatives already settled in the West to remit to them, the situation continue to be dire. For the youth as well as adult members of family and households, there is intensity and pressure to migrate as total family income and productivity continue to decline. With economies that are sputtering due to the global recession, several of the countries of Africa may have to depend on the international community and donor countries to offer short- and longterm economic assistance and aid. For many Africans, the preferred option to dealing with these economic uncertainties is migration. The future of African immigrant identities in the United States is inexorably linked with the representations of other minority and immigrant identities, particularly Hispanic, Asian, and Caribbean. Africans have a wellestablished cultural relationship with Caribbean immigrants with whom they share educational, cultural, colonial, and migratory legacies. Like their African counterparts, Caribbean immigrants in the United States have higher educational attainments than white and black Americans. Both groups of black immigrants bring significant social and cultural capital to the United States. And whether they migrate to Britain, Canada, or the United States, these black immigrants forge and sustain identities that are based on strong identifications and linkages with the homeland, hard work, deferment of gratification, and the ability to engage in self-help through labor force participation and continued education.16 As the African immigrants in particular establish their cultural communities in the United States and elsewhere to anchor their identities, they will have to form inter-immigrant alliances and coalitions with other minority and immigrant groups. There are several areas of mutual cooperation and interethnic integration. Forming sustainable economic, cultural, and political cooperation and linkages to define common interests to influence urban and national policies are warranted. The future prospects of African immigrant transnational identities may revolve around how this group is able to contextualize issues that are broad and transcend race, ethnicity, and places of immigrant origination. For African, Caribbean, Asian, and Hispanic immigrants, the continued forces of globalization will test the viability of any black-brown-yellow coalition that these groups form to agitate for better educational opportunities, equal housing, and access to jobs and economic opportunities. As economic opportunities shrink and access to low-wagesector employment tightens, intergroup discord and conflicts among the various immigrant groups will become more pronounced. The perceived economic marginalization and alienation of different sub-population immigrant groups will test the political alliances that immigrants are likely to form to represent their mutual and collective interests. It is significant for Africa’s central governments to fully grasp the costbenefits of international migration as hundreds of thousands of their

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citizens continue to seek greener pastures in foreign destinations. This recognition will have to be accompanied by sustained economic and social development programs to create the much-needed capacity to ensure robust economic and industrial takeoff. Vigorous efforts must be undertaken to promote private-sector investment protocols to provide funds for start-up of low-capitalization businesses that will provide employment for secondary and tertiary graduates. Government role in this process will be to facilitate the development of infrastructural services to bring added value to the small-scale businesses. The goals of such measures are twofold: to stem the tide of urban youth unemployment and underemployment and to promote the retention of Africa’s skilled and semi-skilled population. The absence of capital will continue to test the economic and political wills of several of the African governments and pose a serious threat to development. Incorporation of the remittances that their citizens send home provides tentative solution to the lack of capitalization and investment potential if it is properly and effectively tapped and incorporated into national development schemes and initiatives. By all accounts, the African émigrés abroad are willing to participate in the task of national reconstruction modeling. However, most are skeptical and leery of the feasibility of investing or transferring assets from the United States for this purpose due to the lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability, and entrenched political corruption or outright thievery. Sustained measures must be implemented at the national level by the African governments to utilize the brain drain of their skilled population to their maximum advantage. This may necessitate the need to relax or liberalize tax laws to give favorable incentives to immigrants who are willing to transfer assets home. A similar protocol recently undertaken by the Chinese and Malaysian governments to entice their nationals abroad to return achieved measurable results if it was accompanied by adequate housing for returnees, employment, and governmental fiscal and incubation support for those willing to start new businesses in predetermined economic and industrial sectors. For the African countries, these sectors that stand to gain from the reverse flow of immigrant assets are food processing, hospitality, education, and healthcare. The development of technological and industrial parks and zones where immigrants abroad can channel assets and funding matched by governmental grants to start business will be steps in the right direction. Of equal significance is for the African governments to recognize and incorporate into national planning and development schemes the role played by African transnational immigrant networks in facilitating migration to global labor markets. Family, lineage, and ethnic networks are important to the understanding of migration streams out of Africa. In African cultural societies, families serve as units of economic production. In the migration of Africans for better economic opportunities predominantly in the West,

