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.

Foreword by: Suzanne Model