African Minorities in the New World

Toyin Falola, Niyi Afolabi, Toyin Falola, Niyi Afolabi

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781135900700
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Social Sciences
• Categoria: African American Studies

This book uncovers the reality that new African immigrants now represent a significant force in the configuration of American polity and identity especially in the last forty years. Despite their minority status, African immigrants are making their marks in various areas of human endeavor and accomplishments—from academic, to business, to even scientific inventions. The demographic shift is both welcome news as well as a matter for concern given the consequences of displacement and the paradoxes of exile in the new location. By its very connection to the 'Old African Diaspora, ' the notion of a 'New African Diaspora' marks a clear indication of a historical progression reconnecting continental Africa with the New World without the stigma of slavery. Yet, the notion of trans-Atlantic slavery is never erased when the African diaspora is mentioned whether in the old or new world. Within this paradoxical dispensation, the new African diaspora must be conceived as the aftermath of a global migration crisis.

Chapter One
Introduction: Voluntarily Singing the Lord’s Song …

Toyin Falola and Niyi Afolabi

OVERVIEW

This book confronts the reality that new African immigrants now represent a significant force in the configuration of American polity and identity, especially in the last forty years. Despite their minority status, African immigrants are making their mark in various areas of human endeavor and accomplishment—from the academy, to business, to scientific innovation. The demographic shift is welcome news as well as a matter for concern, given the consequences of displacement and the paradoxes of exile in the new location. By its very connection to the “Old African Diaspora,” the notion of a “New African Diaspora”¹ marks a clear indication of a historical progression reconnecting continental Africa with the New World without the stigma of slavery. However, the notion of trans-Atlantic slavery is never erased when the African diaspora is mentioned, whether in the old world or the new. Within this paradoxical dispensation, the new African diaspora must be conceived as the aftermath of a global migration crisis.² While studies³ addressing new international migration patterns of ethnic groups into the United States, such as the cases of Asian-Americans, Latinos, Sino-Americans, etc. are on the rise, only a few⁴ address African immigrants. This is the context in which this book is significant.

While a few studies have attempted to expose the emerging transmigrational trends in the 80s and 90s, such as John Arthur’s Invisible Sojourners: African Immigrant Diaspora in the United States (2000), Toyin Falola’s focus on African intellectuals in a changing world order—as in Nationalism and African Intellectuals (2001)—and Lawrence Okafor’s Recent African Immigrants to the USA (2003) in which he proposes recipes for survival and success in the United States, no other study has come close to the diversity and comprehensiveness African Minorities in the New World, especially in its intellectual scope, cogency, and interdisciplinary orientation. Broadly framed as a dialogue between the implied antithesis of the diaspora of slavery, the diaspora of colonialism, and the voluntary diaspora to the United States, Canada, and Latin America, the main arguments of African Minorities in the New World may be summed up as follows:

i. That the exigency of migration has significant unintended consequences.

ii. That any displacement from a ‘comfort zone’ triggers survival mechanisms.

iii. That there is a correlation between economic gain and brain drain.

iv. That voluntary migration implies hopes, dreams, and a sense of peace among African immigrants.

v. That there is a subtle relationship between the dynamics of Atlantic slavery and the unintended consequences faced by African immigrants in terms of reverse patterns of postmodern migration from Africa.

vi. That migrant African professionals in the United States see their ‘displacement’ more as an opportunity for professional development than loss of patriotism.

vii. That the implications for US African policy can lead to an improved partnership between the United States and Africa, through productive dialogue between local and international development agencies.

viii. That the processes of adaptation and integration for African immigrants must be studied and analyzed from an interdisciplinary perspective to highlight the journey to citizenship not necessarily as the attainment of the ‘American dream’ alone, but also as the possibility to contribute to an Africa that from which the migrants voluntarily departed due to economic or political exigency.

ix. That such a study must involve the entire African community, located in major American cities (New York, Chicago, Washington, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, etc.) as well as in the traditional American South.

x. That the refugee situation as well as the economic and political crises in Africa have a direct bearing on African immigration to the USA, and must also be factored into the discussion of how the first generation of “new African Americans” (“new minorities”) will be received or is being received, such as the election of Barack Obama (Kenya) to the US Senate in 2004.

