I went through the literature on health research among African immigrants focusing on type 2 diabetes prevention and management.I noted that many studies in the UK recruit African Caribbean mostly for ethnic minority studies somehow these are in place of African immigrants straight from Africa while in the US, studies are mostly conducted among African-American who are very different from African immigrants. So this had me wondering if there is a reason for this as it seem there is knowledge gap on this group. Please can anyone enlighten further on the issue. Thank you.
There is a literature on the neglect of African immigrants as a research topic, and this literature provides some speculations about the causes of this neglect; not much by way of hard evidence, though:
Kamya, H.A., 1997. African immigrants in the United States: The challenge for research and practice. Social Work, 42(2), pp.154-165.
Djamba, Y.K., 1999. African immigrants in the United States: A socio-demographic profile in comparison to native blacks. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 34(2), pp.210-215.
Takougang, J., 2003. Contemporary African immigrants to the United States. Irinkerindo: A Journal of African Migration, 2, pp.1-15.
Mwakikagile, G., 2007. Relations Between Africans, African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans: Tensions, Indifference and Harmony. New Africa Press.
Dear Tawakalitu
I think you make a really good point here. Jayaweera (2010) argues that there is an elision between ethnicity and migrant status in research which is complicated by the changing of recording of ethnicity/country of origin in the UK in recent years. From my knowledge there are public health papers about Somali people but I am not sure about other areas. Maybe best to search on actual countries in the area of diabetes? However I am quite prepared to believe there is very little in this area
best wishes
Louise
Dear Louise,
Thank you so much for your response to my question, this is exactly what i have noticed during my review of the literature. Some research has been conducted among Somalian immigrants but almost nothing among immigrants from other [parts of the continent. I tried country specific search and came up with diabetes studies conducted in the African country not among immigrants in host country. I feel this is an indication that there is a need for research in this area especially with the prevalence of diabetes among this population and their poor health outcomes. Thank you again for your contribution.
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