This collection of original essays draws on a variety of theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and empirical data to explore the effects of West Indian migration and to develop analytic frameworks to examine it.
Nancy Foneris Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Purchase. She is the author ofFrom Ellis Island to JFK: New York's Two Great Waves of Immigration(2000) andThe Caregiving Dilemma: Work in an American Nursing Home(1994), among others. She is the editor ofNew Immigrants in New York(1987) and coeditor, with Rub?n Rumbaut and Steven Gold, ofImmigration Research for a New Century: Multidisciplinary Perspectives(2000).
These superb essays illuminate the fascinating process of absorbing West Indian immigrants into New York City's multicultural but racially divided social fabric... They explore how gender, transnational networks, class, economic restructuring, and above all racial stereotyping have affected these black immigrants as they struggle for a better life and how their struggles have in turn influenced the contours of the larger society. The result is a model of multi-disciplinary analysis. John Mollenkopf, co-author ofPlace Matters: A Metropolitics for the 21st Century
Islands in the City is a comprehensive collection of the recent findings of the foremost scholars in this field. The premier researchers on West Indians in New York City discuss migration from historical, statistical, theoretical, and experiential points of view. This volume will be used as a model for understanding migration in other areas and it will have importance beyond its field. Wallace Zane, author ofJourneys to the Spiritual Lands: The Natural History of a West Indian Religion
Nancy Foner has pulled together excellent essays by the leading scholars of the emerging study of West Indians in the United States. Islands in the City is a welcome book becausl£Ñ