This book systematically documents the experiences of Ghanaian communities in North America as a case study of the new African migration. The rapid increase in the number of Ghanaians lawfully admitted as permanent residents since 1980 offers an opportunity to investigate their immigrant journeys, their membership in the larger society and the expression of their individual and collective social identities. Using original empirical data from the US and Canada as well as comparative material from the UK and the Netherlands, the author also investigates the relationship between these new African migrants and the native-born black diaspora in the US. This study balances theoretical insight with policy implications, using the case-study as a lens not just on African migration but also on significant conceptual themes in migration studies including transnationalism, identity, social networks, remittances, economic integration and citizenship.

Compared to migration from other continents, the voluntary migration of people of African ancestry to America is a recent phenomenon. However, migration from Africa has accelerated dramatically in the last two decades and the group termed by the popular media 'America's newest immigrants' now has a very strong African component. Despite this, existing literature tends to focus first on European migration and more recently on migration from Asia and Latin America. The experiences of new African immigrants living in America have yet to be systematically documented. This book focuses on the Ghanaian community in the US and Canada as a case study of the new African migration. The rapid increase in the number of Ghanaians lawfully admitted as permanent residents since 1980 offers an opportunity to investigate their immigrant journeys, the ways they seek membership in the larger society and how they express their individual and collective social identities.

African Diaspora Identities provides insights into the complex transnational processes involved in shaping the migratory identities of African immigrants. It seeks to understand the durability of these African transnational migrant identities and their impact on inter-minority group relationships. John A. Arthur demonstrates that the identities African immigrants construct often transcends country-specific cultures and normative belief systems. He illuminates the fact that these transnational migrant identities are an amalgamation of multiple identities formed in varied social transnational settings. The United States has become a site for the cultural formations, manifestations, and contestations of the newer identities that these immigrants seek to depict in cross-cultural and global settings. Relying mostly on their strong human capital resources (education and family), Africans are devising creative, encompassing, and robust ways to position and reposition their new identities. In combining their African cultural forms and identities with new roles, norms, and beliefs that they imbibe in the United States and everywhere else they have settled, Africans are redefining what it means to be black in a race-, ethnicity-, and color-conscious American society.

Four overarching themes underscore the essays in this book. These are the creation of African diaspora community and institutional structures; the structured and shared relationships among African immigrants, host, and homeland societies; the construction and negotiation of diaspora spaces, and domains (racial, ethnic, class consciousness, including identity politics; and finally African migrant economic integration, occupational, and labor force roles and statuses and impact on host societies. Each of the thematic themes has been chosen with one specific goal in mind: to depict and represent the critical components in the reconstitution of the African diaspora in international migration. We contextualized the themes in the African diaspora as a dynamic process involving what Paul Zeleza called the "diasporization" of African immigrant settlement communities in global transnational spaces. These themes also reflect the diversities inherent in the diaspora communities and call attention to the fluid and dynamic boundaries within which Africans create, diffuse, and engage host and home societies. In this context, the themes outlined in this book embody the diaspora tapestries woven by the immigrants to center African social and cultural forms in their host societies and communities. Collectively, the themes represent pathways for the elucidation of understanding African immigrant territorialization. Our purpose is to map out and identify the sources and sites for the contestations of the myriad of cultural manifestations of the new African diaspora and its depictions within the totality of the shared meanings and appropriations of the essences of African-ness or African blackness. The vulnerabilities, struggles, threats (internal or external to the immigrant community), and opportunities emanating from the diasporic relationships that these immigrants create are accentuated within the nexus of African global migrations. We view the African diaspora in terms of spatial and geographic constructions and propagations of African cultural identities and institutional forms in global domains whose boundaries are not static but rather dynamic, complex, and multidimensional. Simply stated, we approach the African diaspora from a perspective that incorporates the historical, as well as contemporary postmodern constructions of the Africa's dispersed communities and their associated transnational identity forms.

There are only a few studies that analyze the complex relationship between Migration and development in Africa. The book presents the main trends in African migration since the last two decades. It analyzes the major migration trends, the various migration hubs across the continent and the underlying factors explaining the changing nature of migration across the continent. A few of the chapters in the book examine the phenomenon of migration from a national perspective by focusing on migration trends in countries such as Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya, and Nigeria. Two chapters examine the migration links between Africa and Europe with one of them focusing on the political links between Ghana and the Netherlands while the other focuses on economic exchanges between the Cameroonian diaspora in Germany and selected groups and organizations in Cameroon. The uniqueness of this book lies in the varied disciplinary viewpoints used by the authors in explaining the phenomenon of migration and development in Africa. The authors are specialists in the fields of sociology, anthropology, geography, history, philosophy and migration studies. Examining migration from so many different perspectives enriches the analysis and brings in new insights that would otherwise have been missing with the use of a single disciplinary perspective. The book recommends the need for policy coordination by national governments of both origin and destination countries to manage the size and composition of migrants. Most migrant-receiving countries prefer to receive professionals and persons with the required skills and training while keeping out the bulk of untrained and lowly-skilled persons. The result of this is that most migrants leave their countries and enter their destination countries illegally, swelling the numbers of undocumented immigrants.

