WP3: There Is NO “Immigrant Work Ethic”
The United States government claims we don’t have a national religion, but this is false: our religion is the religion of work and career. Americans view work simultaneously as a core identity and a purpose to life, both factors that are often attributed to religion. However, creating a culture around your source of income — no matter how self-fulfilling it is — is unhealthy to its followers. This attitude is the reason why Americans are so prone to burnouts, imposter syndrome, death, and other work-related conditions and diseases. Black African immigrants in the U.S. have an even more unique experience with this as their purposes for migrating and expectations clash with the reality of education and career in America.
My family is one, of many, that was confronted by this harsh truth. Both my parents came into America with masters and lots of hope for the job opportunities that would be presented to them that they were not able to find in Cameroon. But for decades they came across an unexpected number of obstacles in their career search leading them to pick up whatever jobs they could to support us and their family back home. The combination of long working hours, low-paying jobs, and duty to their community along with culture shock from discrimination in the workplace to the emphasis placed on productivity led my parents to one, unified thought: I never want my children to go through this. This is the thought that brings me to reveal and analyze the unexpected toxic mindset it enforced on me and other second-gen children in similar situations.
Before coming to the United States, my parents had this preconceived notion that they would continue their education, attain respectable jobs, and live comfortably in a mansion with their children. Sonia Roubeni and other researchers call this “immigrant optimism” which is the belief that, “the host country will provide viable opportunities for their social advancement and that their endured sacrifices and hard work will translate into upward mobility for themselves and/or their children.” But like other African migrants in Yolanda Covington-Ward’s study on migration expectations and adjustments, they were not prepared for the battle to become naturalized, the “unexpected culture of excessive work,” and had “expectations of abundant wealth and a well-developed country, an easier life, and many opportunities for advancement.” This shift from expectation to reality as well as being foreigners and feeling like they have something to prove puts a TON of pressure on African immigrants. Like I’ve seen my father pick up multiple shifts during hours of the day where no human should have to be awake and still struggle to make ends meet. The grey hairs he started growing in his 30s is proof of the intense pressure that’s placed on African immigrants to quickly conform to their host country’s culture or risk losing their job.
My parents are also responsible for remittances, a phenomenon Covington-Ward explains as, “The pressure to send money, which is partially influenced by the stereotypes of easily gained money in the United States, often pushes Liberian and other African immigrants to take multiple jobs and/or work extensive overtime hours to make sending these remittances possible (Covington-Ward 2016).” When they’re working twice as hard to provide for their family and themselves as well as entering an environment where it’s not unheard of to work over 50 hours per week, it’s easy to see how overworking creeps up without them ever noticing.
The mountain of responsibilities that comes with being an African foreigner in America disproves the continuously entertained idea that African immigrants enter the U.S. miraculously having a superhuman work ethic. Ignorance of American public policy, feeling the need to prove themselves, lack of quality job opportunities, and unrealistic family expectations force immigrants to work even harder to achieve a livable salary and eventually, give up on their own dreams because they simply don’t have the means. But they can’t completely give up because they have children depending on them and a core value of West African culture is service to their loved ones. To cope with these losses experienced through acculturative demands in the host country, many African immigrants developed a new motivation for living in a way that can accommodate both their home country’s values and their host country’s values. They put their faith in their children to be successful by emphasizing the importance of education and a practical career using a “dual frame of reference” which is the belief that since their experiences couldn’t possibly be as bad as their home country, they’re “more willing to accept less equitable treatment. (Knight)” They’re willing to place what they believe is a necessary amount of pressure on their children’s academic achievement despite their own experiences because unlike U.S. natives, they’ve seen firsthand the effects of living in an under-developed country.
Political instability, poverty, famine, poor education, and no guarantee of safety are qualities that motivate immigrants to “play by the rules” — the rules being a society that values humans based on their productivity — because in their minds, they, and their children, have no other choice. I’m now reminded of how my parents constantly pushed me into applying to a variety of programs, magnet schools, selective colleges and made a point to celebrate whenever I had an achievement (and encouraged me to “try harder” when my grades were below expectation). This led me to value myself only when I was productive and even as I’m working to unlearn that harmful mindset, I, and other second-gens, often feel that even though our fathers “no longer had control over that [education] . . . he had already set us on a path. (qtd. in Knight)” Basing our self-worth and goals on our academic success but also knowing our parents only want what’s best for us creates a moral dilemma in the child of immigrants. I know I’m constantly plagued by the fear that “I’m not doing enough” in school to make my parents proud because it’s been instilled in me, through my parents and society, that the only way I will accomplish anything as a black woman is through university. This creates perfectionistic values which I’ve observed to be quite common among children of immigrants and can lead to severe anxiety, inability to take risks, and other mental problems. However, these ideals may lead to the opposite of their intended effect for children of black immigrants.
For black immigrants who are over-educated for their jobs, like my father who has a master’s degree in economics yet delivers packages for a living, their children are at higher risk for poverty even though their levels of schooling are highest among other immigrant groups. This completely goes against the human-capital theory in which, “high levels of human-capital are expected to result in lower levels of child poverty (Becker 1995; Wood 2003). (Thomas)” Kevin Thomas in “Occupational Stratification, Job-mismatches, and Child Poverty: Understanding the Disadvantage of Black Immigrants in the US” predicts since job mismatches affect wages and motivation of workers, it negatively affects their children too. To add on, I think the “play-by-the-rules” mindset from before is a cause of this phenomenon. My parents always motivated me to take any and every opportunity I could, but they never taught me to speak up against unfair treatment that could result in the loss of said opportunity. I also think those perfectionist ideals that plague a lot of children of immigrants increase the chance of failure since it results from a fear of failure and therefore, an unwillingness to take risks. I believe this makes a lot of children of immigrants passive: in the workplace, they would be less likely to speak up against indirect discrimination (ex. Accepting lower wages) because they were taught to be grateful for the opportunity and work hard at it no matter what in order to ascend upwards.
