Professional Organizations

You have reached the Professional Organizations portion of the Peopling of New York City seminar website. Below are links to two professional organizations that play a vital part in the Dominican-American community.

- Daniel Dvorin, Boris Kalendarev & Yuriy Minchuk

Dominican Bar Association

Dominican Medical Association

The chart below contains information retreived from ISGMNY and explains occupational distribution New York City. From the middle bar (Dominicans), we can see that there is not an overwhelming percentage of Dominican "professionals" but for the 15% who are, there exists associations, such as the Dominican Bar Association and Dominican Medical Association that can assist and guide Dominican professionals in their path to becoming licensed in the United States. 

Besides the fact that many Dominican-Americans live in ethnic enclaves, centered around Washington Heights and the south Bronx, the associations previously mentioned double as an ethnic enclave. It is not to say that these associations provide a direct line to the top, but those who are members and are already successful play a big part in the success of recent immigrants and following generations.

View Dominican Enclaves in a larger map

It may seem that these institutions are setting up boundaries that will, in the future, hinder Dominicans from outward mobility, but that is an oversimplified assessment. Based on Richard Alba, there exists a notion of boundary blurring. In other terms, the fact that these ethnic enclaves exist does not interfere with two way assimilation. Both the American society and the Dominican culture could benefit from this. The society will have more professionals with immense skills and the culture will be more closely assimilated, or intermingled, with Americans.

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