Constructing Race and Ethnicity: “It Has to Do with Where You Are”

Drawing from the lived experiences of Haitian women in Boston and Montreal, this study illustrates how ethnography can augment understandings of race and place in demography by complementing quantitative analyses, showing how race is constructed across place through daily micro-interactions. Building on the work of demographers who examine how race shifts over time and place, this article challenges the practice of engaging with race as a fixed or static category to consider how race is constructed across place, highlighting the nuances of race that are sometimes lost in quantitative studies. The multi-sited ethnographic methodology employed in this study is uniquely suited to uncovering the specificities of race and place. The findings reveal that Haitian women experience race differently in Montreal and in Boston, based largely on the historical context of each place. Haitians in Boston experienced intraracial tensions with African Americans, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, that shaped their experiences of race and place, while Haitians in Montreal at the same time experienced Blackness that was closely tied with xenophobia in the French Canadian context. The Haitian women in this study experienced race, place, gender, ethnicity, and class simultaneously, necessitating an intersectional approach to understanding the effects of race in and on their daily lives.