Emigration And Development In The English Speaking Caribbean

This book represents the product of a two-year research project and a four-year personal journey to explore the relationship between migration and economic development in the Caribbean area. Does Caribbean immigration to the United States assist or impede the economic development of the Caribbean? Would the curtailment of immigration affect the stability of the Caribbean? Can a certain mix of development strategies significantly reduce the pressures for migration? What can the United States and the Caribbean countries do separately and together to improve the prospects for economic development while permitting migration at manageable levels? This book begins with these questions and ends with some answers.

Originally published in 1992, this text considers out-migration from the Caribbean in an analytical manner. Its comparative approach, involving three islands (Jamaica, Barbados and St Vincent) and the range of micro-environments within those islands, is based on data from extensive surveys and in-depth interviews. Analysis of the migration process reflects the perspective of Caribbean potential migrants themselves.

This work provides a detailed analysis of the phenomenon of return migration to the English-speaking Caribbean. Return migration has been studied primarily for the Hispanic Caribbean but little exists for the English-speaking region. The co-edited work brings together the scholarship of ten social scientists, many of them from the Caribbean, whose research is focused on the process. The phenomenon is discussed from several theoretical perspectives and includes indepth studies of Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, St Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, and St Lucia. It includes renowned scholars in the field such as Elizabeth Thomas-Hope, Margaret Byron and George Gmelch as well as younger scholars such as Frank Abernaty and Godfrey St Bernard.

In Pilgrims from the Sun, Ransford Palmer chronicles the migration of people from the English-speaking Caribbean to the United States, detailing the largely economic reasons for their departure and the cultural reasons for their successful settlement. Close to 700,000 West Indian immigrants and their children live in America today with the greatest concentrations in the New York City and Miami areas. The high value they place on hard work, education, home ownership, private savings, and family loyalty writes Palmer, has helped to rank West Indians among the most socioeconomically successful immigrant groups in the United States. Palmer looks not only at West Indians permanently residing in the United States - many of whom are employed in services, the fastest-growing sector of the economy - but also at temporary residents, in particular farm workers in Florida's sugar industry and students, and at the problem of illegal immigration. He assesses the interrelationship of migration, employment, and trade in the island and U.S. economies, and he argues that only accelerated economic growth in the islands will stem the tide of migration. Despite recent attempts by many Caribbean countries to free up their economies and to create development programs in cooperation with the European community as well as the United States, the promise of higher living standards in America remains too powerful for many West Indians to resist.