West Indian Migration

The Monserrat Case

Stuart B. Philpott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000323566
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

West Indian migration has attracted considerable attention in recent years. There is a growing body of sociological literature dealing with various aspects of the adjustment of West Indian, as well as other, immigrants in Britain. This book looks at the continuing relationships these migrants maintain with the societies they have left.

1 The Problem

West Indian migration has attracted considerable attention in recent years. There is a growing body of sociological literature dealing with various aspects of the adjustment of West Indian, as well as other, immigrants in Britain. While such studies vary widely in orientation and empirical content, they tend to focus either on the relations of migrants with the host society in terms of such concepts as assimilation, prejudice and discrimination (e.g. Glass 1960, Patterson 1963) or on the internal structuring of the migrant populations themselves (Banton 1954), or both. The continuing relationships these migrants maintain with the societies they have left, on the other hand, have been largely ignored.

Such academic concerns in British social science parallel the earlier (and continuing) emphasis on the ‘sociology of immigration’ in the United States, an emphasis which has resulted in an accumulated literature on the subject of staggering proportions. Furthermore this scholarly interest reflects a wider concern of government members, official agencies, and the public at large, over such social problems as overcrowded housing, racial tension, and unemployment which are linked with (particularly by political demagogues) the highly visible influx of coloured immigrants to Britain.

Yet the proportion of such immigrants in the total British population is relatively small, certainly far less than the proportion emigrants comprise relative to the population of most West Indian islands. For such island societies die social implications of migration are possibly more significant—if less dramatic—than they are for Britain. This end of the migratory path has been neglected by the social sciences. Sociologists and anthropologists have been asking what happens in British society with the entry of large numbers of West Indians; they have paid little attention to what happens in West Indian society with their exit.

Admittedly a considerable amount of work has been published (cf. Davison 1962, Roberts and Mills 1958, Peach 1968) as to the ‘causes’ of the migration in terms of population increase and density, British labour shortage, etc., as well as some statistical documentation of the gross economic and demographic implications of the migration. But the social implications are often ignored or dismissed as obvious. Davison, an economist, for example, simply states: ‘The migration is draining the islands of the younger people, leaving the older folk and the children behind. The economic and social implications of such a lop sided arrangement need no elaboration’ (196a: 16).

On the contrary I believe that the implications of this and other aspects of migration need a great deal of elaboration. A detailed analysis of the adaptation of a Caribbean society in the face of continuing out-migration is relevant to the understanding of that particular area as well as small-scale societies undergoing similar processes elsewhere.

Furthermore the only substantial body of research on the sociology of out-migration has been done primarily by British anthropologists on labour migration in Africa. Such studies focus largely on lineage-based ‘tribal’ societies. This study, hopefully, will partially offset too great an emphasis on an ‘African model’ and allow some more general conclusions to be drawn.

Montserrat, the island chosen for the research, has long been heavily affected by out-migration. Fieldwork was conducted in the island from August of 1964 to September 1965, and intermittently from that time to June 1966 with Montserratian migrants in London. Since that time Frucht (1966, 1968) has dealt briefly with the effect of remittances and migration on social stratification and economy in Nevis. Also Crane (1966) has analysed some implications of selective migration from the Dutch Caribbean island of Saba. Despite these works I believe this is the first study in the Caribbean which attempts to systematically examine the implications of migration for the major institutional complexes of the society.

METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The study of the implications of mass emigration for the sending society presents a number of methodological problems. To some extent, in speaking of the ‘implications’ of migration, one is speaking of the social change connected with such migration and the approach to its study should be that applied to the study of social change.

Most anthropological studies of social change are of the before and ‘after’ variety. Such studies are rarely truly ‘diachronic’ wherein the investigator spends a very long time in the field recording and analysing the ongoing processes of social change. Instead most such studies are based on the comparison of a social structure abstracted earlier by the same or a different investigator. Other methods have included the construction of a ‘zero point’ or base line of culture as the datum against which to compare change.