This book examines the influences of social class and inequality structures on migration in Africa using information from Ghana. As the country achieves moderate to significant economic gains driven (in part) by the country's diaspora communities, the desire to migrate has intensified. Migration is now synonymous with social mobility and self-improvement. It has been found that existing class and status inequalities are analytically inseparable from the social and cultural processes underpinning the motivations behind Ghanaian migration. Migrant class and socioeconomic attributes are closely intertwined, reinforcing and operating at every level of the migration decision-making to influence the motivation to migrate, the type and form of migration, the direction of the migration, its timing, and ultimately the outcomes and expectations that migrants associate with their decision to migrate. From a historical and contemporary perspective, this book argues that power and class-based structural relationships are significant components in understanding how migratory diasporas shape and are shaped in turn by social class and inequality. The social class identities that Ghanaian immigrants manifest in the United States are often based on immigrant formulations and importation of class dynamics from the home country. These identities are then transformed in the countries of destination and replayed or relived back home, thereby creating multiple class identities that are powerful forces in inducing social changes. In essence, migrant social class attributes formed before and post-migration is significant because it holds the possibilities of transforming the social structures of migrant-sending countries. As migrants return home and seek reintegration into the body polity of the home society, conflicts emanating from changes in their class dynamics may hinder or promote sociocultural and economic development. Hence, the imperative of the central government is to understand and incorporate into national development planning the social class characteristics of its citizens who are leaving, as well as those who are returning.

Four overarching themes underscore the essays in this book. These are the creation of African diaspora community and institutional structures; the structured and shared relationships among African immigrants, host, and homeland societies; the construction and negotiation of diaspora spaces, and domains (racial, ethnic, class consciousness, including identity politics; and finally African migrant economic integration, occupational, and labor force roles and statuses and impact on host societies. Each of the thematic themes has been chosen with one specific goal in mind: to depict and represent the critical components in the reconstitution of the African diaspora in international migration. We contextualized the themes in the African diaspora as a dynamic process involving what Paul Zeleza called the "diasporization" of African immigrant settlement communities in global transnational spaces. These themes also reflect the diversities inherent in the diaspora communities and call attention to the fluid and dynamic boundaries within which Africans create, diffuse, and engage host and home societies. In this context, the themes outlined in this book embody the diaspora tapestries woven by the immigrants to center African social and cultural forms in their host societies and communities. Collectively, the themes represent pathways for the elucidation of understanding African immigrant territorialization. Our purpose is to map out and identify the sources and sites for the contestations of the myriad of cultural manifestations of the new African diaspora and its depictions within the totality of the shared meanings and appropriations of the essences of African-ness or African blackness. The vulnerabilities, struggles, threats (internal or external to the immigrant community), and opportunities emanating from the diasporic relationships that these immigrants create are accentuated within the nexus of African global migrations. We view the African diaspora in terms of spatial and geographic constructions and propagations of African cultural identities and institutional forms in global domains whose boundaries are not static but rather dynamic, complex, and multidimensional. Simply stated, we approach the African diaspora from a perspective that incorporates the historical, as well as contemporary postmodern constructions of the Africa's dispersed communities and their associated transnational identity forms.

African Diaspora Identities provides insights into the complex transnational processes involved in shaping the migratory identities of African immigrants. It seeks to understand the durability of these African transnational migrant identities and their impact on inter-minority group relationships. John A. Arthur demonstrates that the identities African immigrants construct often transcends country-specific cultures and normative belief systems. He illuminates the fact that these transnational migrant identities are an amalgamation of multiple identities formed in varied social transnational settings. The United States has become a site for the cultural formations, manifestations, and contestations of the newer identities that these immigrants seek to depict in cross-cultural and global settings. Relying mostly on their strong human capital resources (education and family), Africans are devising creative, encompassing, and robust ways to position and reposition their new identities. In combining their African cultural forms and identities with new roles, norms, and beliefs that they imbibe in the United States and everywhere else they have settled, Africans are redefining what it means to be black in a race, ethnicity, and color-conscious American society.

The New African Diaspora in North America brings together sociologists, social workers, geographers, economists, anthropologists and others to explore the African immigrant experience from a multi-disciplinary perspective. The contributors shed light on the factors behind the increasing wave in African immigration to the U.S. and Canada, the socio-economic characteristics of African immigrants, their spatial distribution, obstacles, and contributions. Despite their increasing presence, African immigrant groups in the U.S. and Canada have engendered relatively little scholarly research on their pre- and post-migration experience. This collection helps fill that void, and will be valuable reading for anyone interested in African Diaspora studies.

Arthur documents the role that Africa's best and brightest play in the new migration of population from less developed countries to the United States. He highlights how Africans negotiate and forge relationships among themselves and with the members of the host society. Multiple aspects of the African immigrants' social world, family patterns, labor force participation, and formation of cultural identities are also examined. He lays out the long term aspirations of the immigrants within the context of the geo-political, economic, and social conditions in Africa.

Ultimately, Arthur explains why people leave Africa, what they encounter, their interactions with the host society, and their attitudes about American social institutions. He also provides information about the social changes and policies that African countries need to adopt to stem the tide, or even reverse, the African brain drain. A detailed analysis for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with African and immigration studies and contemporary American society.