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these same familial-based networks are been utilized by Africans to connect them to employment centers around the world. They are the main conduits of sponsorship whereby African immigrants abroad are able to sponsor immediate and extended relatives to come to the West. Policies to assist in raising the economic standards of Africans are imperative if the tide of the brain drain is to be alleviated or curbed. The formation of African immigrant identities in transnational spheres are going to be influenced by bilateral and multilateral economic, cultural, and technical agreements between the African countries and the destination countries of African immigrants. These agreements may impede or increase the flow of skilled and unskilled immigrants to the sites of global market centers. For the African nations, it is imperative to engage in and ratify only those bilateral or multilateral arrangements that will present the optimum advantages for these developing countries. Negotiations that will drain the skilled and professional classes of educated Africans must be critically examined to ensure that vital sectors of the African economies are not tapped by Western economic interests to the detriment of the African countries. As the African countries begin to recognize the impact of the brain drain of their skilled population to the West and other sites of international labor, concerted efforts must be undertaken by the governments to ensure that the immigration consequences and implications of multi-governmental economic and cultural agreements are fair, equitable, and in consonance with the need to promote and ensure the overall development of the African region. Protocols to develop such understanding and cooperation in aspects of human research management among the African immigrant–sending and –receiving countries in the West must be undertaken in such a way to preserve Africa’s prevailing need and pressure to mount a vigorous effort to arrest the forces of underdevelopment and poverty. So far, the constructions of African immigrant identities have been positioned on the strong human capital abilities and work ethic manifested by the Africans. It is this same human capital which is pushing the Africans to disperse across the United States, sometimes having to use secondary or tertiary internal migrations to find the goodness of fit in employment, education, and housing opportunities. Their abilities to move their households to centers and areas of economic boom and prosperity have served them well as a group. Their long-term ability to continue to depict fluid and flexible identities to facilitate and structure their incorporation or integration into the body polity of their host societies will ultimately be pivotal in the outcomes of their immigrant identities. As economic conditions become scarce and competitive in the traditional sites of African immigrant settlements, it is to be expected that these immigrants will exhibit identities that will take some of them to destinations in the American Southwest and West Coast of the United States. This will mean that African immi-

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grant settlement concentrations will shift away from the Eastern seaboard corridor, Mid-Atlantic, Northern Virginia–Maryland, New England, and Northern Illinois–Indiana metropolitan statistical and contiguous regions to destinations of economic and cultural growth, possibly in the Southwest, Northwest, and California. This shift and transformation will certainly give African immigrant identities a national and continental outlook. The longterm implications of this shift are how the immigrants are able to transform and redefine their identities in new locales and social spaces, including their ability to replicate their cultural communities and immigrant enclaves in the new destinations. The construction and manifestation of African immigrant identities will also hinge on the identities that second- and third-generation Africans are going to negotiate. The second- and third-generation children will manifest identities that will mirror those of African Americans. The cultural differences and orientations between this group and native-born blacks will be blurred as more and more of the second and subsequent generations embrace black American cultural and social ethos. Cultural, economic, and political alliances between these two groups will intensify as their concerns and issues find a convergence in terms of access to structural opportunities, particularly in areas of education, employment, housing, and relationships with the criminal justice system. As they continue to manifest their black African and American identities, subsequent generations of African immigrants will have to contest their identities against the backdrop of a multilayered racial and ethnic American society. More particularly, their ability to mobilize with other minority and marginalized immigrant and nonimmigrant groups to agitate for collective action to contest political, economic, legal, and cultural issues unique to their subordinated statuses will become critical in the long run in the forms and contents of identities that are going to be manifested. As subsequent generations continue to straddle multiple racial and ethnic cultures, their identities will be blended via hosts of social and cultural genres of which the major confluences are going to be inter- and intra-immigrant and nonimmigrant marriages and relationships, shared business and entrepreneurial interchanges, and above all, cultural intermixing at the community and grassroots levels. The formation of broad-based alliances and organizations that have national foci will also broaden the scope and depth of the identities that will be formed and negotiated by the stream of African immigrants and their descendants now entering the United States. What is not known or difficult to conceptualize is the cultural identity outcomes emanating from how these immigrants and their subsequent dependents or offspring will relate to Africa and its issues or agenda. The continuity of the formation of the African diaspora in the United States in particularly will be transformed by the increasing levels of African migrations to the country. The forging

