Countering anti-Blackness with migrant solidarity: Black and Caribbean linkages through racial struggle

Abstract

ABSTRACT Black Caribbean migrants are uniquely positioned between multiple forms of negative racialization – that of their experiences with both anti-Black racism and xenophobia due to their immigrant status. Such positioning means that they may be subject to increased anti-Black and anti-migrant policing. In this paper, I argue that Black Caribbean migrants’ experiences with race in the United States can and should be interwoven with research and advocacy focused on the increasing criminalization of migrants or, Crimmigration research. I use archived newspapers, fliers, and pamphlets produced by Caribbean activists to show how they not only recognized these two-fold processes and but also reframed Black identity and politics to include anti-Black and anti-migrant discrimination as linked causes. I contend that their advocacy and concern for Afro-descent migrants, African Americans, and migrants more broadly reveal the expansiveness of Black politics through the bringing together of both Black and migrant concerns.