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.

Multifaceted analyses of the African diaspora in Europe

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.

This publication does not just mark the presence of black people in Europe, but brings research to a new stage by making connections across Europe through the experience of work and labour. The working experience for black peoples in Europe was not just confined to ports and large urban areas – often the place black people are located in the imagination of the European map both today and historically. Work took place in small towns, villages and on country estates. Until the 1800s enslaved Africans would have worked alongside free blacks and their white peers. How were these labour relations realised be it on a country estate or a town house? How did this experience translate into the labour movements of the twentieth century? These are some of the questions the essays in this collection address, contributing to new understandings of European life both historically and today. This book was originally published as a special issue of Immigrants and Minorities.

Patrick Manning follows the multiple routes that brought Africans and people of African descent into contact with one another and with Europe, Asia, and the Americas. In joining these stories, he shows how the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean fueled dynamic interactions among black communities and cultures and how these patterns resembled those of a number of connected diasporas concurrently taking shaping across the globe. Manning begins in 1400 and traces the connections that enabled Africans to mutually identify and hold together as a global community. He tracks discourses on race, changes in economic circumstance, the evolving character of family life, and the growth of popular culture. He underscores the profound influence that the African diaspora had on world history and demonstrates the inextricable link between black migration and the rise of modernity. Inclusive and far-reaching, The African Diaspora proves that the advent of modernity cannot be fully understood without taking the African peoples and the African continent into account.

The New York Times reports that since 1990 more Africans have voluntarily relocated to the United States and Canada than had been forcibly brought here before the slave trade ended in 1807. The key reason for these migrations has been the collapse of social, political, economic, and educational structures in their home countries, which has driven Africans to seek security and self-realization in the West. This lively and timely collection of essays takes a look at the new immigrant experience. It traces the immigrants' progress from expatriation to arrival and covers the successes as well as problems they have encountered as they establish their lives in a new country. The contributors, most immigrants themselves, use their firsthand experiences to add clarity, honesty, and sensitivity to their discussions of the new African diaspora.

Africans in the Americas presents a comparative and comprehensive survey of the African diaspora in the Western Hemisphere from the arrival of the first Africans to contemporary times. Organized chronologically, the book begins with a review of the early history of Africa and details its relationship with Europe. Continuing with a comparative history of the slave trade throughout the Western Hemisphere, it then explores the progress of the African experience through emancipation, specifically in the Caribbean, Brazil, Latin America and the United States. It concludes by analyzing race, economics and politics in modern times. With its broad view of African-American history and its portrayal of the roles of Africans and their descendants in the development of both North and South America, the book confirms the diaspora as an integral part of world history. Africans in the Americas affirms Africa's vital, enduring contribution to the Americas and to the global community. (Back cover).