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of diaspora bonds with African Americans, Caribbean blacks, as well as with other diasporic communities (Latino groups) and the identities that are transcended by these inter-immigrant alliances will shape or define the long-term cultural identities that are going to be created by the mélange of black African cultural forms represented in the United States. There is a need for robust theoretical and methodological formulations to explain the structure, form, and organization of the African diaspora in the West. The sheer size, internal diversities, and composition of this diaspora make it difficult to use aggregate data to map out individual, group, and national differences in the gathering of the African diaspora in the United States and the West more generally. A fresh synthesis using a combination of multiple theoretical and methodological approaches is warranted. For example, it is a common fact that not every African is fleeing to the United States or to the West because of unmet economic needs and aspirations. While the majority can be classified as economic migrants whose migration fits in well with classical and neoclassical interpretations of migration as an economically driven and rational calculus designed to maximize income or standards of living, a growing number of Africans continue to migrate for noneconomic reasons, primarily to pursue and fulfill cultural and psychological goals difficult to attain in Africa. A unilinear and mono-causal approach to the explanation of African migrations will have to be eschewed in preference for a more robust, interdisciplinary, holistically grounded, and multi-situational perspective that adopts a vigorous theoretical frame to position African migrations in the global arena. Such an approach will have to be able to address interlocking issues such as the role of African families and social networks in transnational migrations, the long-term significance and impact of remittances on nation building, effective management of foreign investments, economic and political development in Africa, the ascendancy of feminized migrations in the African and global contexts, and the effects of labor outmigration on the dispensation of essential social services such as healthcare, education, and national insurance schemes (old age, retirement, pension, and disability schemes). Equally significant is the need for a firm understanding by African governments of the intricate relationships between migration and socioeconomic, cultural, and political processes such as globalization, political systems management and organization, international aid (bilateral and multilateral), structural adjustment programs, public debt management protocols, human rights, incorporation of minority groups into the affairs of the nation-states, and the new forms of citizenship. The migrant-sending countries of Africa cannot rely solely on the international migration of their citizens and the added value immigrants bring home via remittances and skills transfer to deal with pressing and mounting socioeconomic and cultural problems. The economic and politi-

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cal growth of these countries will be stalled if the national governments are not able to pursue internally driven and self-sustaining economic and cultural programs to lift the standards of living of their citizens and implement sound programs designed to retain skilled labor, particularly doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, and information technology specialists. The net gains these professionals bring to their respective countries must be ascertained. A central question to address is whether the benefits and gains migrants make to their home societies (remittances, innovation, cultural and normative changes, small-business formation, private-sector investments, diaspora charities, philanthropies, political formations) are eclipsed by the total expenditures incurred by central governments in funding the bulk of the education and skill training of several of the immigrants at every level of education and human development.17 The cultural, social, and political economy of the brain drain has to be debated in national development policy formulations and program implementation. The current overt and at times covert culture of governments in Africa that economically and politically dissatisfied citizens should leave is inimical and an anathema to achieving progress and development. The piecemeal approach to national data collection on migrants who are leaving cannot be sustained and rationalized. Coupled with this is the failure or lip-service approach of many African governments to incorporate their returning immigrants into the nation-building process. Deploying the resources of their diaspora communities abroad to assist in homeland development will become an enduring feature of planning the economies of African migrant-sending countries.18 African diaspora immigrant identities in the West are not homogeneous. Internal differences can be discerned. These differences are the outcome of many factors, including migrant country of origination, normative and cultural belief systems, history of colonization, homeland political culture, migrants’ subjective and object evaluation of the citizenship and nationalism in the nation-state, and above all, prevailing migrant homeland economic conditions. Added to these are issues also emanating from the politicosocial, cultural, and economic conditions as well as the acceptance of immigrants in the host societies. Not every African immigrant is going to manifest transnational diaspora identity. As Gabriel Sheffer (2007:187–214) noted, there are core and peripheral members of every diaspora formation.19 Core diaspora members, according to Sheffer, are those immigrants “who emotionally and cognitively cling to the general inherent identity characterizing their entire ethnonational group, including living in their actual or imagined ethnonational homeland.” The peripheral diaspora identities, he maintained, are constituted by those immigrants “who have been fully or partly integrated, but not assimilated into their host societies, but still maintain their original identity and some contacts with the organized part of their diaspora.” Immigrants, after all, are free to choose whether they

