Race and Ethnicity across Borders An Ethnographic Study of Haitian Women in Diaspora

Abstract

Using a transnational approach grounded in ethnographic research with Haitian women, this paper augments existing U.S.-based literature on race and gender to examine the construction of race and ethnicity as transnational processes rooted in local historical contexts. Focusing on the workplace as a crucial site where race is reproduced, this article draws from the experiences of Haitian women in Boston, Montreal, and Paris regarding race and ethnicity to shed light on the ways in which race is constructed transnationally while remaining locally grounded. Haitian women experience race in each context, but the ways in which race manifests in Boston differs from the ways in which race manifests in Montreal or Paris, due to the specifics of each locale’s historical relationship to race, labor, and migration.