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Return Migration and Remittances:
Developing a Caribbean Perspective
Return Migration and
Remittances:
Developing A
Caribbean Perspective
Edited by
William F Stinner
Klaus de Albuquerque
and
Roy S. Bryce-Laporte
i RIIES Occasional Papers No. 3
Research Institute on Immigration and Ethnic Studies
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 1982
1982 by the Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Return migration and remittances.
(RIIES occasional papers ; no. 3)
Includes bibliographies.
Supt. of Docs. no.: SI 1.2:M58
1. Return migration--Caribbean area--Addresses,
essays, lectures. 2. Emigrant remittances--Carib-
bean area--Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. United
States--Emigration and immigration--Addresses,
essays, lectures. 4. Caribbean area--Emigration
and immigration--Addresses, essays, lectures.
I. Stinner, William F. II. De Albuquerque, Klaus.
III. Bryce-Laporte, Roy S. IV. Research Institute
on Immigration and Ethnic Studies (Smithsonian
Institution) V. Series.
JV7321.Z6 1982 304.8'73'0729 82-600341
The Research Institute on Immigration and Ethnic Studies
founded in 1973, is part of the Smithsonian's Department of
Anthropology. The Research Institute focuses on immigration flows
which have been affected by legislation since 1965. It also explicitly
includes American extraterritorial jurisdictions among its
scholarly concerns.
Staff
Roy S. Bryce-Laporte, Director
Betty Dyson, Administrative Assistant
Constance M. Trombley, Secretary
Dedication
The Research Institute on Immigration and Ethnic Studies
makes a gift to the membership of the Caribbean Studies Associa-
tion, now in its eighth year of existence, by dedicating this volume
to the memory of our beloved colleague, Dr. Vera Green, a member
of long standing who departed this life on January 16, 1982. We,
the three editors of this volume, recall her unselfish spirit and
steadfast commitment to the Caribbean region, its people and its
study; her perkiness, pleasant presence, and participation in CSA
meetings; and her encouragement and assistance to us in connec-
tion with this project. She was truly appreciated; she will be sadly
missed.
Further, the Research Institute on Immigration and Ethnic
Studies of the Smithsonian Institution wishes to dedicate the
collection to Dr. Basil Ince, Past President of CSA and at present
Minister of Foreign Relations of Trinidad and Tobago; Dr. Orville
Goodin, at present Minister of Treasury, Republic of Panama; and
Dr. Vaughn Lewis, Past President of CSA and now Director-General
of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (in St. Lucia). By
their examples, they and other colleagues of our generation con-
tinue a tradition established by an older group of outstanding
Caribbean scholars and reinforce the hope of the continued return
migration of younger, promising Caribbean scholars to perform
high, public services for their peoples and the countries or region
of their birth and early education.
Contents
Preface ix
Roy S. Bryce-Laporte
Acknowledgments xxxiii
Introductory Essay: The Dynamics of Caribbean Return
Migration
Wlliam F Stinner and Klaus de Albuquerque xxxvii
Part I: Papers on Return Migration
Return Migration to the English-Speaking Caribbean:
Review and Commentary
Hymie Rubenstein 3
The Origins and Continuity of Return Migration in the
Leeward Caribbean
Bonham Richardson 35
"In Sick Longing for the Further Shore": Return Migration
by Caribbean East Indians During the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries ( .
Brinsley Samaroo 45
International Return Migration: Socio-Demographic
Determinant of Return Migration to the Dominican
Republic
Antonio Ugalde and Thomas C. Langham 73
Return Migration from the United States to Costa Rica
and El Salvador
Guy Poitras 97
The Newyorican Comes Home to Puerto Rico: Description
and Consequences
Roberta Ann Johnson 129
The Puerto Rican Circuit and the Success of Return
Migrants
Barry B. Levine 157
Why Returnees Generally Do Not Turn Out to Be "Agents of
Change": The Case of Surinam
Frank Bovenkerk 183
Composite Bibliography on Return Migration 217
Part II: Notes on Remittances
The Impact of Remittances in the Rural English-Speaking
Caribbean: Notes on the Literature
Hymie Rubenstein 237
The Magnitude and Impact of Remittances in the Eastern
Caribbean: A Research Note
Rosemary Brana-Shute and Gary Brana-Shute 267
Migration Remittances and Development: Preliminary
Results of A Study of Caribbean Cane Cutters in Florida
Charles H. Wood 291
Composite Bibliography on Remittances 309
Appendix A: Notes on Contributors 317
Appendix B: Notes on Editors 319
PREFACE
By the time of the release of this volume, the
Research Institute will have entered its tenth year of
official establishment within the Smithsonian Insti-
tution. With this volume, RIIES will have produced
its eleventh publication on the subjects of new and
Caribbean immigrations. Conceived of at a time when the
Smithsonian decided to extend its efforts beyond tradi-
tional concerns for artifacts and events of antiquity to
include the study of ongoing human sociocultural activi-
ties, RIIES was granted membership in the Institution's
family in 1972. (This was one year before it was to
make its appearance as a formal organization with a
director.) As of this earliest association, the Research
Institute was to become committed to share with its
larger parent body its rather well-known responsibili-
ties, "to increase and diffuse knowledge to all [Men],"
charged to it by benefactor James Smithson. Restated,
the formulation of the specific objectives of RIIES
reads as follows:
To stimulate, facilitate, diffuse and conduct
scholarly research on post-1960 immigration
into the United States and its overseas terri-
tories.1
The year 1972, apart from being the occasion
when RIIES was conceived, is important insofar as it
marked a period in which the latest wave of incoming
foreigners into this country had become an established
reality, with clear patterns of composition, origin and
places of settlement. Ironically, it was also a period
of continued public unawareness and scholarly inatten-
tion to this new presence. It also marked the emergence
of a campaign of anti-immigration forces who were bent
on creating a sense of panic and promoting a negative,
one-sided and isolationist view of the new immigrants
and what their presence as new ethnics as well as added
population would mean to the American society.
