Title: Transplants in the West: A Study of Settlement and Adjustment Issues Among Nigerian Immigrants in Portland, Oregon.

Though African Americans have been in the northwestern part of the United States since the early part of the settlement of the western United States by non-indigenous people, the Nigerian is a new comer to these areas. Until the immigration liberalization law of 1965, the Nigerians who came here were students with temporary visas. Yet, the literature on immigrant settlements in the United States has been selective in its examination of the immigrants and the immigration process. Very few studies exist about the Nigerian immigrants and the issues they face as they settle into the United States. The present study attempts an examination of this immigrant group. The focus is on barriers, challenges and struggles that this group encounters as they settle in Portland , Oregon. The study attempted to find out why this particular population came here and what their reasons were for choosing to settle in the area. Since the study sought to discover the immigration experience from the individual's perspective, the method of study was phenomenology. The focus of the study, therefore, became the description of the phenomenon (immigration), the individual experiences of the phenomena of arrival, settlement and adjustment, the relationships and differences in these experiences. These private experiences were then taken together and conclusions and lessons were drawn. The goal was exploratory with a view to stimulating interest among researchers on this particular population. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with fourteen recent Nigerian immigrants with an equal number of males and females who lived in the Portland metropolitan area stretching from Multnomah County, in Oregon to Clark County, Washington. The stories collected were analyzed using themes that emerged and organized into an interpretive framework that included: reasons for coming to the United States, reasons for staying in the Northwest, barriers/challenges/struggles encountered, practical coping strategies, cognitive coping strategies, interpretation and meaning imposition to the experience. Participants had different reasons for coming and settling in the northwest. Education played a great role both in the impetus to emigrate as well as in the coping process in the settlement phase. The participants reported lack of familiarity with the formal networks and heavy reliance on the informal networks. Social workers must pay attention to these concerns and issues of culture raised in this study and employ appropriate practice skills in working with this population.