Since they began migrating to the United
States in the early 1900s, Afro-Caribbean immigrants have been heavily
concentrated in a few cities along the Eastern coast of the United States. The
largest concentrations have settled in and around New York City, Miami, Boston,
and Washington, D.C.—collectively home to more than half of the 2.5 million
Caribbean-born migrants in the United States
(U.S. Census Bureau, 2008-2010 American Community Survey).[1] In the 1990s, a growing number started
moving to areas outside these traditional concentrations (Vickerman 1999; Logan
2007; Foner 2005; Hintzen 2001; Palmer 1995). Unlike their prior migrations, this
new (post-1990) migration has developed a southeastern U.S. pattern.
For the majority of the 20th
century, Afro-Caribbean immigrants largely bypassed the South due to its
struggling job markets and long history of violence and discrimination against
people of African descent. Florida’s proximity to the Caribbean seems as if it
would have encouraged Afro-Caribbean migration, yet Afro-Caribbean transplants
only became significant in number in the 1980s. The number of Afro-Caribbeans
in the South has greatly increased since 1990. Demographer John Logan (2007) finds
that six of the top ten US metropolitan areas with the largest Afro-Caribbean
populations in 2000 were located in the South.[2] Among these metropolitan areas, Atlanta
experienced the greatest increase in its Afro-Caribbean population, quadrupling
from 8,342 to 35,308 between 1990 and 2000. According to the 2010 US Census,
Atlanta’s Afro-Caribbean population has more than doubled in the last ten
years, now numbering over 93,000.
In my scholarly readings I found that
researchers had only tangentially discussed the movement of Afro-Caribbean
immigrants to the southern city of Atlanta. Sociologist Milton Vickerman (1999) states briefly in his book Crosscurrents that Afro-Caribbeans were starting to move out
from New York City in the 1990s to new destinations such as Atlanta, Georgia,
Silver Springs, Maryland, Richmond, Virginia, and Houston, Texas, because they
viewed them as offering a better quality of life and better opportunities for blacks.
However, he neither elaborates upon which Afro-Caribbeans were moving to these
new areas, nor why they moved, nor does he explain what they experienced in the
communities that they entered. In a study comparing Afro-Caribbeans, African
Americans, and Africans in the US, demographer John Logan (2007) takes note of
a rapidly growing Afro-Caribbean population in Atlanta and provides some
demographic information about the group. He found that Afro-Caribbeans in
Atlanta in 2000 were faring better than their counterparts in New York City for
they had a higher median household income, a higher rate of homeownership, and
a higher proportion of college-educated individuals compared to those in New York. In 2000, Afro-Caribbeans had a
median household income of $50,911, compared to $35,758 in New York City, a
rate of homeownership of 61.9%, compared to 35.1% in New York City, and a
percentage of college graduates of 29.9%, compared to 18.2% in New York City
(Logan 2007). These studies by Vickerman and Logan suggest that Afro-Caribbeans
participating in the migration to Atlanta are predominantly middle-class, and that
the migration is heavily driven by economic factors. The search for a better
life (e.g., employment, education, homeownership, etc.) has been a driving factor
in Caribbean migration. However, economic factors do not fully explain why they
are gravitating specifically to Atlanta, rather than other cities with similar opportunities.
I argue here that there are a number of other factors—social, cultural, and
political—that has shaped this migration to Atlanta. The rapid
increase of Atlanta’s Afro-Caribbean population, the city’s immigration history,
and the presence of a large African American population provides a context that
is wholly different from other destinations (like New York, historically the
most popular destination for Caribbean immigrants in the US), and this
difference is of great social and political difference to black migrants’
racial and sociopolitical incorporation in the US. We know little about this
new context of incorporation because the
information published on Afro-Caribbean immigrants’ US-internal migration to Atlanta
(and other cities outside of traditional destinations) remains scarce.
[1]
In 2000, the ten metropolitan areas with the largest
Afro-Caribbean populations were (in descending order): New York, NY; Miami, FL;
Fort Lauderdale, FL; Boston, MA-NH; Nassau-Suffolk, NY; Newark, NJ; West Palm
Beach-Boca Raton, FL; Washington, D.C.-MD-VA-WV; Orlando, FL; Atlanta, GA.
[2] In 2000, the ten metropolitan areas with the largest
Afro-Caribbean populations were (in descending order): New York, NY; Miami, FL;
Fort Lauderdale, FL; Boston, MA-NH; Nassau-Suffolk, NY; Newark, NJ; West Palm
Beach-Boca Raton, FL; Washington, D.C.-MD-VA-WV; Orlando, FL; Atlanta, GA.
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