This paper contextualizes racial and ethnic identities in shaping African women's work lives in the USA. While the literature on black immigrant groups has posited that ethnic identities are often deployed to shield black immigrants from racism, my findings indicate that for a group of African women, their racial and ethnic identities are viewed as potential sources of discrimination. As black immigrant women from middle-class backgrounds in their home countries, they also articulate experiences with racism and downward social and occupational mobility. Accounting for how race and ethnicity intersect in the lives of black immigrant groups can nuance our understanding of racial identities and highlight diversity in experiences among national and regional groups. Focusing on particular health-care settings further suggests the importance of professional contexts in shaping the identity formations of recent black immigrants.

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What motivates people to enter health care occupations? What are the rewards of these jobs? What are the paths of mobility from low-paid, low-prestige, health care jobs to higher paid, more professional ones? This paper attends to these questions through interviews and ethnographic observations among West African immigrant nurses and disability support professionals in the US. I find that extrinsic motivations, (racial discrimination in other segments of the labor market), and the quest for extrinsic rewards, (wages, immigration status benefits), played a role in the decision-making of West African immigrant health care workers. I show how West African immigrants were able to parlay low-wage, entry level positions in the health care industry into more professional, highly paid, and secure ones. These workers also reaped material benefits, and developed intrinsic rewards (love/affection, job satisfaction), and the desire to help others after being immersed in their jobs. I posit an understanding of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards of care, as complex, layered, and intersecting. I prove that a m elange of motivations is in play, intrinsic and extrinsic rewards work in tandem, and one can enter health care for money and remain for money and for love.

Drawing from ethnographic data, this article investigates the work experiences of a group of African immigrants in the US care industry. By highlighting their strategies for coping with their entry into care work, this article presents the realities of professional, yet downwardly mobile, immigrants who care for vulnerable, minority ethnic populations. It extends the focus on gender, which has been central to the literature on migration and care work, to argue that the identity-formation processes of migrant care workers are shaped by their racial/class location, the contexts within which the work occurs and the specific care needs of care recipients.

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