| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Karl |
Posted - Mar 25 2003 : 01:03:10 AM
The Caribbean Diaspora
Monday, March 24, 2003, 9:41:57 PM
IP:68.161.88.105
The Caribbean Diaspora
David Jessop
Sunday, March 23, 2003
THE Caribbean's most significant export is its people. In the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands and in many other nations, millions of individuals of Caribbean origin live and work. Some may have little or no connection with the region that their grandparents or even great grandparents emigrated from 50 or more years ago. Others are more recent arrivals. Some have become important figures nationally or in the community with their grandchildren or children also achieving significantly. Others have become a part of an underclass of despair. Today, the Caribbean Diaspora peoples cover whole sections or districts of some of the world's major cities. Trinidadians, Jamaicans, Guyanese and even Anguillans, whether by origin or descent, can now be found clustered around those locations in which the first arrivals chose to live.
The total global size of the Caribbean Diaspora is unclear but government figures suggest that, in the US, there are some 2.8 million people of self-declared Caribbean origin or ethnicity, in Canada, around 0.3 million, and in the United Kingdom, 0.6 million. While these figures are sizeable enough in themselves, they most probably significantly underestimate the real numbers and the relative weight of the Caribbean in each community.
Recently the Canadian Foundation for the Americas published a policy paper on 'The Impact of Migration in the Caribbean and the Central American Region' (http://www.focal.ca). It is essential reading because of its implications for the region's dire need to make better use of its Diaspora to leverage advantage for its trade and other interests.
The paper focuses on a number of ways in which the Caribbean and Central American community in Canada have driven economic activity to the benefit of both the host country and the region. It suggests that the economic connectivity between migrants and their countries of origin has become self-reinforcing. Long stay 'tourism' has become a central feature with family and friends travelling annually. This has supported the development of air transportation and telecommunications. The presence of the Diaspora, the report suggests, has also caused the development of new services and new areas of trade. Money transfer businesses to enable remittances to be sent securely and at low cost have developed and led to the expansion of some financial institutions in the region. Caribbean manufactures such as beers, rums, processed foodstuffs, garments and other products have found ready markets in the community and then in some cases spread out into the mainstream market. Commercial linkages have expanded with a growing number of individuals in the business community in the Diaspora identifying and then developing out of their small export and import businesses, opportunities for joint ventures or investments to ensure their ability to supply the demand they have created.
Remittances, the report notes, are having an impact that goes beyond money transfer. It suggests that apart from representing an important share of the national income, a significant part of the US$84 million that goes annually to Barbados, the US$50 million to Trinidad or the US$1.2 billion to Jamaica, may now be going beyond basic household needs. Up to 10 per cent of such transfers, the paper indicates, may be going into savings to provide for pensions or into other beneficial channels such as investment in small businesses. The report also notes that formalised relationships, through what it describes as hometown associations, are having influence linking economic and social activities in the region through charitable giving or investment.
This is of great importance. But one of the paper's conclusions in particular, ought to make governments and institutions in the region sit up and recognise the potential the Diaspora has in the battle yet to come over commodities such as sugar and the pace and scope of US- or EU-led trade liberalisation.
The report suggests that the continuing flow of people from regions like the Caribbean and Central America to the North is 'setting the stage for the formation of special interest groups with strong transnational agendas and objectives'. The interests of migrants, the report notes, are threefold: 'to gain recognition by their home countries; to increase the level of interconnection with their homeland; and to eventually lobby their home and host country's political system for favourable foreign policy'.
While this may seem self-evident, this message is still largely lost in the Caribbean. In contrast to Canada and the United States, where the Caribbean community continues to grow, Europe in particular has a relatively mature and integrated Caribbean community. It is at or even beyond, the third stage recognised by the study. Despite this, the political and economic potential of the community and the presence of key leadership groups such as the black churches, the European Diaspora is largely ignored by the region other than when it is able to influence domestic, political agendas in the Caribbean. This is in stark contrast to the positions taken by the very powerful lobbies representing Israel, India, Pakistan, Kashmir or other groups less embedded in European society.
A while ago, my own organisation undertook a study that indicated that a significant number of key marginal seats in the United Kingdom, including some of those that are held by Cabinet ministers, have significant populations from the Caribbean Diaspora. It suggested a course of action that might bring the region's assets together to its advantage. It was widely if privately distributed. Despite subsequent interest, there was no follow-up by any regional government, institution or association.
Somehow many Caribbean diplomats, governments and others still see lobbying on any significant scale as interference in the domestic affairs of another nation. This is the stuff of history. If the United States and it allies can take pre-emptive military action in the Gulf, the encouragement of the exercise of the democratic rights of the Caribbean's extended community can hardly be regarded as eye-opening. Indeed, there are signs in some European nations that quite senior figures in government would actually welcome a noisy and bothersome Caribbean lobby, in order that they can raise the profile of the region and its political and economic problems to the level of European cabinets.
The Caribbean has an army already in the field that, if suitably mobilised and informed, can change policy. It also has economic muscle through investors, those that it trades with and the region's many influential friends. It is time the region made use of these strengths rather than continuing to plead its weaknesses.
David Jessop is the director of the Caribbean Council and can be contacted at david.jessop@caribbean-council.com
|
|
|
