Ethnic And National Identities Of Africans In The United States*

Abstract

. The emerging scholarly literature on contemporary African migration to the United States has primarily focused on populations concentrated in large urban areas. In contrast, this study considers the experiences of African university students living in two distinctly different places, Eugene, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., to examine how the context of the local host community shapes ethnic and national identities. Specific contextual variations under consideration are the extent to which newcomers have contact with coethnics/conationals and access to material and nonmaterial culture. Results based on thirty‐six in‐depth interviews show that, despite easy access to coethnics, some students in the Washington metropolitan area readily identified with conationals. Likewise, in the absence of coethnics in Eugene, many students described strengthening national identities; and, in the absence of conationals, they have constructed panethnic African identities. Additional research into the experiences of newcomers in various host‐community contexts is needed.

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