The Making of the Second Diaspora: On the Recent African Immigrant Community in the United States of America.

Abstract

American society is increasingly becoming more diverse and multicultural. This diversity has been shaped to a large extent by recent waves of immigrants from the Third World nations. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 17.1 million immigrants (including 1.6 million unauthorized aliens and 1.1 million Special Agricultural Workers who were granted permanent resident status under the provisions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986) were admitted into the country between 1971 and 1995. Of those admitted, most were from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and to a lesser degree Africa. Furthermore, the Bureau points out that during the 1990s, the nation's foreign-born population increased nearly four times faster than that of the native-born population. It is therefore not surprising that Martin and Widgren (2002) have reported that the foreign-born population in the United States rose by about 8 million during the 1990s to reach 28 million in 2000. As a result of the increased immigration coupled with the changing geographic origins of recent immigrants, the scholarly community has focused its attention on understanding the experiences of this new wave of immigrants (Hirschman, 1983; Bouvier, 1991; Lieberson, and Waters, 1988; Portes and Zhou, 1992; Zhou, 1997; Anechta, 1998). Although recent studies have provided significant insight on the new wave of immigrants, most of the existing studies focus on immigrants from the major sending geographic regions of Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Mexico. Thus, while immigrants from these world regions have received much scholarly attention, few studies examine immigrants from places such as Africa (for some exceptions see Peil, 1995; Takougang, 1995; Dodoo, 1997; Kamya, 1997; Perry, 1997; Gordon, 1997; Lobo and Salvo, 2001). The case of Africans is more compelling because Rumbaut (1994) has reported that on a regional basis, the flow from Asia and Africa grew faster in the 1980s than ever before in U.S. history. My primary objective in this paper is to contribute to the literature on recent immigrants by documenting the experiences of Africans in the United States. In addition to examining the trends and pattern of emigration, the study also documents the settlement patterns (geographic distribution) of these new arrivals, their socio-demographic characteristics, and also their economic situations in this country. By focusing on the African immigrant community, my other goal is to shed some light on the diversity of this community. This is important because previous studies that have included African samples have tended to treat this group of immigrants as a homogenous entity (Dodoo, 1997). Because of this analytical strategy, not much is known about the variations and diversity of experiences of these recent African immigrants. Background Since the end of European colonial rule, many Africans have left the continent for other parts of the world. Ricca (1989) has noted that during the 1980s, over 10 percent of Africa's total population of about 350 million people was living in another country. While most of these people were refugees and these population movements occurred primarily within the African continent, during the same period there was a steady but significant exodus out of Africa. Unfortunately, data on international migration of Africans are not readily available, making it difficult to assess the extent and magnitude of these intercontinental movements. The limited data that exists, however, indicate a sizable and growing African emigrant presence in many parts of the world, including Britain, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Australia, and the United States (U.S. Bureau of Census, 1990; Russell, 1993; Killingray, 1994; Peil, 1995; Hamilton, 1997, ter Haar, 1998; Martin and Widgren, 2002). In the United States alone, the 1990 census enumerated about 470,000 Africans. …

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