Immigration and the Political Economy of Home: West Indian Brooklyn and American Indian Minneapolis, 1945-1992

Abstract

In Immigration and the Political Economy of Home, Rachel Buff undertakes an unusual comparison between West Indian immigrants in New York City and Native Americans in the upper Midwest. Although this juxtaposition is atypical, Buff argues that the two groups display interesting similarities. Immigration—or, as she neatly phrases it, “im/migration”—is the common thread linking the groups. In both, notable histories of migration, rooted in capitalist/colonialist hegemony, have led to lasting problems of adjustment after settling in new homelands. Basically, these problems revolve around the racialization of West Indians and Native Americans, their economic status, and the fact of transnationalism, which dynamically links old and new homelands. Moreover, the two groups have evolved similar mechanisms for coping with their im/migration-re-lated problems, and Buff argues that ethnic festivals—Carnival in the case of West Indians and Native American powwows—are of particular significance. By conceptualizing, organizing, |and participating in these festivals, West Indians and Native Americans create new communities and identities through which they adjust to the challenges of migration.