Tod G.HamiltonImmigration and the Remaking of Black AmericaNew York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2019. 314 p. $35.00 (paper).

Abstract

Since 1965, when the Hart-Cellar Act eliminated the national origins quota system, Blacks from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa have experienced an easier time migrating to the United States. The last three decades of the twentieth century saw significant immigrant flows from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and other English-speaking Caribbean nations. Since 2000, more than half of black immigrants have come from African countries. By 2014, the number of black immigrants reached 4 million, 9.2 percent of the black population; more change is likely since 16 percent of black children now have immigrant parents. But Tod Hamilton, assistant professor of sociology at Princeton, does more than simply depict this compositional change. He directly addresses a controversial question surrounding this influx: why do black immigrants have better occupational, educational, and health outcomes than black Americans? Some have offered a “cultural” explanation for this differential: black Americans have a weaker work ethic than black immigrants. Others point to differential discrimination, and to the selectivity that comes with migration. Hamilton sets out to provide a methodologically and theoretically sophisticated answer to this question. First, he does note that migrants, whether international or internal, are a self-selected group. An extreme example can be found in Nigerian immigrants, 63 percent of whom had at least a bachelor's degree in 2014. And when Hamilton compares black immigrants to black American movers (those who live in a state different than that of their birth), he finds that socioeconomic differentials are significantly reduced, although not totally eliminated. He then looks at the possible impact of the time period when most black immigrants arrived in the United States: post-1965, after major civil-rights legislation had begun reducing the effects of institutionalized racism in schools, housing, and the workplace. When looking at 1910–1940 data for New York City, which had numerous black immigrants from the Caribbean at the time, Hamilton found little evidence that immigrants differed from the city's black population in measures of social well-being. These differentials come to the surface during the post-1965 period. Recent black immigrants never experienced the harsh racist system that many black Americans experienced: inferior education, segregated living arrangements, predatory policing, the consequences of which still affect black Americans’ life-chances. Also, recent black immigrants picked certain areas of the country in which to settle—they are 30 percent of the black population in the Northeast—and their economic and educational opportunities differ from black Americans accordingly. Through his systematic study of how race, migration, and nativity interact in black Americans lives, Hamilton has produced a more nuanced understanding of the achievement gaps existing between black immigrants and black Americans. His framework, based on careful choice of comparison groups, also provides a blueprint for research that might better understand the general achievement gap between black and white Americans.