Adrian Horczak
People of New York
Professor Jennifer Lutton
March 12, 2015
Reading Journal 7
There has been a large flow of West Indian people to the United States, especially to New York City. West Indian Migration to New York discusses what has fueled this migration and how New York has become an important place for West Indians. In fact, someone would learn more about their culture in New York than in a large city in the Caribbean. Another topic covered in this reading is that West Indians must cope with being categorized the same way as Americans of African decent. White Americans expect them to live in African American neighborhoods which are rife with crime and lack good schools, and West Indians value education. West Indian migrants were not expecting this much discrimination, since the people who live in the Caribbean are practically all black. West Indians feel proud of their ethnicity, while being looked down upon because of it. They try to assert their ethnic identities to claim that they are different from African Americans.
In New York as a Locality in a Global Family Network, Karen Olwig talks with migrant families to trace their experiences in New York. Through the people she studies migration to New York City, which is equivalent to the study of the creation of the United States of America. Olwig explains that many family members inhabited the places West Indians moved to. These kinds of areas encouraged the development of West Indian culture. On the other hand, family members that settled outside of New York were scattered in different areas across North America.
Charles Tilly’s Trust Networks in Transnational Migration describes what an important role trust networks play in migrant families. It describes how so many people must trust the members of their family that go to the United States of America to send remittances. Contrarily to what most believe, people do not cut ties with family when they immigrate. Instead, they try to make their families in the Caribbean financially secure. Together the family can work towards a common goal like buying land or funding a trip for the whole family to eventually come to the United States. Long distance migration is especially risky for trust networks because it is hard to keep contact over long distances, and there are no professional contracts to keep promises. For families in which members do not migrate far, the trust networks are more popular since people can go back and forth easily relaying information and delivering money. These trust networks often function among several families of the same background, and they make certain jobs available for people of those trust networks. However, sometimes the jobs available only provide low wages, so it is important for trust networks to adapt to make members in it prosper.
I live with immigrant parents who plan a trip to Poland every two or three years to visit their family. They own a building there and when they go to Poland, they pick up the money my grandparents pick up from rent. My parents have to trust my grandparents will give them the money they collect. Since trust networks are mainly among family members, it only seems natural that trust will be very important in their relationship.
Often people mistake me, a Polish American for being Russian American because Poles and Russians look alike and their languages are similar. It must be more frustrating for West Indians since people look down upon them for thinking they are African Americans.
