Who are the Afro-Caribbeans? --Pt 2

 I found that Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta had high levels of education. Among the migrants that I interviewed for this study, 70% had college educations[1]. There were a significantly high number of migrants with graduate or professional degrees.[2] Thirteen of the thirty-three Afro-Caribbean respondents in my study (39%) had either a masters, doctoral, or law degree. Their educational levels were reflected in their occupations: almost all of the migrants in this study were in managerial, professional, or service occupations.[3] Seventeen were in management/professional occupations (e.g., lawyers, business owners, urban planning directors, etc), six were in service occupations (e.g., teachers, military, etc), three were in office occupations (e.g., administrative assistants), and two were law school students. Two migrants were not in the labor force: one was retired, while the other was a homemaker. Overall, the flow of Afro-Caribbean immigrants to Atlanta includes a high percentage of professionals and non-manual labor workers. According to the 2008-2010 American Community Survey, 38.1% of Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta in the labor force were in management, business, arts, and science occupations, in addition to the 15.2% in service occupations and the 28.2% in sales occupations.

Afro-Caribbean men and women in Atlanta are concentrated in similar occupational fields, with large proportions of both women and men working in managerial and professional occupations and sales and office occupations.[4] Their concentration in white collar and service sector occupations may be due to the relatively high education level and socioeconomic status of the Afro-Caribbeans migrating to Atlanta. Previous research has found gender differences in labor force participation in the US, with Afro-Caribbean women and men tending to cluster in different occupations (Bashi 2007; Foner 2009). Afro-Caribbean immigrant women have worked mostly in health care and domestic work in the three major global cities of Afro-Caribbean settlement—New York, London, and Toronto—while Afro-Caribbean immigrant men have concentrated in transport, in London and New York (Foner 2009). Kasinitz and Vickerman (2001) argue that high levels of concentration in these occupational fields reflect patterns of network hiring and referrals; that is, the social networks of Afro-Caribbean female domestic, health care, and clerical workers facilitate access to these jobs.

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[1] There were four respondents that I forgot to ask about their educational attainment; thus, they were added to a N/A group when I tabulated the education percentages for my research sample.

[2] This overrepresentation of post-collegiate degrees, among respondents in this study, may have been produced by my use of snowball sampling. It is likely that migrants referred to me other migrants with similar educational backgrounds who they felt would reflect well on them, or who they thought would be better able to answer my questions.

[3] Three of the migrants’ occupations were unknown due to the question about employment being unintentionally omitted at the time of my interview.

[4] The 2008-2010 American Community Survey shows that Afro-Caribbean men in Atlanta are employed in natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations (15.3%) and production, transportation, and material moving occupations (19%) at a significantly higher rate than Afro-Caribbean there, at 0.8% and 3.8% respectively. Figures also show the largest percentage of Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta is in the educational services, healthcare, and social assistance industry.