Introduction. Cultures of Freedom and Constraint in Caribbean Migration and Diaspora

• Author: Elizabeth Thomas-Hope
• Pages: 25-46

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CULTURES OF FREEDOM AND CONSTRAINT IN CARIBBEAN MIGRATION AND DIASPORA

Cultures of Freedom and Constraint

in Caribbean Migration and Diaspora

ELIZABETH THOMAS-HOPE

INTRODUCTIONINTRODUCTION

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INTRODUCTION

Introduction Introduction

Introduction Introduction

Introduction

Freedom and coercion in Caribbean migration is an enduring theme in

a region where migration, under both of these circumstances, has

characterized the construction of the region’s societies and cultures. Modern

Caribbean societies were created through the forced migration of Africans

and Asians under conditions of slavery and indenture. Other groups,

including Europeans and Arabs, also migrated to the Caribbean under

varying conditions of coercion or the search for freedom. Subsequent

movements from and within the region, including those of the present

time, reflect motivations based not only on the freedom to move, but on

migration as a resource in the pursuit of freedom. The dialectic of coercion

and freedom is one that permeates the migration dynamic and is reflected

in the ongoing movements outwards from the country of birth and, for

some, back again, or in an ongoing cycle of transnational mobility.

Forced migrations still occur. Many persons are trafficked within and

from the region to other parts of the world under conditions that deprive

them of their human right to personal freedom. Caribbean persons in the

USA and the UK are currently deported involuntarily back to their country

of birth in significant numbers. Others move from their homeland due to

political pressures and persecution. But these are among the more overtly

forced movements of the present time. The coercions and freedoms in the

migration process are in most cases covert and embedded in socially

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FREEDOM AND CONSTRAINT IN CARIBBEAN MIGRATION AND DIASPORA

constructed inequalities of migrant identities – chiefly those based on race

and the process of racialization conditioned by class status and national

stereotypes. At the destination these factors are further complicated by

the circumstances of migrant arrival in combination with the pre-existing,

or even newly emerging, perceptions of the identity of the migrants leading

to various levels of receptivity in the host society. However, this seemingly

common migration framework, offering freedoms and coercion,

opportunities and constraints, must not mask the real differences between

forced and voluntary movement. The forced movements of individuals

and peoples induced by war, economic deprivation, political repression or

environmental disaster, who seek refuge elsewhere, are fundamentally

different from the freedoms and constraints experienced in the mobility of

those who move outwards and back again without any compulsion, simply

to expand their horizons and to engage new environments of opportunity.

Viewed both from the behavioural and the historical-structural

theoretical perspectives, and within the colonial and post-colonial contexts,

there is good reason to interpret the characteristics of Caribbean migration

in terms of freedom and constraint. This applies to the selectivity of the

migration process as well as the subsequent relationship of the migrants

with the host society, as also with the home society. Further, freedom and

constraint underpin the identities and the perceptions which are embedded

in the various constructions of the migrant as the ‘other’ and, on the part

of the migrant, in the sense of self and the livelihoods they can pursue. It

therefore affects the contribution the migrant can make to the culture and

life at both migration source and destination.

Yet, the common conceptualizations of the migration process and

explanations of the movements and experience at the destinations have

subsumed the significance of freedom and coercion. Instead, the paradigms

have been dominated by materialist interpretations of movement, and

consequently a theoretical framework entirely comprised of periphery-centre

alignments and relative advantage (the so-called migration ‘pushes’ and

‘pulls’ of popular discourse). At one level, individuals make decisions to

migrate based on the differential advantages of perceived opportunities,

and in this sense the competitive material nature of globalization ascribes