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will identify with a transnational ethos or not. They are also free to choose the contents of their identities. For some of the African émigrés, diaspora identity will be shaped by links with the nation-state. For others, the content of diaspora identity is going to be informed by a Pan African dynamic. Yet still for others, the formation and continuity of diaspora identities will be filtered through immigrants’ sense of statelessness, refugee status, tribal, clan, ethnic, class, gender, or even alumni relationships. Considering the multiple forms of identities inherent in the formation of African diasporas, it is imperative for scholars of the African diaspora to be meticulous in their identification and analyses of the specific multilayered forms and genres that come together to depict how African diaspora identities are constructed or propagated in host and homeland societies alike. Disentangling the internal dynamics of the African immigrant diaspora transnational identities to unmask commonalities and differences will occupy the attention of scholars for a long time to come due to the sheer diversity of this immigrant population. Africans have become and will continue to form a significant part of what Jonathon W. Moses (2006) described as globalization’s last frontier: international migration.20

NOTES 1. See Zachariah and Conde (1981), Konadu-Agyemang (1999), Adepoju (1991), and Oppong (2004) for a discussion of internal migrations in Africa. 2. See United Nations Population Division (UNPD). (2006). Trends in Total Migration Stock. The 2005 Revision. New York: Department for Social and Economic Affairs, UNPD, February. 3. See for example, Pnina Werbner’s (2002) account of how immigrant diasporas are imagined and propagated in foreign spheres to redefine and change the global positions of underrepresented and marginalized groups to provide economic and cultural empowerment for migrant actors. For detailed discussion, see also Rajan, Gita, and Sharma, Shailja. (2006). New Cosmopolitanisms (eds.). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. 4. See Marilyn Halter (2007:290). Halter also reported that for some of these immigrants, advanced educational credentials has yet to translate into high incomes. As she stated, for some of the contemporary African émigrés, the lower income is attributed to employment in the service-sector economy where wages are traditionally lower relative to manufacturing. Common forms of employment among this contemporary group are in transportation (driving a taxi), orderlies, airport porters, lab assistants, nurses, and nursing assistants. 5. See Abdi Kusow (2007) and Aminah McCloud (2006). 6. Marilyn Halter (2007) noted that some of the Africans will be able to adapt to these economic pressures due to their commitment to education following their arrival in the country. As Halter noted, many of Africa’s educated pursue continuing education to upgrade their skills or retrain altogether. Some of them target

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specific sectors of the economy such as teaching, healthcare including nursing, and elderly care where there is a high demand for workers. Others may operate their own businesses operating ethnic stores and sales peddling consumer goods on sidewalks in major urban commercial centers across the country. With time, a growing number of these street peddlers have been successful in moving off the streets into stores in Harlem, Queens, and other places in the New York City and Newark metro areas. 7. The gap in economic well-being between recently arriving immigrants and the native population that Borjas (1998) and Clark (1998) wrote about will continue to widen as more and more Americans pursue some college or acquire college degrees. 8. For detailed discussion, see also Hondagneu-Sotelo (2003) and Benmayor and Skotnes (2005). 9. See Oboler, Suzanne. (1995). Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives. Identity and the Politics of (Re) Presentation in the United States. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. 10. See Safran (2005) and Cohen (2008). 11. See Dovlo, Delanyo. (2004). “Managing the Migration and Return of National Intellectual Capacity.” Bulletin of the World Health Organization. Volume 82 (8): 620–21. 12. Like their Latino immigrant counterparts, political participation in domestic American and home political culture is significant because it provides immigrants with the opportunity to influence and contribute to the political culture of their home and host societies respectively. For a detailed discussion, see Garza et al. (1994) and Gracia (2008). 13. Peggy Levitt and Ninna Nyberg-Sorensen (2004) stressed the importance of what they termed “social remittances” that migrants bring back to their home countries. See Levitt, P., and Nyberg-Sorensen, N. 2004. “The Transnational Turn in Migration Studies.” Global Migration Perspectives. Volume 6:8. 14. A number of studies have addressed immigrant repatriation and return. For detailed discussions, see among others, Gmelch (1980) and Ong (1999). 15. See Okome, Mojubaolu. (2007). “African Diasporas.” In Diasporas and Development. Merz, Barbara, Lincoln Chen, and Peter Geithner (eds.). Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press, 151–84. 16. Demographic issues such as family organization and total fertility rates among minority immigrant groups will constitute significant aspects of their future identities in the United States. Evidence suggests that America’s new immigrants (including those from Africa) tend to have larger families than the native-born population. 17. Some contend that this is a moot issue because graduates from tertiary institutions in most parts of Africa (particularly Ghana and Nigeria) are usually bonded and obligated to undergo a national service program whereby they work for government establishments for stipends to defray part of the cost of financing their education. Proponents of the national service scheme contend that it is a fair deal for these graduates, who upon completion of the period of service (usually one year), are free to look for employment anywhere in the world. I contend that the appropriate issue to address, alongside the brain drain problem, is the massive underemployment and chronic employment currently facing many tertiary graduates

