Winner of the 2020 Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Social Demography Honorable Mention for the 2020 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association​​​​​​​ Over the last four decades, immigration from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa to the U. S. has increased rapidly. In several states, African immigrants are now major drivers of growth in the black population. While social scientists and commentators have noted that these black immigrants’ social and economic outcomes often differ from those of their native-born counterparts, few studies have carefully analyzed the mechanisms that produce these disparities. In Immigration and the Remaking of Black America, sociologist and demographer Tod Hamilton shows how immigration is reshaping black America. He weaves together interdisciplinary scholarship with new data to enhance our understanding of the causes of socioeconomic stratification among both the native-born and newcomers. Hamilton demonstrates that immigration from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa is driven by selective migration, meaning that newcomers from these countries tend to have higher educational attainment than those who stay behind. As a result, they arrive in the U.S. with some advantages over native-born blacks, and, in some cases, over whites. He also shows the importance of historical context: prior to the Civil Rights Movement, black immigrants’ socioeconomic outcomes resembled native-born blacks’ much more closely, regardless of their educational attainment in their country of origin. Today, however, certain groups of black immigrants have better outcomes than native-born black Americans—such as lower unemployment rates and higher rates of homeownership—in part because they immigrated at a time of expanding opportunities for minorities and women in general. Hamilton further finds that rates of marriage and labor force participation among native-born blacks that move away from their birth states resemble those of many black immigrants, suggesting that some disparities within the black population stem from processes associated with migration, rather than from nativity alone. Hamilton argues that failing to account for this diversity among the black population can lead to incorrect estimates of the social progress made by black Americans and the persistence of racism and discrimination. He calls for future research on racial inequality to disaggregate different black populations. By richly detailing the changing nature of black America, Immigration and the Remaking of Black America helps scholars and policymakers to better understand the complexity of racial disparities in the twenty-first century.

This book examines the well-being and development of children in black immigrant families (most with parents from Africa and the Caribbean). There are 1.3 million such children in the United States. While children in these families account for 11 percent of all black children in America and represent a rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population, they remain largely ignored by researchers. To address this important gap in knowledge, the Migration Policy Institute's (MPI) National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy embarked on a project to study these children from birth to age ten. Chapters include analysis of the changing immigration flow to the United States; the role of family and school relationships in the well-being of African immigrant children; exploration of the effects of ethnicity and foreign-born status on infant health; and parenting behavior, health, and cognitive development among children in black immigrant families. Contributors include Randy Capps (MPI), Dylan Conger (George Washington University), Cati Coe (Rutgers University-Camden), Danielle A. Crosby (University of North Carolina-Greensboro), Angela Valdovinos D'Angelo (University of Chicago), Elizabeth Debraggio (New York University), Fabienne Doucet (Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development), Sarah Dryden-Peterson (University of Toronto), Angelica S. Dunbar (University of North Carolina-Greensboro), Tiffany L. Green (Virginia Commonwealth University), Megan Hatch (George Washington University), Donald J. Hernandez (Hunter College and City University of New York), Margot Jackson (Brown University), Kristen McCabe (MPI), Lauren Rich (University of Chicago), Amy Ellen Schwartz (New York University), Julie Spielberger (University of Chicago), and Kevin J. A. Thomas (Pennsylvania State University).

Black Immigrants in the United States paints a picture of the black immigrant population, where they come from, what languages and histories they bring with them to the U.S., and discusses their challenges as well as their triumphs.

This study of Boston's West Indian immigrants examines the identities, goals, and aspirations of two generations of black migrants from the British-held Caribbean who settled in Boston between 1900 and 1950. Describing their experience among Boston's American-born blacks and in the context of the city's immigrant history, the book charts new conceptual territory. The Other Black Bostonians explores the pre-migration background of the immigrants, work and housing, identity, culture and community, activism and social mobility. What emerges is a detailed picture of black immigrant life. Johnson's work makes a contribution to the study of the black diaspora as it charts the history of this first wave of Caribbean immigrants.

The latest book from the Immigrant Learning Center addresses some of the most prominent immigrant groups and the most striking episodes of nativism in American history. The introduction covers American immigration history and law as they have developed since the late eighteenth century. The essays that follow--authored by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists--examine the experiences of a large variety of populations to discover patterns in both immigration and anti-immigrant sentiment. The numerous cases reveal much about the immigrants' motivations for leaving their home countries, the obstacles they face to advancement and inclusion, their culture and occupational trends in the United States, their assimilation and acculturation, and their accomplishments and contributions to American life. Contributors Wayne Cornelius, University of California, San Diego * Anna Gressel-Bacharan, independent scholar * Nancy Foner, Hunter College * David W. Haines, George Mason University * Luciano J. Iorizo, SUNY Oswego * Alexander Kitroeff, Haverford College * Erika Lee, University of Minnesota * Deborah Dash Moore, University of Michigan * David M. Reimers, New York University * William G. Ross, Cumberland School of Law * Robert Zecker, Saint Francis Xavier University Distributed for George Mason University Press

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize–winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties. Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.

An illustrated chronicle of the migrations--forced and voluntary--into, out of, and within the United States that have created the current black population.