When Barack Obama Sr., father of the 44th U.S. president, left Kenya for the United States in 1959, he was part of a relatively small number of Black Africans immigrating to the United States at the time. On average, only 760 Africans were admitted into the United States each year in the five decades preceding his arrival, and the majority of these were white. Like many Africans arriving in the late 1950s, however, Barack Obama Sr. was among the best and brightest leaving the shores of the African continent. Since then, the scale of African migration to the United States has increased. In the last two decades alone, the number of African immigrants arriving in the United States has increased by more than 300 percent. However, these immigrants still arrive with high levels of human capital due to policy developments, such as the Diversity Visa Program, that provide new pathways of entry for educated Africans.
Today, immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa make important contributions to the cultural, social, and demographic diversity of America. They are more visible in the film industry, professional sports, and politics than they were before the start of the century. Their growing presence has revitalized neighborhoods, where they fulfill their civic responsibilities as they play a central role in the lives of their communities. African immigrants are further actively involved in the provision of critical social services and make significant contributions to the workforce in health-care, business, and educational institutions. However, the maximum potential of their contributions is yet to be realized due to constraints they experience to the use of their human capital.
Owing to the highly selective nature of international migration from sub-Saharan Africa, Black immigrants from the region now have some of the highest levels of education in the United States. They are far more likely to be college graduates compared to the U.S. born and are almost as likely to be employed in management, business, science, and arts occupations. As awareness of their educational successes increases, so also have the positive comments they have received from social commentators. Some have implied that they are a new model minority. Others, realizing that Black Africans also have higher levels of education compared to U.S.-born Blacks, have used this comparison to draw flawed conclusions about the declining significance of race. In the process, such commentators have discounted the contribution of positive selection to this disparity, while also ignoring the fact that African immigrants have higher levels of education compared to individuals in Africa.
But while the evidence on the high educational attainment of African immigrants is indisputable, it also hides a significant disadvantage they experience in using their education to achieve social mobility. Compared to other highly skilled individuals, most Black African immigrants have not been able to reach a level of socioeconomic success that matches their educational attainment. Instead, comparisons of their educational profile with other standard measures of their well-being have revealed a paradox. Far too often, the latter falls below what one would expect given their high levels of educational attainment.
Africans and the Black Immigrant Paradox
The basis of the African immigrant paradox is found in emerging studies that show that they tend to have low measures of socioeconomic well-being despite having high levels of educational attainment. While the paradox is generally found among Black immigrants, it is almost entirely driven by the outcomes of African immigrants, who have the highest levels of achievement among Black immigrants. Compared to the U.S. born, for example, Black African immigrants are far more likely to be college graduates but are about 50 percent more likely to live in poverty. Moreover, despite their high levels of education, Black African immigrants experience high levels of occupational segregation from Blacks and are more likely to be overqualified for their jobs. This paradox of weaker-than-expected indicators of well-being extends to other outcomes as well. In fact, some of this evidence has been used to argue that Black African immigrants are generally penalized, rather than rewarded, for their educational attainment.
African immigrants are not different from other immigrants who face daunting challenges in their efforts to achieve social mobility. In more recent years, they have been very successful in overcoming some of these challenges. Yet, the paradox described above is a unique feature of the Black African immigrant experience. No other major ethnoracial group seems to experience this contradiction between their levels of education and their indicators of well-being. For example, recent data from the American Community Survey indicates that compared to their U.S. born working-age counterparts, Hispanic immigrants have worse poverty and educational attainment outcomes, which is consistent with human-capital theory. Similarly, Asian immigrants have more favorable levels of education attainment and poverty than U.S. natives. However, Black African immigrants have a higher level of educational attainment compared to U.S. natives but were comparatively more likely to live in poverty.
What makes the Black African immigrant paradox more concerning is the fact it is inconsistent with what we know from human-capital theory. Arguably the most fundamental insight offered by the theory is that high levels of human-capital acquisition in the form of education and skill lead to higher rewards in the labor market and more favorable indicators of well-being. Despite their high levels of human capital, Black immigrants from Africa have found it more difficult to realize the expected benefits of these endowments compared to other highly skilled individuals.
One example of this can be seen in recent evidence on the outcomes of STEM graduates. Consistent with our traditional understanding of the rewards of human capital, graduates with STEM degrees receive higher salaries in the labor market compared to their counterparts with non-STEM degrees. Recent evidence, however, indicates that African immigrants with STEM degrees do not receive the same rewards for their skills compared to other STEM graduates. Although they are far more likely to have STEM degrees compared to the U.S. born and immigrants from Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions (except Asia), they generally receive lower salaries for their jobs compared to their counterparts with similar degrees.
