Newly arrived from Cuba, Angelica, Dora, Marina, and Damaris attempted to negotiate new surroundings and immigrant identities, building a sense of home for themselves and their families. Data from qualitative interviews, classroom observations, and focus group conversations revealed hopes that by acquiring English language skills, they would improve their quality of life in their new country. Struggles included personal factors situated in their pasts in Cuba and their new surrounds in the Miami Cuban exile enclave, contexts that were further complicated by uncertain expectations of new lives in Miami and the overwhelming task of learning a new language at a local adult education center.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
310 p., Relates current theoretical debates about hospitality and cosmopolitanism to the actual conditions of refugees. Examines literary works by such writers as Edwidge Danticat, Nikl Payen, Kamau Brathwaite, Francisco Goldman, Julia Alvarez, Ivonne Lamazares, and Cecilia Rodriguez Milans, Jacques Derrida, Edouard Glissant, and Wilson Harris.
60 p., Explores the legal means by which victims of natural disasters could qualify as refugees and thus benefit from the power of migration as a tool for disaster recovery.
Explores the challenges facing immigrant families as they adapt to the United States, as well as their many strengths, most notably high levels of marriage and family commitment. The authors examine differences by country of origin in the human capital, legal status, and social resources of immigrant families and describe their varied living arrangements, focusing on children of Mexican, Southeast Asian, and black Caribbean origin.
"I'm from the United States," said Dr. [Claire-Marie Cyprien], a 43-year-old anesthesiologist who three days earlier had dropped her practice in Orlando, Fla., to rush to Haiti, the land of her birth. "And I'm a doctor." For generations, Haiti's chaos, corruption and poverty pushed out many of its most talented people. Haiti has a population of about nine million, but as many as two million more Haitians live abroad, about half a million of them in the U.S. The diaspora-Haitians refer to the émigrés as Haiti's "Tenth Province"-sends about $2 billion a year home, a sum equal to about 30% of the country's gross domestic product. Despite the money, émigrés have often been regarded warily by those who stayed behind. Emigration may offer a way to climb up or break out of Haiti's rigid class structure. But new wealth inspires jealousy, while distance from the motherland opens émigrés to accusations that they aren't as "authentic" as those who never left.
When the earthquake of 7.0 on the Richter scale struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, the forcibly displaced on and off the island were the object of emergency planning, but so too were the host populations in Haiti and the neighbouring Dominican Republic. This article seeks to examine the emergency response to the earthquake and ongoing challenges through the lens of critical mobilities, with special reference to forced migration island-wide. Who (men, women, boys and girls) is able to move, how, where, for how long and through which networks? What is the legal framework, if any, governing these movements? Who wants visibility and who prefers to move 'incognito', in the context, for example, of ambiguous migration policies in the Dominican Republic towards impoverished Haitian immigrants?
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
239 p., From 1791 to 1804, revolution on the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue sent thousands of free and enslaved people of African descent to the United States. Historians have largely viewed this migration as contributing to black community formation in cities like Philadelphia, and as evidence of revolutionary connections in an Atlantic World. This dissertation examines the experiences of these migrants as an example of competing identities among people of African descent, and argues that the emergence of an ethnic identity among black Saint-Dominguans, shaped by Roman Catholicism and French language, impeded assimilation into African-American communities.
At the same time, [Jesse Jackson] lamented what he described as the "disparity" in how the U.S. government treats Cuban and Haitian refugees. Jackson said while the U.S. readily welcomes Cuban refugees, it neglects Haitians. "When Haitian children's parents die at sea they are sent back," he said. "We subsidize Cubans to come to the United States, but we ship Haitians out...We should change our policy and measure human rights by one yardstick." "The Cuban immigrants are called political refugees, and they are welcomed in the United States," he said. "The Haitian immigrants are called economic refugees, and they are sent back...There is a distinction without a difference."
Ember,Carol R. (Author), Ember,Melvin (Author), and Skoggard,Ian A. (Author)
Format:
Monograph
Publication Date:
2004
Published:
New York: Academic/Plenum Kluwer
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
1242 p, Immigration is a topic that is as important among anthropologists as it is the general public. Almost every culture has experienced adaptation and assimilation when immigrating to a new country and culture