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in Africa. Underutilization and the inappropriate use of skilled labor is a major cause of African graduate migration to the West where working conditions are relatively better than it is in Africa. 18. See Khachig Toloyan (2000, 2007), Gabriel Sheffer (2002, 2003), and Singh (1999) for a detailed account of the role of immigrant diaspora groups in the development of their homelands. 19. See Gabriel Sheffer (2007) for a detailed discussion of the challenges that confront diaspora populations. 20. See Jonathon W. Moses. (2006). International Migration. Globalization’s Last Frontier. New York: Zed Books Limited.

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10_339_z1_Bib.indd 296

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Index

9/11, 86, 115, 118, 196 Abraham, Knife, 103, 117 acculturation: cultural values and, 259– 60; employment and, 15; identity and, 8, 240, 243, 249; immigration and, 50; women and, 65 Adepoju, Aderanti, 76, 77, 276 Adi, Hakim, 117 African migrations: broadening scope of immigrant diaspora identities, 153–56; dream of home ownership, 131–35; economic rationalizations and meanings of, 120–31; home and locality, 139–40; naturalization and citizenship identities, 140–47; political rationalizations, 147–49; redefining gendered identities and expectations, 149–53; strategies for buying property, 135–39 African Progress Union (APU), 103 Agrawal, Anuja, 33 Aguirre, Benigno, 158 Alba, Richard, 32, 201 Aleinikoff, Alexander, 146, 158 Almaguer, T., 202 Alvarez, R. R., 158 Anderson, Elijah, 203

Anosike, Enyi, 77 Anya, Ike, 77 Apartheid, 67 Appadurai, Arjun, 32, 114 Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 114 Apraku, Kofi, 76 Arya, Sadhna, 33 Asante, Molefi Kete, 104, 117 assimilation: acculturation and, 15, 117, 243; heritage and, 248–49; home ownership and, 132; identity and, 8–9, 27–28, 275; immigration status and, 112; intercultural contacts and, 240–41; marriage and, 185; refugee youths and, 180, 203; resistance to, 259–60; social capital and, 106; structural, 163, 256 asylum, 1, 85, 159 Attah, William Ofori, 103 Awolowo, Obafemi, 103 Azikiwe, Nnamdi, 103 Bach, Robert, 31, 77, 79, 114 Barkan, Elliott, 156 Barot, Rohit, 77, 176 Basch, Linda, 16, 28, 30, 31, 201, 205 Bauer, Elaine, 116, 117 Benmayor, Rina, 260, 277

297

10_339_z2_Idx.indd 297

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298

Index

Bersselaar, Dmitri, 18, 99, 101, 117 Bhabha, Homi, 252 Bhachu, Parminder, 116 bi-racial diasporic identities, 184–200 Bloemraad, Irene, 117 Blumer, Herbert, 156 Bogardus, E. S., 203 Bonacich, Edna, 31 Borjas, George, 46, 277 Bouvier, L., 158 Bowser, Benjamin, 158 Boyd, M., 79, 114 Brah, Aytar, 32 brain drain, Africa and: circulation of elites and, 50–61; demographics of, 61–68; influences of education on, 38–47; migration of doctors to West, 48–50; policies promoting population retention, 68–77; social conditions and, 38–47; structural causes of, 35–38 Brettell, Caroline, 30, 251 Brewer, J., 32 Briggs, J. M., 77 Brinkerhoff, Jennifer, 159 Bryce-LaPorte, Roy, 33, 116, 157, 201 Bryceson, Deborah, 116 Bush, George W., 112, 196, 219, 229 Butler, Kim, 29 Card, David, 30 Carroll, Joseph, 251 Castaneda, Alejandra, 141, 158 Castles, Stephen, 31, 35, 38, 50, 76, 77 Chamberlain, Mary, 93, 94, 116, 157, 164 Chambers, Iain, 29 child-naming ceremonies, 23, 98, 138, 207 civil war, 61, 132 Clark, William, 157, 252, 277 Clinton, Bill, 229 Clothey, Fred, 80, 114, 116 Cohen, Robin, 77, 87, 115, 117, 250, 277 Coleman, James, 117 Congo Democratic Republic (DRC), 85

