Premigration Legacies and Immigrant Social Mobility: The Afro-Surinamese and Indo-Surinamese in the Netherlands (Program in Migration and Refugee Studies)

In Premigration Legacies and Immigrant Social Mobility, anthropologist Mies van Niekerk examines the social and economic trajectories of two groups that have immigrated from the Caribbean Basin to the Netherlands: the Afro-Surinamese and the Indo-Surinamese. Drawing on a wide variety of sources including family histories, participant observation, and surveys of educational and employment outcomes, Dr. van Niekerk compares the experiences of two groups who share a sending country, Surinam, and a receiving country, the Netherlands, but who are ethnically quite different. The work is both a focused case study of the Surinamese migration and a comparative work that contributes to the debate about the relevance of 'structural' and 'cultural' factors for the social mobility of immigrant groups.