More generally, the African immigrant paradox contradicts the central narrative of the immigrant success story. America, according to the common narrative, is a land of opportunity where hard work can lead to success among immigrants. For many African immigrants, however, this success has been elusive. This elusiveness is surprising given the fact that their levels of labor force participation are higher than those of the U.S. born and the overall foreign-born population. Accordingly, the constraint they experience in translating their human capital into occupational success is the defining evidence of this elusiveness.
Explanations for the Paradox
Given the fact that African immigration to the United States is relatively recent, it is easy to assume that the inconsistency between the educational profile African immigrants and their indicators of well-being should be expected. After all, it takes several years for immigrants to become integrated into the labor market and develop the social networks needed to be connected to better opportunities. Some may further argue that, although many African immigrants speak English very well, there are still others who do not, which could negatively affect the opportunities available to them. Others may question whether the challenges these immigrants experience may be explained by the fact that many of them are refugees. As intuitive as these explanations sound, however, none of them is a definitive explanation for the paradox. Indeed, these factors are accounted for in most studies showing the apparent Black African disadvantage. We also know that, among refugees, Black immigrants still have lower indicators of well-being compared to refugees of other races.
There are at least two other possible explanations for the paradox. First, existing norms that determine how education earned abroad is recognized in the United States, create significant barriers to the use of human capital in the U.S. labor market. Most immigrants with degrees earned abroad find it difficult to have their credentials recognized by professional institutions in their destination countries. For example, after their arrival in the United States, immigrants with foreign medical degrees are required to be recertified and complete several years of residency, even if they have already completed similar training in their origin countries. Many other professions have their own recertification requirements, and for others (e.g., in the arts), the recertification requirements are unclear. What does remain clear is that immigrants from developing countries, such as those in Africa, are more likely to have credentials that require recertification due to the negative perception of degrees earned in these regions. Faced with these challenges and the need to support themselves, many immigrants are forced to choose the next best option, which is to seek employment in lower-level occupations.
Second, we cannot ignore the role of race in shaping the kinds of opportunities available to Black African immigrants. The labor market opportunities available to these immigrants are quite distinct from those available to other ethnoracial groups on the basis of their historical and contemporary connections with anti-Black racism. African immigrants thus compete for jobs in a labor market where Black workers are more likely to be stratified into lower status jobs compared to white workers. It is not surprising then that among the highly skilled, Black African immigrants are more likely to work as dishwashers or security guards compared to other immigrants. There is no question that these immigrants are doubly disadvantaged on the basis on their race and immigration status. Growing up in origin societies, where they were not exposed to racism, makes many of them unprepared to navigate racist encounters that limit their ability to achieve social mobility.
Conclusion
Years after Barack Obama Sr. completed his studies in the United States, he returned home to Kenya, where he spent the rest of his professional life. However, for many contemporary Black African immigrants, this is not a viable option. When Obama Sr. returned to Kenya in 1964, the country had just become independent, and like many countries in Africa at that time, its economic prospects were impressive. Since then, economic conditions in Africa have declined. Political persecution in other African countries has further left many Africans with no choice but to leave, and many are migrating to the United States in search of a better life. If this sounds familiar, it is because it is. Like Europeans immigrants who arrived in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, African immigrants are arriving in the United States simply in search of a better life.
The major difference between the two is that Black African immigrants are arriving with far higher levels of education compared to the Europeans who arrived about a hundred years ago. This disparity is important for two reasons. First, it suggests that, holding other factors constant, African immigrants are equipped to exceed the intergenerational patterns of social mobility observed among European immigrants. Second, and relatedly, the European immigrant experience provides a snapshot of what the trajectory of African immigrants can become if it is unimpeded by structural limitations. Currently, however, the full potential of their human capital is not being realized because their incorporation occurs under structural conditions that foster its underutilization.
Still, African immigrants are already finding ways to cope with these limitations, and to thrive despite the barriers that they can create. This response should make us optimistic about the future because it demonstrates their level of resilience. Moreover, it suggests that in subsequent generations, the lessons they learn from these experiences could be used to accelerate the socioeconomic achievement of their descendants.
Any opinions expressed in the articles in this publication are those of the author and not the American Sociological Association.
