Dominicans In New York City

This volume forms part of the Latino Communities, Emerging Voices Political, Social, Cultural and Legal Issues series. This study explores the diverse struggles of incorporation pursued by immigrants from the Dominican Republic to one city in the United States- New York City. The Dominican Republic, the second largest country of the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, was the nation that sent the most immigrants to New York City during the 1980s and 1990s. This study chronicles the lives of Dominicans in New York City: their difficulties, their courage, and their boldness to incorporate themselves into American politics.

In the second half of the twentieth century Dominicans became New York City's largest, and poorest, new immigrant group. They toiled in garment factories and small groceries, and as taxi drivers, janitors, hospital workers, and nannies. By 1990, one of every ten Dominicans lived in New York. A Tale of Two Cities tells the fascinating story of this emblematic migration from Latin America to the United States. Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof chronicles not only how New York itself was forever transformed by Dominican settlement but also how Dominicans' lives in New York profoundly affected life in the Dominican Republic. A Tale of Two Cities is unique in offering a simultaneous, richly detailed social and cultural history of two cities bound intimately by migration. It explores how the history of burgeoning shantytowns in Santo Domingo--the capital of a rural country that had endured a century of intense U.S. intervention and was in the throes of a fitful modernization--evolved in an uneven dialogue with the culture and politics of New York's Dominican ethnic enclaves, and vice versa. In doing so it offers a new window on the lopsided history of U.S.-Latin American relations. What emerges is a unique fusion of Caribbean, Latin American, and U.S. history that very much reflects the complex global world we live in today.

Significant changes in New York City's Latino community have occurred since the first edition of Latinos in New York: Communities in Transition was published in 1996. The Latino population in metropolitan New York has increased from 1.7 million in the 1990s to over 2.4 million, constituting a third of the population spread over five boroughs. Puerto Ricans remain the largest subgroup, followed by Dominicans and Mexicans; however, Puerto Ricans are no longer the majority of New York's Latinos as they were throughout most of the twentieth century. Latinos in New York: Communities in Transition, second edition, is the most comprehensive reader available on the experience of New York City's diverse Latino population. The essays in Part I examine the historical and sociocultural context of Latinos in New York. Part II looks at the diversity comprising Latino New York. Contributors focus on specific national origin groups, including Ecuadorians, Colombians, and Central Americans, and examine the factors that prompted emigration from the country of origin, the socioeconomic status of the emigrants, the extent of transnational ties with the home country, and the immigrants' interaction with other Latino groups in New York. Essays in Part III focus on politics and policy issues affecting New York's Latinos. The book brings together leading social analysts and community advocates on the Latino experience to address issues that have been largely neglected in the literature on New York City. These include the role of race, culture and identity, health, the criminal justice system, the media, and higher education, subjects that require greater attention both from academic as well as policy perspectives. Contributors: Sherrie Baver, Juan Cartagena, Javier Castaño, Ana María Díaz-Stevens, Angelo Falcón, Juan Flores, Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Ramona Hernández, Luz Yadira Herrera, Gilbert Marzán, Ed Morales, Pedro A. Noguera, Rosalía Reyes, Clara E. Rodríguez, José Ramón Sánchez, Walker Simon, Robert Courtney Smith, Andrés Torres, and Silvio Torres-Saillant.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This text is part of The New Immigrants Series edited by Nancy Foner. This groundbreaking new series fills the gap in knowledge relating to today's immigrants, how these groups are attempting to redefine their cultures while here, and their contribution to a new and changing America.

An innovative historical and ethnographic examination of Dominican identity formation in the Dominican Republic and the United States.

Aparicio examines the ways first- and second-generation Dominican-Americans in the dynamic northern Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights have shaped a new Dominican presence in local New York City politics. Through community organizing, they have formed coalitions with people of different national and ethnic backgrounds and other people of color, tackled local concerns, and created new routes for empowerment.