10_339_z2_Idx.indd 298

Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), 217 Cooley, Charles Horton, 156 Cordero-Guzman, Hector, 30, 31 Dasgupta, Shamita Das, 252 DaVanzo, J., 77 Dawson, Michael, 201 DeJong, Gordon, 77 Diversity Visa Lottery Program (DVLP), 84–85, 115 Dodoo, Francis, 76, 77, 250 Donnan, Hastings, 250 Dovlo, Delanyo, 277 Du Bois, W. E. B., 162, 169, 187 Dufoix, Stephane, 116 Egbert, Henrik, 159 elites, 35, 42, 45, 50–51, 54, 58, 126, 169, 217, 219, 228, 231 empowerment: American culture and, 88; citizenship and, 142; community and, 12, 19, 181, 183, 208, 215, 218–19, 226, 242; family and, 97–99, 128, 187; home ownership and, 136; identity and, 266–69; immigrant youths and, 163, 170–74, 204; race and, 170, 230, 232, 234–35, 237, 247; return migration and, 72; transnational ties and, 28, 110, 113; women and, 150, 153, 190–93, 203, 213, 218, 237, 244 Engel, Friedrich, 3 Escobar, A., 77 Espiritu, Augusto, 30 ethnic cleansing, 217 Faist, Thomas, 201, 205 Falola, Toyin, 76 family: economic rationalizations and, 120–258; gender and, 164, 169–79, 183–86, 189–97; globalization and, 21–22; home ownership and, 132– 46; as human capital, xi; identity and, 11, 13–14, 208, 210–11, 213–14, 220, 230–33, 237, 240–44;

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Index migration and, 52, 55, 59–62, 65– 66, 264, 267–71; remittances and, 2, 18, 47; reunification of, 5, 81, 83–84, 95, 104, 142, 144, 146, 258; transnational networks and, 79–81, 83–87, 91–104, 108, 113–14; women and, 150–53, 156 Fanon, Frantz, 104, 117 Farley, Reynolds, 32 female genital mutilation (FGM), 216, 218 Findlay, A., 77 Fitzgerald, David, 31 Flores, W. V., 260 Foner, Nancy, 16–17, 31, 116, 205, 208 Fong, Timothy, 200 Gabaccia, Donna, 33 Gans, Herbert, 252 Garson, J. P., 77 Garvey, Marcus, 187 Garza, Rodolfo, 277 Gates, Henry, Jr., 193 gendered identities, 149–53 genocide, 178, 216, 222, 228, 247 Gilroy, P., 87, 115 Glantz, Oscar, 157 Glick Schiller, Nina, 16, 94 globalization: education and, 38, 58, 75; identity and, 7, 13, 15–16, 21–22, 110, 204, 261, 263, 270, 274, 276; migration and, 110, 126, 154, 211, 253, 255; technology and, 4, 40; transnational networks and, 87–88, 99, 164, 255, 257 Gmelch, George, 277 Golbert, Rebecca, 158 Gold Coast Students Association (GCSA), 103 Goldring, Luin, 30, 158 Gordon, April, 76 Gordon, Edmund, 30 Gordon, Milton, 201, 203, 260 Gracia, Jorge, 277 Grebler, L., 158 Greenbaum, Susan, 250

