Caribbean Migration
The Immigration and Nationality Act implemented in the United States in 1965 eliminated race discrimination in immigration policies. Immigration percentage restrictions based on the country of origin were abolished. National origin no longer caused barriers to immigration. Immigration selection was made based on the financial benefit an individual can bring to the United States and not on their national origin (Cohn, 2017). Professionals and intellectuals were given migration priority. The newly established migration policies prioritized reuniting families by allowing family members of migrants to move to the US. The policies increased immigration numerically and demographically, leading to the fast growth of the immigration population. However, the new immigration policies restricted immigration from Mexico and other West Northern nations.
The first Puerto Rican immigration wave to the United States was in the middle of the 19th century. At the time, the island was a Spanish province. The migrant’s motivation to move to the US was to obtain great economic success. After the first wave, Puerto Rico became United States territory. The second wave of Puerto Rico immigration took place in 1917 (Alexander et al 2019). The citizenship status had changed, allowing the Puerto Ricans to be official American citizens. The island had been terrorized, and many people from Puerto Rico moved to America. The migrants of the second wave faced racial discrimination, language barriers, and hardships of getting jobs. The third wave was massive, and it occurred in the 1950s. Puerto Rica’s third wave of migration is referred to as ‘Great migration’ which was caused by World war II, the advent of air travel, and the Great Depression.
According to Nancy Foner, transnational practices refer to the way migrants maintain multiple social networks. The migrants try to sustain social connections along with family, finances, and political lines, which connect their origin societies and the society they are settling in. An example the social media platforms like Instagram help the migrants connect socially with people from their origin societies. The social platforms allow them to send pictures to each other and communicate experiences as well. Another example is where a migrants ships household goods from the immigrated country to the home country where the products are expensive or unavailable.
Childcare providers experience hard working conditions, and sometimes it is difficult for them to maintain social interactions. However, West Indian babysitters in New York have shaped social spaces that occupy their workdays with a series of events. The West Indian babysitters visit public parks where they interact socially and share food as cultural expression. Creating the public park social space through interactions allows the babysitters to express ethnic solidarity and the isolation and hardships which come with babysitting (Brown, 2015). The care providers from West Indian also visited public libraries and studios with their employer’s child and practiced motherhood. The social space they created to promote the sense of motherhood in them withdrew the feeling of submissiveness they felt at their employer’s home space. Mose-Brown portrays that these daily interactions in the social spaces created by West Indians, allowed their collective lives and group identity to flourish. Using Raising Brooklyn, the daily interactions were demonstrated as using cultural preservation as a weapon against tiring working conditions. Therefore, Raising Brooklyn placed the childcare providers in a frame of social justice movement. The framework created a dialogue between the workers on how to change their exploitive working conditions and build solidarity.
References
Alexander, M., Zagheni, E., & Polimis, K. (2019). The impact of Hurricane Maria on out-migration from Puerto Rico: Evidence from Facebook data.
Baločkaitė, R. (2015). Book review: Raising Brooklyn: Nannies, Childcare, and Caribbeans Creating Community by Tamara M. Brown.
Cohn, D. (2017). How US immigration laws and rules have changed throughout history. Pew Research Center RSS.
Schlenker, A., Blatter, J., & Birka, I. (2017). Practicing transnational citizenship: dual nationality and simultaneous political involvement among emigrants. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43(3), 418-440.