by Orita | July 13th, 2009
A commentary which highlights among other issues, the current pre-occupation with Caribbean emigration and the how national concerns impact CARICOM'S free movement of people agenda in the region.
Over The course of the Cricket World Cup (CWC) in 2007 my brother received a gift from a guest that stayed at the hotel where he worked, of two books of the history of St. Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla they had purchased in their native North Carolina. They visited the Federation for the CWC out of pure curiosity about this intriguing sport and decided to research their destination. The books are a treasure trove of well researched historical information about these islands that cannot be found anywhere on St. Kitts because there are virtually no bookstores on this island. That is a terrible legacy for any society and it explains a lot about the intellectual stupor that afflicts most public discussions, but that issue needs its own commentary.
What interested me most about the books was the detail about the immediate post – Emancipation history of migration that determined the fates of these islands. Beginning in the 1840s successive waves of Kittitians especially but also Nevisians and Anguillians migrated first to Trinidad, then to the United States, Santo Domingo, the Dutch Antilles and were deported to Bermuda on a regular basis until the 1940s. Of course migration did not stop then but what was interesting about this early migration was the fact that; with the exception of the United States from which the emigrants rarely returned, the migration to the other Caribbean territories was as transient as it was regular and occurred around the seasonal demands of the agricultural industry and later the petroleum industry in Curacao.
Both men and women travelled either annually or for two or three years at a time and returned with desperately needed earnings. As is always the case when times are hard, people did what they had to in order to survive and care for their dependant children and elderly parents.
Apart from the interesting history about the regional movement of labour; long before a CSME the other important legacy of this migration is the birth of generations of children who were truly Caribbean in origin because they were often born in a different territory from either of their parents.
This is important to remember not only for the study of Caribbean anthropology but also in order to answer that ever important and evolving question; where are we from?
In recent times there has been much public discussion about the numbers of Caribbean nationals resident in the Federation. Of course they are not the only immigrants but join communities of Chinese, Indians, a variety of African nationalities and several white North American and European families to form a diverse and cosmopolitan enclave of multiculturalism within these two islands. As the economic times have become more difficult the inevitable arguments have arisen about the place of foreigners in our communities.
I was born in Guyana so this discussion is always of interest to me. Over the course of living here for nearly 20 years and having gone to school here from the Primary level I have been privileged to have met many interesting people on both islands who are happy to meet another Caribbean national because they feel an affinity from having parents, children or spouses from elsewhere in the region usually because of having studied at the University of the West Indies. Others readily regaled me with their reminiscences of being “garots” in the United States Virgin Islands, of making a living in the BVI or St. Martin or their keen understanding of the difference between being an expatriate and being an immigrant in the UK or North America.
While both words describe basically the same kind of person the terms firmly confine individuals within particular sections of society based only on perceptions of race and class. Regardless of their economic circumstances, white newcomers both in the Caribbean and in the former colonial powers are usually treated as guests because they are thought to be visiting with means while black newcomers are treated with suspicion because they are considered to economic refugees. This distinction is often the unspoken basis around which the inevitable discussion about the place of immigrants in our society occurs. It is because this fact is almost never acknowledged that these discussions are almost never useful or enlightening.
It is to be expected that the ebb and flow of these discussions coincide with the constant tide of economic fortune. In goods times people are too busy enjoying themselves to be bothered by their neighbours but in bad times they often wonder whether that neighbour is a part of the problem. The important feature of this perception is how much it is limited to those in the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Of course they will be most affected by economic upheavals but particularly in a Caribbean society that has been formed by migration it is worth studying why it is that people are so prone to see threats in their equally poor Caribbean neighbours who are a mirror image of themselves but not in the immigrants from further afield who are often those with the real economic impact. In other words why is it that nearly two generations after Eric Williams’s Capitalism and Slavery the very basic economic arrangement of these societies remains misunderstood?
One reason is certainly political expedience. It is easy and sadly effective to camouflage poor economic decision making on the part of governments by making scapegoats out of the vulnerable and defenseless minimum wage black Caribbean immigrant. When people are distracted by competition for the worst and most poorly paid jobs they are also often unable to understand the impact of economic policies that impoverish native entrepreneurship while enriching equally poor immigrants from China, India and elsewhere. I often am astonished to hear people say that he or she will not get rich off of me when talking about a black Caribbean entrepreneur including their fellow Kittitians and Nevisians but completely fail to see how they are willingly making other people very rich indeed and often through the consumption of very inferior products. When people can come to these islands from Asia, North America and Europe and get rich even in bad times while 12000 locals languish in desperate poverty surely there is much more to this discussion than where the poorest people are from.
Much has been made of the distrust and disgust black Caribbean people have of themselves as a particularly pernicious legacy of enslavement but in 2009; more than a century after formal steps were initially taken to foster an integration movement; when we are finally on the verge of a CSME whether we like it or not; when everyone else is forming regional trading blocks or actively seeking to do so because the benefits are plain to everyone except us; why are we still so preoccupied with where we are from but only when it refers to other people virtually exactly like ourselves – Caribbean people.
The real question for people to ask especially when it is time to choose a new government is where are we going? When our economy is shrinking yet the fortunes of a tiny elite who are in our society but not of it are rapidly expanding where are we going? When the most our children are raised to expect is a government job, a government house; to be as dependent on the patronage of the Minister as our forefathers were on the plantation owner where are we going? When our economic future continues to be dictated to the benefit of others as is the case with the EPA where are we going? When in this country the average local self – employed person has a tray or a space on the sidewalk or sells from a vehicle while those with the ambition to own at least one building must bear the brunt of the tax burden to compensate for the duty free concessions and tax holidays of those who compete directly against them where are we going? When the government pats itself on the back for tourism development yet over a fourteen year tenure not a single local person has been able to build a hotel; when there is no program to encourage the development of local hoteliers where are we going? When we actually call it success that others get wealthy from these islands so that there is a slightly larger group upon which our people are dependent were are we going? When we are daily witnessing a wholesale transfer of wealth in the form of land, in the form of shares in multinational companies, in the form of consumer spending away from the masses and into the already overflowing pockets of those whose fore parents never sweated and toiled under the lash to earn this wealth where are we going?
This is probably the most important question in these difficult times; seconded only by the other equally important question of where do we want to go. Now is the time to be decisive about our answer or else the question will quickly become where are we being taken?
Do you share the writer's viewpoint? Share your views with us and let us debate this vital topic.