Making moral migrants? Exploring the educational aspirations of Black African and Caribbean boys in a New York City public school

ABSTRACT

Drawing on 48 in-depth interviews with Black immigrant and second-generation boys at Bridgewood secondary school in New York City, this article points out how the high educational aspirations expressed by Black African and Caribbean boys are strategically deployed as features of an ethnic project to counter anti-immigrant sentiments and anti-Black racism in US society. The findings indicate that in a context of rising xenophobia along with the historical and continual stereotypes of Black people in the US, participants’ aspirations for elite higher education function as strategies to enhance their individual and ethnic reputations. High educational aspirations were also used to justify emigration to and worth within the US. At its core, this article illustrates how participants mobilized aspirations to represent themselves as moral migrants and ‘worthy’ ethnic minorities. Moral claims and ethnicity-based campaigns associated with aspirations are problematized because they reinforce the hierarchical racial order that informs US society.

KEYWORDS:

• Black immigrants
• aspirations
• higher education
• ethnic projects
• race and racism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In keeping with immigration studies scholarship, I define Black immigrants here and throughout this work as foreign-born voluntary migrants who leave their homelands primarily in pursuit of family reunification, economic gains and/or educational opportunities. Whereas Black immigrants come to the US from various parts of the world, I focus here on ones from the Anglophone Caribbean and select parts of West Africa – regions shaped by colonial encounters and ongoing neocolonial arrangements. For more details see Foner (2018), Imoagene (2017) and Waters et al. (2014).

2. Here, and throughout this paper, I use the term ‘public school’ to refer to government-managed schools, or what would be regarded as ‘state schools’ in the UK.

3. In US higher education, the ‘Ivy League’ refers to eight longstanding, elite universities widely regarded for their highly selective admission, institutional wealth, and social prestige. Located in the Northeastern section of the United States, Ivy League institutions include Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University.

4. This claim is of considerable analytical import because it marshals the complexity of US ethnic history to underscore the fact that intra-group distinctions are not unique to Blacks, nor are they predicated definitively on self-hatred or internalized racism. The nature of the US racial project has urged multiple ethno-racial groups to pursue whiteness, and/or distinguish themselves from historically stigmatized groups (Omi & Winant, 1994). Therefore, Black immigrants’ attempts to differentiate themselves from African Americans in contexts that prove advantageous for Black immigrants is a prejudicial and highly problematic arrangement of which I am critical. Scholars such as Treitler (2013), however, take issue with such distancing practices whether pursued by Black immigrants or any other ethno-racial group (i.e. Latinx, Jewish and Asian people).

5. Recent research by Model (2008a); Waters (1999); Ifatunji (2018), among others, calls into question the extent to which Black Caribbeans are Black model minorities at all, and note the declining premium of Caribbean ethnicity as a marker of positive distinction  in the US.

6. Though I initially recruited 15 Black African boys to participate in the study, three did not receive parental consent to continue with follow-up interviews in the second year, two no longer had an interest in the study, and one returned to Nigeria long-term and as such was not available to participate. The 24 participants included in this study of Black immigrant boys are ones who participated in two rounds of interviews over three years.

7. Black immigrants who emigrate in pursuit of economic opportunities are often highly aspirational, highly motivated, and well equipped with the requisite social, cultural and economic capital to transition effectively from their homelands to a new host society.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Gates Cambridge Trust [07234].

Notes on contributors

Derron Wallace

Derron Wallace is an assistant professor of sociology and education at Brandeis University, USA. He is a sociologist of race, ethnicity and education specialising in cross-national studies of inequalities and identities in urban schools and neighbourhoods. His research focuses specifically on the experiences of Black youth in Africa and the African diaspora. His work has appeared in journals such as Sociology, Cultural Sociology, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Gender and Education and Harvard Educational Review. His research has been supported by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, the Gates Cambridge Trust, the Marion & Jasper Whiting Foundation and the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.