About
I’m a humanistic and interpretive sociologist working at the intersection of race, ethnicity, and migration. I study “ethnic return migration”—the movement of descendants of immigrants to their ancestral homelands (i.e., a country that an earlier generation emigrated from)—among members of the Black diaspora.
My dissertation draws on in-depth life history interviews with ethnic return migrants of Jamaican descent who were raised in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, alongside multi-year ethnographic research across Jamaica, Canada, and the United States. By examining these return movements through the lens of migrants' experiences of integration in their countries of upbringing, I demonstrate how the very processes through which Black descendants of immigrants become incorporated into middle-class life in their countries of upbringing can also generate the dispositions and capacities to leave. This work has been generously supported by the Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the University of Michigan's International Institute.
My interdisciplinary training has provided me with the unique opportunity to study and address various contemporary social issues. I have published work on topics ranging from urban inequality to medical education to the impact of COVID-19 on society, to racism and health. My work on racism and health has appeared in academic textbooks, such as The Routledge Companion to Intersectionality, academic journals, such as The Lancet Regional Health and The Journal of Healthcare for The Poor and Underserved, as well as online, public-facing magazines, such as TRAD.
My research has been recognized by the American Sociological Association (Medical Sociology Section) and the Pacific Sociological Association as the recipient of the Louise Johnson Scholar Award and the Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award, respectively.
You can learn more about me and my work at my website, www.kayonnechristy.com
