Abstract
This chapter looks into the second-generation Black Africans in the UK diaspora and their activities (e.g., social and economic). The second-generation Black African entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs tend to have different enterprise tendencies and socio-cultural value compared to the first-generation Black Africans. Together with the analysis of their entrepreneurship, this chapter reviews their preparations, motivations, and experiences in the UK and the instrumentality of their agency in the development of their parents' homeland (ancestral home).
TopThe Second-Generation
Generally, the second-generation group has been described as children of the first-generation immigrants born in the country of residence (King & Christou, 2010). However, the literature is not settled on who are the second-generations. Aside from children born in the country of residence, many studies regard the second-generation as home-country-born children who are taken abroad when their parents migrate (the supposedly 1.5 generation). Other typologies of distinct generational cohorts include 1.0, 1.25, 1.75, 2.0, and 2.5 as defined by age and life stage at migration (Rumbaut, 2004). These children may be inclined to return in the future on the strength of their recollections of childhood in the country of origin. According to Glick-Schiller and Fouron (2002: 193), the second-generation include “the entire generation in both homeland and new land who grow up within transnational social fields linked by familial, economic, religious, social, and political networks”. However, Espiritu and Tran (2002) expand the returned definitional landscape by asserting that the homeland is not simply a physical place for return visits, but a concept and desire that can be returned to by means of the imagination. Factors such as cross-national marriages between first-generation and second-generation partners that produce offspring (i.e. one first and one second-generation parent) may further becloud accurate categorization (King & Christou, 2014).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Ancestral Return: Refers to the notion of second-generation return migration to their parents’ countries of origin or perceived homelands, which can be both visits and definitive relocation to those places.
Social Remittance: Refers to the notion that, aside from money, migration also involves the circulation of ideas, practices, skills, identities, and social capital also circulate between host and home communities.
Second-Generation: Refers to categories immigrants’ children residing in a foreign country.
Returnee: Refers to persons who moved abroad or was born abroad (and lived there for an extended amount of time) and relocates to his/her country of heritage/origin.