The edited volume has been prepared as both a scholarly book and as a reader in undergraduate and graduate courses. In its three-part division, it groups under thematic clusters the main issues of African immigration in the New World, especially in the United States and Canada. The first part brings together four chapters addressing “Negotiating Citizenship and Cultural Identities.” Combining issues of nation-building, nationalism, religion, dislocation, resettlement, and new identity formations, this part emphasizes the imperative of negotiation in a new setting where family and kinship networks are disrupted, re-defined, and re-imagined. The second part, “African Refugees and Policy Implications,” brings together five chapters that address policy issues regarding refugees, migrant health-care workers, and the relationship between migrancy and the American educational system. In essence, this section raises issues of adaptation, human, and economic costs of migration for the hosting communities, countries, as well as African immigrants. The last part, “Paradoxes of (Im)migration and Exile” highlights the tensions and contradictions faced by African immigrants in their process of integration within American society. The three chapters passionately discuss how stereotypical images in the media, perceived discrimination and a sense of being marooned in a shifting and floating state of citizenship and alienation can be a matter of concern leading to some forms of activism and discourses of self-recuperation. While this book has focused primarily on new trans-Atlantic African migration, its constructive-dialogic model also serves the comparative interests of other “new migrant minorities” in the United States in the era of globalization and transnational capitalism.

NEW AFRICAN MIGRATION: HISTORY, PATTERNS, AND THEORY

A new cadre of African immigrants are finding themselves in the New World—mostly well educated, high-income earning professionals, and belonging to the category termed “African brain drain,” they constitute the antinomy of those Africans who were forcibly removed from Africa during slavery. Along with this sense of freedom and voluntary migration comes a paradox: that of living in two worlds and negotiating the pleasures and agonies that come with living in exile. In order to understand fully the nature of this complexity, we must draw from multidisciplinary frameworks and variables. While there is no agreement on the best approach to understand or explain migration and its consequences, a number of questions⁵ and methodologies do facilitate the possibility of a theoretical framing. These questions are:

1. What is the impact of migration on cultural change and ethnic identity?

2. What is the impact of migration on population change?

3. What explanation can be provided for the wish to migrate, and its consequences?

4. What approaches are best to understand the experience of the immigrant?

5. What is the impact of immigration laws on the immigrant?

6. Why is it difficult for the state to control immigration?

7. What is meant by immigrant incorporation?

While not exhaustive, these questions provide a starting point for theories and hypotheses on the new African immigration. Some of the questions not addressed here are the impact of education for children and women as part of the decision to stay on, the role of perceived or real discrimination, the push-pull dynamics that often compel some immigrants to consider returning to Africa, and finally, the wave of implantation of religious entities and communities as a form of coping strategies for those who have considered the United States as a home in exile. These other questions, which are fully addressed in this book, make for a more comprehensive analysis of the state of new African migration.

Migration brings about the hyphenated self, that is, the old self versus the newly formed or emerging self. Such a state of flux and of trauma brings about a psychological crisis of identity and of consciousness. On the one hand, the immigrant is still clinging on to the old identity; in this case, the African, while at the same time, he/she is obliged to assimilate cultural values and social conditionings of the United States that make integration more feasible. Ultimately, the levels of flexibility, conformism, and resistance determine whether assimilation will happen or if a compromise will be reached. The impact of migration on cultural change and ethnic identity may then be theorized as a permanent state of crisis, negotiation if not confusion. In order to maintain some level of psychological balance, the immigrant is obliged to immerse himself or herself in those African rituals and ceremonies that help to maintain connections with Africa. On the other hand, in order for the new African immigrant to function properly in the United States, a coping strategy is necessitated—that is, an awareness of American cultural values, an embrace of it when convenient, and total indifference when immaterial to survival. A problematic example is the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. It is not impossible, for example, for an African immigrant to attend a rally in honor of the Civil Rights leader and later rush to an African naming ceremony or an African wedding event the same day without any feeling of contradiction or betrayal. The holiday is significant to all Americans, more so African Americans, and even to the African immigrant. Yet, because “charity begins at home,” the African immigrant will also ensure his or her rituals or ceremonies are maintained even as a form of resistance and survival.

The impact of migration on population change is both a demographic and historical question. Since the 1500s, Africans have been uprooted from their homelands to the Americas to work on plantations as slaves. As James Arthur points out in Invisible Sojourners, the slave trade brought “between ten and twenty million Africans”. Between 1891 and 1900, there were only three hundred and fifty, due to abolition of slavery. Between 1900 and 1950, over thirty one thousand African immigrants migrated. Arthur surmises that regardless of the period when they came to the United States, “Africans have contributed immensely to shaping America” (2). In the new African immigration wave, thousands of Africans have migrated to the United States in search of a better life. In recent migration patterns, African immigrants are coming primarily from Nigeria, South Africa, Liberia, Ghana, Egypt, Kenya, Cape Verde, and the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea). According to April Gordon’s data (1998), Nigerians alone constitute 17 percent of the African immigration population followed by Ethiopia with 13 percent. Since most new African immigrants settle in urban areas such as New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Atlanta and Houston, they are driven to succeed and compete to the extent that they may be said to have become more economically successful than when they were in Africa. Numerically, the number of Afr...