Hometown associations sit at the centre of Pierre-Louis's account of Haitian New York. Organised around places of origin in Haiti, they ship goods, raise money for local projects and help officials at home set up nonprofits of their own, while doubling as advocacy bodies for their members in the city.

They also do identity work. Haitians arrived from a society where class outranked colour and found themselves assigned to a racially marginalised minority; the associations offer a setting where the history of the first black republic stays in view, immigrant enterprise is admired, and the differences of language and culture that separate Haitians from African Americans and other black immigrants are treated as assets.

Exile politics complicated all of this. Service organisations meant to help newcomers settle were led by people whose horizon was the fall of Duvalier and a return home, and several of them did return, into government.