West Indian Immigrants
A Black Success Story?
Publication Year: 2008
Published by: Russell Sage Foundation
Title Page, Copyright
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About the Author
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Map of the Caribbean
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Acknowledgments: Intellectual Debts and Personal Debts
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The chronology of my fascination with West Indian immigrants is a good way of conveying my intellectual debt. The story begins in 1980, when I was a graduate student writing a “comps” paper on African American...
1. Why Study West Indians?
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Not long after the United States government released the results of the 2000 census, a headline in the Boston Globe proclaimed: “Study Shows U.S. Blacks Trailing.” The article revealed that black immigrants were receiving higher household...
2. Documenting the Difference Between West Indians and African Americans
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This chapter examines the labor market outcomes of West Indian immigrants, especially those who arrived before 1925 (the first wave) and those who arrived after 1965 (the third wave). Inadequate numbers preclude...
3. Three Explanations for the Differences Between West Indians and African Americans
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Having demonstrated that even those West Indian immigrants with the same skills, family responsibilities, and residential location as African Americans do better in the labor market than African Americans, the narrative now takes...
4. Testing the Hypothesis of Selectivity
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This is the first of three empirical chapters devoted to testing the three explanations for West Indian advantage. It focuses on selectivity because tests of selectivity show very clearly the utility of controlling for the number of years since...
5. Testing the Cultural Hypotheses
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One of the central messages of chapter 3 is that there may be more than one explanation for the advantage that remains when West Indians and African Americans are made “the same” on measured job-related characteristics. Thus, empirical...
6. Testing the White Favoritism Hypothesis
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Attention now turns to the final explanation for West Indians’ economic advantage over African Americans: white favoritism. More research relevant to this hypothesis has been published than is the case for either the culture or selectivity...
7. An Immigrant Success Story
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This book began by asking: why do black immigrants have stronger labor market outcomes than African Americans? As it turns out, black immigrants from Africa or from the Hispanic Caribbean do not have stronger labor market outcomes...
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This appendix offers a description and evaluation of the data and methods used in this study. The main sources of data are censuses, gathered both in the United States and elsewhere, and three waves of the Sociale Positie...
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Page Count: 256
Publication Year: 2008