10_339_z2_Idx.indd 299

299

Guarnizo, Luis, 16, 30, 201 Gulati, L., 77 Guests and Aliens (Sassen), 1 Hacker, Andrew, 201 Hackshaw, Alana, 198, 201, 202, 205 Hall, Stuart, 200 Halter, Marilyn, 29, 117, 250, 276 Harbison, Sarah, 77 Harris, J., 76 Hart-Cellar Immigration Act, 5, 29 Hear, Nicholas van, 157 Hernandez-Leon, Ruben, 30 home ownership. See property, ownership of Hondagneu-Sotelo, P., 277 Hourani, A., 115 Howe, Stephen, 117 hybrid identities, xii, xiv, 8, 91, 176, 202, 241, 246 Ihekweazu, Chikwe, 77 Immigration and Nationality Act (1965), 83 Immigration Quota Law (1921), 83 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), 5, 30, 81, 114 industrialization, 35–36, 45, 65, 75 intercultural identity, 231–39 intercultural networks, 14, 164, 210– 11, 232, 240–43, 252 Jacobson, Matthew, 236 James, Deborah, 117 Jasso, Guillermina, 158 Jones-Correa, Michael, 201 Kanneh, Kadiathu, 105, 117 Kasinitz, Philip, 201, 202, 279 Kearney, Michael, 30 Kelson, Gregory, 33 Kenyatta, Jomo, 103, 234 Killingray, D., 164 kinship, 4–5, 9, 60, 66, 92–94, 99, 116, 136, 139, 184–85, 211, 244, 247, 250, 252 Kolb, Holger, 159

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300

Index

Konadu-Agyemang, K., 76, 276 Koser, Khalid, 30, 116, 158 Kossoudji, Sherrie, 30 Kunz, Rahel, 157 Kusow, Abdi, 276 Kwok, Viem, 45 Kymlicka, Will, 158 legal permanent residents (LPRs), 81–83 Leland, Hayne, 45 Lenoir, Gerald, 250 Leonard, Karen Isaksen, 115 Lerman, Nicholas, 203 Levitt, Peggy, 277 Lewis, David, 30 Lieberson, Peggy, 32 Liegeois, J. P., 115 Light, Ivan, 32 Long, Lynellyn, 159 Lubkemann, Stephen, 157 Mabogunje, A., 77 MacGaffey, J., 250 Mahler, Sarah, 16, 31 Maimbo, Samuel Munzele, 117 Mandela, Nelson, 187 Marcus, George, 31 Marx, Karl, 3 marriage, 19, 80, 93–94, 98, 144, 162, 185–86, 207, 216, 273 Massey, Douglas, 76, 77 matriarchy, 98 McCloud, Aminah, 115, 276 McGrew, A., 157 Mead, George Herbert, 156 Milne, W., 77 Model, Suzanne, 31, 32, 117, 157, 159, 201 Modell, John, 31 Mohan, Giles, 30 Molho, I., 77 Morawska, Ewa, 201 Morrison, Andrew, 33, 77 Morrison, Marlene, 23, 32 Moses, Jonathon W., 276, 278

10_339_z2_Idx.indd 300

Munck, Ronaldo, 29, 265 Myrdal, Gunnar, 203, 204 Nash, A., 77 Nash, Manning, 117 Nee, Victor, 201 Nkrumah, Kwame, 77, 103, 187, 227, 234 Nolin, Catherine, 30, 31, 32, 178 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), xiii, 54, 74, 100, 109, 126, 265 Nyberg-Sorensen, Ninna, 157 Obama, Barack, 112, 225, 229 Obiakor, Festus, 251 Oboler, Suzanne, 277 Okafor, Lawrence, 33 Okome, Mojubaolu, 158, 277 Oliver, Melvin, 201 Omi, M., 204 Ong, Aihwa, 49 Ong, Paul, 277 Opoku-Dapaah, E., 76 Oppong, Joseph, 276 Owusu, Thomas, 19, 32, 104, 107 Ozden, Caglar, 117 Pachon, H. P., 158 Park, Robert, 203, 260 Partridge, M., 251 patriarchy, 65, 98, 190, 218 Pessar, Patricia, 201 Phizacklea, A., 76 Piper, Nichola, 33 Poitier, Sidney, 187, 225 Pole, Christopher, 23, 32 Portes, Alejandro, 31, 32, 77, 79, 107, 114, 117, 158, 201, 202, 252 property, ownership of, 131–40 Pryor, R., 77 racism, 66, 89, 102–3, 111, 138, 142– 44, 165, 168, 170, 175, 183, 188, 193, 215, 225–26, 230, 234, 247, 249, 267

