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Article Excerpt
Stretching back to a tradition established by the Chicago School of sociology, early immigration scholarship sought to explain and predict the Americanization of immigrants and their children as they progressed toward assimilation into the host society (Park and Burgess 1921; Warner and Stole 1945; Gordon 1964). In the post-1965 era of predominantly non-European migration to the United States, social scientists began to call these assimilation models into question, and many scholars shifted their research to examine how immigrants and their children accommodate the norms of the host society while maintaining strong ethnic ties (Gibson 1988; Rumbaut 1994; Portes 1996; Zhou and Bankston 1998; Min and Park 1999; Arthur 2000; Phinney and others 2001; Chacko 2003b). However, rather than focusing primarily on the tension between ethnic maintenance and the pressure to Americanize, this article takes an alternative approach, similar to the work of the European scholars Francis Ianni and Matti Simila, by exploring how migration experiences reshape ethnic and national identities themselves and how the context of the local host community influences these processes (Ianni 1987; Simila 1988). Ianni asserted that Italians migrating to America at the turn of the twentieth century brought with them strong ethnic identities based on native regions, provinces, or villages but did not acquire an Italian identity until after they settled in the United States. Simila argued that explaining how social context shaped Yugoslavian and Turkish ethnicity in Sweden was just as important as understanding how these immigrants integrated into Swedish society. Likewise, this article demonstrates how a strong national identity previously unexpressed in the home country can emerge in the context of the host country.
Social scientists have used two theoretical paradigms to explain ethnicity. The first of these paradigms assumed that ethnicity was essential; that is, inherent or a given (Geertz 1963). Harold Isaacs argued that ethnicity "consists of the ready-made set of endowments and identifications which every individual shares with others from the moment of birth by the chance of the family into which he is born at that given time in that given place" (1975,31). Pierre Van den Berghe went a step farther by delving into sociobiology to come up with his explanation that ethnicity and race are rooted in the instinctual impulse to protect and preserve one's own kind, which he called the "biology of nepotism" (1978).
The essentialist paradigm went unchallenged until the late 1960s, when Fredrik Barth first argued that ethnicity is not a given but, rather, is negotiated within social situations (1969). However, a significant paradigm shift away from essentialism and toward a situational perspective did not occur until the 1980s, when a growing number of scholars began to examine ethnicity through the lens of the immigrant experience and sought to explain the malleability of ethnic identities (Hayano 1981; Omi and Winant 1986). With wide acceptance of the situational paradigm since the late 1980s, many immigration scholars have considered the influence of the larger social context, rather than just the immediate situation, in constructing ethnic identity (Simila 1988; Nagel 1994; Waters 1999; Phinney and others 2001; Chacko 2003b; Reitz 2003; Abbott 2006). Jean Phinney and her coauthors (2001), and Jeffrey Reitz (2003), for example, argued that the strength of immigrants' ethnic identities varies depending on the host society's support for ethnic maintenance and pressure to assimilate. Similarly, this article employs a social constructionist perspective to illustrate how ethnic and national identities are shaped in the transition from home to host country. The influence of contextual variations under consideration in this study is the extent to which newcomers have contact with coethnics/conationals and access to material and nonmaterial culture in their host community.
THE NEW AFRICAN DIASPORA: AN EMERGING LITERATURE
With the rapid growth of immigrants, refugees, and students coming to the United States from Africa since 1990 (DHS 2007), research into the experiences of African newcomers has emerged in earnest in the twenty-first century. (1) Scholars are addressing a wide range of issues, including the causes of migration (Arthur 2000; Nyamwange 2002; Konadu-Agyemang and Takyi 2006; Okome 2006); the distribution of Africans across the U.S. (Arthur 2000; Takyi and Boate 2006); residential patterns within urban areas (Friedman and others 2005; Hume and Hardwick 2005; Chacko and Cheung 2006; N'Diaye and N'Diaye 2006; Scott 2006); ethnic landscapes (Chacko 2003a; Scott 2006); the roles of ethnic and national associations and other cultural institutions in the host country (Arthur 2000; Hume and Hardwick 2005; Abbott 2006; Amoako 2006; Kwakye-Nuako 2006); and transnational ties between immigrants and their home countries (Nyamwange 2002; Abbott 2006).
The tension between maintaining ethnic identity and adapting to the host society is a common theme within this emerging body of literature. John Arthur concluded from his extensive survey of 650 Africans residing in four U.S. cities that African immigrants engage in the host society selectively in order to achieve educational and economic goals but that, among the first generation, cultural integration is not important (2000). Rather, associations based on clan, hometown, ethnic, national, or religious affiliations serve as the social networks in which African immigrants, refugees, and sojourners can access a wide range of resources in order to adapt to the host society while maintaining their cultural identities (Arthur 2000; Hume and Hardwick 2005; Abbott 2006). This is illustrated in Charles Abbott's detailed description of the important role of hometown associations as mutual-aid societies for Nigerians abroad and ethnic associations based on Yoruba, Igbo, or Tiv identities, for example, as forums for expressing cultural identity and solidarity (2006). In Portland, Oregon, Susan Hardwick and I found that refugees prefer to access resources provided by their own Somali and Eritrean community centers, for instance, rather than those offered by government or government-supported agencies (Hardwick and Hume 2005). Newcomers in particular appreciate the "one-stop-shopping" approach to services that helps them navigate or bypass host society bureaucracies and provides them with a safe place to vent their frustrations about the struggles of adjusting to life in a new country (pp. 194-195).
Immigrant associations and institutions also seek to counterbalance Americanizing influences on their children through cultural programs and languages classes for young people (Chacko 2003b; Hardwick and Hume 2005). Elizabeth Chacko noted that both immigrant parents and local institutions, such as ethnic churches and cultural societies, play a crucial role in transmitting ethnic culture and pride to the next generation growing up in their parents' adopted country (2003b). She found that 1.5- and second-generation Ethiopians in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area continued to maintain their ethnic identity: 80 percent of those who arrived in the United States as children described themselves as "Ethiopian," and 100 percent of the second generation called themselves "Ethiopian American" (pp. 500-501). However, Chacko also observed, despite parents' efforts, the second generation's preference for English over their parents' native languages both inside and outside the home, as well as their sometimes superficial understanding of cultural traditions.
Prior research directly or indirectly speaks to the recognition that ethnic identity is expressed and maintained in host communities with sufficiently large migrant populations (Chacko 2003a; Abbott 2006; Amoako 2006; Chacko and Cheung 2006; N'Diaye and N'Diaye 2006; Scott 2006). Earl Scott, for example, observes that, as the Liberian population grew in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota, and formed a more concentrated community, ethnic expression strengthened. Elizabeth Chacko and Ivan Cheung also note the important role of ethnic enclaves for cultural expression and preservation, such as in Los Angeles' "Little Ethiopia." But what happens to ethnic identity and expression when large concentrations of coethnics are not present in the host community? My comparison of two distinctly different places, one of which is a relatively small city with a limited immigrant population,...
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