Invisible Sojourners

Examines the growth of the African immigrant population in the United States.

Arthur documents the role that Africa's best and brightest play in the new migration of population from less developed countries to the United States. He highlights how Africans negotiate and forge relationships among themselves and with the members of the host society. Multiple aspects of the African immigrants' social world, family patterns, labor force participation, and formation of cultural identities are also examined. He lays out the long term aspirations of the immigrants within the context of the geo-political, economic, and social conditions in Africa. Ultimately, Arthur explains why people leave Africa, what they encounter, their interactions with the host society, and their attitudes about American social institutions. He also provides information about the social changes and policies that African countries need to adopt to stem the tide, or even reverse, the African brain drain. A detailed analysis for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with African and immigration studies and contemporary American society.

This volume engages the reader in understanding past and contemporary critical issues in African scholarship, both in the diaspora and on the continent, that have been marginalized, unexamined, and under-researched, and proposes ways to make them visible. The book is timely as it imagines and reimagines scholarship on Africans in the diaspora and on the continent. It is bold, and authentically unpacks African immigrants’ individual and collective cultural, educational, social, and institutional experiences, especially in the context of US Pk-12 schools as they navigate and negotiate transnational spaces regarding identity and shifting positionalities. The editors and contributors, who are themselves African immigrants, exemplify their spirits of Sankofa as they look back to their roots in order to give back to their “Motherland” by fighting for the visibility, equity and social justice of Africans in the diaspora and on the continent. The book proposes critical and insightful ideas that educators, researchers, policy makers, social and human services, and community leaders will find valuable.

Hanciles does yeoman work in part one synthesizing studies on the impact of globalization, revealing that its outcomes will likely not be determined by the Euro-American heartlands that sparked this movement. Instead, in parts two he shows that migration in general is having an enormous effect on shaping a new world order, and in part three, "Mobile Faith," he advances the case for the migration of Christians as carrying within it the seeds of renewal for the whole church and also the potential to reshape church-state and religion and culture relations globally.

Neighborhood Transformation is a Christian reimagination of compassionate ministry through the application of the practice of biblical hospitality. This book advocates the creation of community outreach programs focused on emotional support, legal support, and spiritual refuge for undocumented African immigrants. Linking the theological and biblical vision for neighborhood transformation with the philosophical framework of community building, it considers the meaning of community within the context of the Christian calling to build a community of strangers in a pluralistic society like the United States of America. The African diaspora is invited to their vocational calling of rebuilding their local communities using Nehemiah, Ezra, and the contemporary Jewish community in the Diaspora as biblical and contemporary example.

This edited volume systematically analyzes the connection between xenophobia, nativism, and Pan-Africanism. It situates attacks on black Africans by fellow black Africans within the context of ideals such as Pan-Africanism and Ubuntu, which emphasize unity. The book straddles a range of social science perspectives to explain why attacks on foreign nationals in Africa usually entail attacks on black foreign nationals. Written by an international and interdisciplinary team of scholars, the book is divided into four sections that each explain a different facet of this complicated relationship. Section One discusses the history of colonialism and apartheid and their relationship to xenophobia. Section Two critically evaluates Pan-Africanism as a concept and as a practice in 21st century Africa. Section Three presents case studies on xenophobia in contemporary Africa. Section Four similarly discusses cases of nativism. Addressing a complex issue in contemporary African politics, this volume will be of use to students and scholars interested in African studies, African politics, human rights, migration, history, law, and development economics.

A comprehensive history of the relationship between Africa and the United States Toyin Falola and Raphael Njoku reexamine the history of the relationship between Africa and the United States from the dawn of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the present. Their broad, interdisciplinary book follows the relationship’s evolution, tracking African American emancipation, the rise of African diasporas in the Americas, the Back-to-Africa movement, the founding of Sierra Leone and Liberia, the presence of American missionaries in Africa, the development of blues and jazz music, the presidency of Barack Obama, and more.

Drawing on the interdisciplinary research projects of scholars from various social science and humanities disciplines, this book explores how African migration to Western countries after the neo-liberal economic reforms of the 1980s transformed West African states and their new transnational populations in Western countries.

This book looks at the movements of immigrants and refugees and the challenges they face as they cross cultural boundaries and strive to build a new life in an unfamiliar place. It focuses on the psychological dynamic underpinning of their adaptation process, how their internal conditions change over time, the role of their ethnic and personal backgrounds, and of the conditions of the host environment affecting the process. Addressing these and related issues, the author presents a comprehensive theory, or a "big picture,"of the cross-cultural adaptation phenomenon.