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Index Rajan, Gita, 276 rape, 66, 217 Reed, D., 251 Refugee Act (1980), 85, 115 Reichert, J., 77 remittances: brain drain and, 38–39, 47, 60; economy and, 257, 264–66, 271; family and, 95, 97, 108, 229; identity and, xiii, 13, 17, 20, 22, 269; migration and, 121–22, 126–28, 138, 145, 151, 155, 157, 274–75 repatriation, 14, 43, 60–61, 68–75, 79, 86, 88, 100, 120, 122, 133–35, 144, 155–56, 256, 259, 262, 265–68 resource mobilization, 10, 19, 22, 108, 113 return migration, 4, 20, 41, 43–44, 70– 74, 134, 155–56, 163, 182, 222–23, 266–67, 271, 275 Riccio, Bruno, 158 Rivera-Salgado, Gaspar, 158 Roces, Mina, 33 Rogers, Reuel, 33 Rosaldo, Renato, 141 Rosenfeld, M. J., 251 Rouse, Roger, 203 Roy, Anupama, 33 Rumbaut, Ruben, 77, 201, 202 Saenz, Regelio, 158 Safran, William, 277 Salih, Ruba, 159 Sassen-Koob, Saskia, 1, 29, 76, 77, 201 Scott, William and Ruth, 2, 29 Segura, Denise, 77 Shapiro, Thomas, 201 Sharma, Shailja, 276 Shehadi, N., 115 Sheffer, Gabriel, 275, 278 Singh, Gurharpal, 278 Sjaastad, L., 77 Skeldon, Ronald, 77, 151 Skotnes, Andor, 277 social capital, 2, 14, 17, 75, 106, 137, 145–46, 180, 227, 236, 255, 262

10_339_z2_Idx.indd 301

301

Society of Peoples of African Origin (SPAO), 103 Smith, Joan, 201 Smith, Michael, 16 Smith, Robert, 205 Spellman, W. M., 76, 251 Stepick, Alex, 201 Stevens, Siaka, 103 Stock, R., 76 Stoller, Paul, 117 Takougang, Joseph, 76 Takyi, Baffour, 76, 77 Tapinos, G. P., 77 Thomas, A., 157 Thompson, Paul, 116, 117 Tienda, Martha, 251 Todaro, Michael, 77 Toloyan, Khachig, 278 Toro-Morn, Maura, 29 Toulis, Nicole Rodriguez, 116 transnational networks, African immigrants: familial-based and kin-group, 91–99; future of, 111–14; immigrants as agents of development and change, 107–11; national and transAfrican identities, nationalism, and consciousness, 102–7; paradigms and typologies of, 90–91; as propagators of cultural identities, 87–90; structural background of diaspora, 80–87; tribal, ethnic, and clan, 99–102 tribal identities, 2, 9, 111, 236, 248, 251, 256 tribal networks, 17–19, 23, 72–73, 80, 99–102, 241, 276 tribalism, 85, 109–11, 212, 222–23 Uba, Laura, 200 undocumented status, 14, 31, 81, 112, 114, 257, 268 unemployment, 14, 46, 54, 58, 70, 76, 86–87, 97, 112, 175, 194, 209, 227, 229, 251, 257, 259, 271

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302 Union of Students of African Descent (USAD), 103 United Nations High Commission for Refugees, 86, 203 United States Office of Refugee Resettlement (USORR), 86 Valdez, Zulema, 31 Vickerman, Milton, 34, 156, 157, 201, 202, 250 Wachtel, Paul, 201 Waldinger, Roger, 31, 32, 158 Waters, Mary, 31, 32, 201, 202, 250 Weiner, Myron, 159 Wellmeier, Nancy, 33

10_339_z2_Idx.indd 302

Index Werbner, Pnina, 116, 276 West, Cornell, 193 West African Students Union (WASU), 103 White, Joseph, 251 Wilson, Thomas, 250 Winfrey, Oprah, 217 Wirth, William, 203 Wolcott, H., 32 Wong, Paul, 203 Wright, Mitchell, 30 Zachariah, K. C., 276 Zegeye, Aberle, 76 Zeleza, Paul, 76 Zhou, Min, 32, 107, 117, 201, 202 Zolberg, A. R., 77

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