The merits or deficiencies of such approaches cannot be evaluated here. Apart from any conceptual difficulties, such methods were inapplicable on more empirical grounds. First the psychological orientation and brevity of die only previous anthropological study (Metraux 1960) made comparison virtually impossible. Secondly, emigration has been an important socioeconomic alternative for so long, as Chapter 2 will evidence, that a search for the ‘before’ and ‘after’ social structures connected with a particular migration would be fruitless. Instead I felt that it was theoretically more profitable and empirically more realistic to consider migration as having a differential impact on various institutional structures (household, family, economic, etc.) depending on its scale and intensity and the nature of the roles in these structures. The result of this approach is to see migration as containing both elements of ‘continuity’ and ‘change’.

Again most anthropological studies of change deal with the impact on some relatively self-contained social isolate of an ecological or technological event. The ‘unit of analysis’ normally remains the same regardless of the institutional structure being examined, partly because of the assumption of functional autonomy of the social isolate, and partly because greater emphasis is given to the detailed examination of one institution, notably kinship, to the exclusion of the others.

Valid as this approach may be for many of the societies studied by anthropologists, it could not usefully be applied in Montserrat. West Indian islands cannot be considered, as Manners has pointed out, as ‘hypothetical tribal or community' isolates for purposes of analysis.

It is clear, for the Caribbean at least, that a body of land entirely surrounded by water is no longer an island. For the anthropologist to study these islands or their parts as if they were independent of outside influence and pressures would be naive in the extreme. And certainly no field-working anthropologist is or should be, to use Arensberg’s expression, ‘ignoramus’ enough to be unaware of these influences and pressures. Nevertheless, if one examines the anthropological literature on the Caribbean it soon becomes evident that awareness may not be enough, for too often the analysis which has emerged from the ‘small unit’ study has proceeded as if virtually all of the determinants of culture change (and stability) existed within the community or, at best, within the island itself (Maimers, 1965:183-4).

While most anthropological studies examine a range of institutions and their inter-relation the tendency has been to give priority to one institutional complex and consider others mainly as they relate to it. The unit of analysis is that which is most appropriate to the main institution under consideration and tends to remain fixed for the entire analysis.

As this study, however, attempts to isolate the implications of an activity—migration—for a number of different institutions, the ‘unit of analysis’ cannot remain constant but must vary according to the nature of the implications being considered. I have variously treated the household, the ‘community’, the island, the sending society plus migrants abroad, as the appropriate units for the analysis of particular implications of migration.

This emphasis on the ramifications of an activity has another facet; the sacrifice of some of the detail and refinements associated with the exhaustive study of single institutions. However, in my view this sacrifice is outweighed by the contribution such an approach makes to filling theoretical and empirical gaps in the study of Caribbean societies. The bulk of sociological literature on the West Indies focuses primarily on family structure, for example, and says comparatively little about anything else. And while there remain important issues in the study of the Caribbean family the primary aim of this work is not toward their resolution. Even so I believe that the emphasis on migration here provides insights on the West Indian family that have not appeared in the studies which made family structure their central concern.

Initially I assumed that such an enormous outpouring of population and increase in remittances would have implications for all the institutions of Montserrat society. But not only must the unit of analysis vary, as indicated earlier, with the institutions being analysed but also the methods employed. In one sense the last statement is, of course, axiomatic. But my point goes somewhat beyond that level. For example, in studying the relationship between migration and the economic structure of Montserrat the ‘before and after’ approach, dismissed earlier in terms of a general method, was considered valid. On the one hand, the presumed validity is bound up with the greater possibility of establishing, with reasonable documentation, the pre-existing economic structure than, perhaps, the family structure. But it also accords with my view that migration has a differential impact in the various institutional contexts.

In considering the implications of migration in the areas of family or local organization I initially planned to compare two villages similar in most respects but differing in the degree or rate of migration. Ideally one village was to have virtually no emigration while the other was to have a great deal. Indeed such a method might have been applicable in Montserrat before the migration to Britain because it appears that in earlier times there were greater differences in the amount of migration from different districts of the island. Since the migration to Britain, however, all areas of the island have high rates of migration and the small variations are not significant enough to permit generalizations about associated differences in organization.

Although contemporary differences in rates of migration were not considered significant for comparison, relative lengths of migration history for different areas were. Such migration history is closely associated with the factor of land ownership or non-ownership. The assumption that this factor would be an important variable in selective migration guided the decision to study in a district composed of small landholders and another composed primarily of landless former estate workers. As the research progressed it became apparent that present differences in land-holding patterns were significant for analysis largely because they were related to varying migration histories. Heavy migration from the small landholding area had been taking place for a much longer period, a fact somewhat contrary to my original assumptions about selective migration.