This willingness to accept racial discrimination in the workplace that’s often noted in African immigrants was previously stated to be an effect of their “dual frame of reference”. However, it can also be derived from the observation that first-gen black immigrants are more likely to see racism as a challenge that can be overcome with hard work rather than a pervasive hundreds-year-old systematic inequality as U.S.-born black immigrants see it. This difference between cultural groups often leads to the enforcement of stereotypical narratives that are used to pit them against each other. The term for this form of racial discrimination is “cultural racism” which describes the narratives of U.S.-born black people and black immigrants are fed to each other to keep the black population divided. The generalization of how each category approaches work may contribute to a strong motivator for black African immigrants. A lot of older generation black immigrants (and even younger ones) are susceptible to the belief that black people born in the U.S are “lazy” and “uneducated” and often try to distance themselves from the latter “in an attempt to circumvent the societal obstacles that come with Black status in the United States. (Roubeni)”
Black immigrants already have an advantage over U.S.-born black people because the criteria to get into this country often means they need to have a degree, but combined with the desire for separation, they work even harder to win this one-sided competition with their American counterparts. Because of this, they are held to a sort of “model minority” status to the black population which functions as “proof that the “American Dream” works and that racial identity does not restrict the acceptance and full integration of immigrants of color into United States society (Hsu 1996; see also Bashi 1998; Bashi and McDaniel 1997). (Pierre, 143)” However, all this does is complicate “assimilation into an already marginalized segment of society with little opportunity for upward mobility” because now on top of other responsibilities, they’re also expected to be “better” than other black cultural groups through their education and careers (Roubeni). They cannot afford to make mistakes white people may get away with because it will count against their entire community and their status will be “reduced” to that of a U.S.-born black person.
Of course, this affects their children as well because we are their successors, therefore, also held to these same standards. It is why I, like many other children of black immigrants, often feel disconnected from my peers because they can afford to get blackout drunk at parties, have lower than expected grades, and engage in senseless activities but I cannot. I shoulder the burden of my parent’s dreams and uphold my community’s “status” to the point where I dread the feeling of unproductivity because it’s just another opportunity for me to mess up everything we’ve built up. Unfortunately, the guilt that comes with being unproductive is surprisingly all too common across the U.S. for decades and when you look at its history through the lens of a black immigrant, it becomes even more complicated.
America’s obsession with work was best described by Samuel P. Huntington: “the work ethic is a central feature of the Protestant culture, and from the beginning, America’s religion has been the religion of work” (71). The worship of career has been imposed onto generations of Americans to the point where they feel as though it is a sin to be stagnant and unproductive. It’s one of the biggest culture shocks that African immigrants face but they are still expected to conform as quickly as possible or face consequences with little support. The consequences come in the form of reductions in income, fear of seeming uncommitted to their employer, and maybe strongest of all, peer pressure from co-workers and employers (Schiff).
For black immigrants, this peer pressure also manifests from their own family and their host country’s expectations for them. They’re expected to send money back home so they must work hard. But they’re also expected to work hard because that is how they prove to America they deserve to live here like everyone else. After all, it’s shown through everything around them that taking advantage of the job opportunities America has leads to respect and success. But these opportunities don’t come as easily if you’re anything other than white for many reasons, one being inequality of resources. If black immigrants are lucky enough to even have a job, those jobs are usually less likely to have the technical resources available that allow employees to work less because of the technology inequality that exists within career paths (Friedman). The heavily labor-induced jobs many black immigrants must work, for lack of better alternatives, along with societal pressure to work more than most makes it extremely difficult to relax and live the comfortable life they dreamed of when arriving here. No one would want their children to spend their life like this, but in the case of African immigrants, it’s a very real and scary possibility that they view is only escapable by acquiring higher education in a prestigious field. A respectable field that pays more and allows for more flexibility in living is achievable if their children work hard in their studies.
But what is not realized is regardless of occupation, unless the religion of work is reformed, Americans will always be overworked. In the past, it was more common for higher earners to have more leisure time since they could afford it, but now higher earners are spending more time working than low-wage workers (Francis). This may be because of an increase in incentives to work, in which working long hours may lead to a promotion or bonus (Francis). So, although many studies projected lower national work hours by this period, the religion of work is still prospering because there are more motivations to work than not. In this case, while black children of immigrants may be more satisfied earning high wages in prestigious careers, there is still a risk they would fall into the same overworking trap as their parents. Overwork in any career can lead to physical disabilities, mental conditions, and even death. For this cycle to end, the way Americans approach their professional lives must change.
Maurice Schiff makes the argument that the U.S. already lags behind other countries in terms of work time, and they would benefit from taking notes from Europeans who “internalise work-time-related negative externalities by enacting restrictive work-time policies, while the United States is not, resulting in a prisoner’s dilemma equilibrium and “overworking trap.” And as mentioned before, many studies have found that although we were predicted to be working fewer hours by this decade, Americans are working way more, even compared to countries of similar economic rankings. The refusal to lower work hours is due to America’s necrophilic love of “transform[ing] man into thing” because when they’re able to make their citizens believe 50 hours per week is a normal amount of time for a human to work, they succeed in dehumanizing the workplace so that we never question our place as productive members of society (Freire, 65). Unless the system itself changes and adapts to modern times, then the already blurred line between job and personal life will become almost nonexistent for black immigrants and the rest of the population.