FIELD RESEARCH

Shortly after my wife and I and our one-year-old son arrived in Montserrat in the middle of August 1964 we were fortunate to be able to rent the house of a teacher on study leave in England located in an area of former estate workers where some of the most dramatic labour-management conflict and emigration had taken place in recent years. We remained in this area until the end of March, 1965, when we moved to another house in an area of small landholders until departure from the island in mid-September 1965.

Much of the first month was spent working at the government offices in Plymouth compiling some basic statistical data about emigration and remittances. As, at that time, such figures were not readily available in tabulated form it was necessary to personally scan all the passport applications for the years 1946 to 1964 as well as collecting the monthly remittance figures from the post office account books. In retrospect, I find it distressing that the result of so many tedious hours in hot, stuffy offices can be reduced to a few pages of tables, in some cases now available from other sources.

In such a small island it was possible to establish a considerable degree of personal contact at all levels, the colony’s political leaden, government officials and businessmen, estate owners and managers. But the bulk of my time was spent with, and data drawn from, the ordinary people in the two localities in which we lived.

Data was gathered following the usual anthropological techniques; ‘participant observation, direct and indirect questioning, surveys. The particular techniques used, with their relative merits and deficiencies, should become apparent as the data is presented in subsequent chapters. However it is probably useful here to say something in a general way about my acceptance by the local groups.

Henriques has claimed that a white investigator is at a great disadvantage in gathering data in the West Indies. ‘The acute colour consciousness of the West Indian inhibits him from giving information to someone who represents the values he himself is larking but trying to attain. Some information will be forthcoming, but much of it will be garbled and dressed to suit what the informant thinks are the ideas of the white investigator’ (1953: 4-5). Basically I would support the position of R. T. Smith, who succinctly replies to these strictures by ‘reminding him [Henriques] that there are more ways of obtaining information than by asking questions’ (1956: 238).

Anthropologists frequently indicate the first step in anthropological field work is to ‘establish rapport’ with the population under consideration. Apparently rapport is considered an essential quality that one has either obtained or not. I have never encountered any discussion of the range or degree of rapport, that what constitutes rapport sufficient to obtain information on one subject is not adequate to obtain information on another.

Without pursuing unduly the concept of rapport, I believe that I established the degree and range of this quality necessary to allow me adequate access to the subjects I was interested in. If my data are lacking, it is probably because I failed to capitalize on the rapport obtained or because the degree of rapport allowed such access to the complexities of situations that in some cases I have been led away from what otherwise might have been a neater analysis.

I do not suggest that I was simply incorporated as one of the villagers. Colour, education, standard of living differentiated me from most of the population I was studying. At the same time it was possible to extract myself from the stereotyped conceptions of colour or class differences. A white man living in lower-class villages with his wife and child, drinking in rum shops, and attending ‘jumbie dances’, virtually assured that.

My incorporation at the village level, in so far as I can evaluate it, was of much the same order as that of returned migrants; a part of the village but possessing greater access to material and bureaucratic resources. This higher status proved useful in that it enabled me to obtain information from the lowest status villagers that they would not have revealed to some one they considered a social equal. This was particularly true in cases of conflict where, unsolicited, both parties often attempted to justify their positions to me.

At the same time my contacts in the villages produced a great number of apparently very genuine friendships which resulted in the unplanned (although, in the light of hindsight, useful) involvement with the Montserratian migrants in London as well as a continuing exchange of letters with many villagers after nearly five years.

1. Montserrat

2 Montserrat: The Geographical and Historical Setting of a Migration-...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• 1. THE PROBLEM
• 2. MONTSERRAT: THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL SETTING OF A MIGRATION-ORIENTED SOCIETY
• 3. SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND MIGRATION
• 4. MIGRATION AND LOCAL ORGANIZATION
• 5. MIGRATION AND HOUSEHOLD ORGANIZATION
• 6. CEREMONIAL AND BELIEF
• 7. MONTSERRATIAN MIGRANTS IN BRITAIN: REMITTANCE OBLIGATIONS AND SOCIAL NETWORKS
• 8. CONCLUSION
• APPENDICES
• LIST OF WORKS CITED
• INDEX