Seeking to carry out a higher mission, RIIES
committed itself, instead, to instill serious scholarly
input into the debate and study of new immigration. Its
hopes were (1) to bring about a broader way of viewing
immigration to the American public, and (2) to generate
the details, data and dynamics which could yield a more
accurate picture of the complexity of new immigration as
both a transnational process and a human experience.
From RIIES's own perspective, American immigration is a
process not only of peopling the United States but of
continuing to shape its history, enrich its culture,
and extend its linkages with other countries of the
continent and the world. Hence, it was quite fitting
that it was RIIES which would sponsor the nation's first
major academic conference on the new immigration. It
was in keeping with its purpose and style that a unit of
the Smithsonian Institution would exercise leadership in
an international, public and intellectual endeavor.
Even before its establishment as a nation, the
history of the United States has been one of successive
waves of immigrants not only from the Old World but from
among New World societies as well. Each such wave
has had its particular impact on the shaping of this
country's internal composition and external relations.
By 1960, the United States was again to experience a
"new" wave of immigrants. Massive numbers of Cuban
refugees and later other peoples from Haiti and the
Dominican Republic entered the United States in flight
from dangerous, incompatible political situations in
their respective countries.
By 1965, the United States Congress passed its
most comprehensive immigration legislation. The Act
facilitated entry and change of status for the Cuban
refugees; for others it increased the opportunities for
admission, abolished national quotas and regional or
racial restrictions in favor of near parity in hemis-
pheric ceilings, and introduced a first-come, first-
served arrangement modulated by priorities based on
family reunification and U.S. labor needs. The 1965 Act
also eliminated the Western and Northern European biases
which prevailed in previous immigration legislation and
policies of the United States. The consequences of
these policies and legislative actions, coupled with new
national and international economic imbalances began
to take effect about the same time. The results have
registered in the form of 80,524,843 nonimmigrants,
3,241,844 legal immigrants and 628,912 parolees, and the
estimated two to twelve million illegal immigrants
alleged from the Caribbean, Latin America and Asia,
which are said to inhabit this country today.2 Accord-
ing to the 1980 census estimates, the foreign-born popu-
lation of the United States has increased to 6 percent
of the country's total population, consisting of four-
teen million people; as compared to ten million in 1970.
Today, 10 percent of the country's population speak a
foreign language, 48 percent of those speak Spanish;
and, there are now twenty seven million non-whites (23
percent in. the total United States population). It is
safe to assume that the new immigration has contributed
in some way to these patterns of change.3
Unfortunately, these developments reached their
peaks at the very moment that the current serious econo-
mic crises have begun to confront the United States.
These crises are being felt with special gravity by
its cities, colonies, common working-class people
and minorities who also share disproportionately space
or resources with incoming immigrants, (themselves
emigrating from new, unstable and even more economically
xiii
depressed or overpopulated countries.)
The news media moving from a stance of inaction
to one of sporadic sensationalism more often reinforce
the fears raised by anti-immigrationist forces. The
news produce another level of one-sidedness in the
nation's conception of immigration: wild estimates,
repeated police raids of undocumented workers, numerous
refugees coming, none of them leaving! They are being
turned back on the high seas, detained in camps,
forced to depart or are deported! Only the occasional
terrorists, misfits or maniacs would kidnap planes to
return to Havana! Nobody leaves the United States
voluntarily; they only come! Of course, this is not
true. Even true-blooded Americans emigrate from the
United States for "greener pastures." And, as Van B.
Shaw has stated, "Just as many naturalized Americans
become expatriates to return to their original home-
lands, many American expatriates are later repatriated
to the United States." He points out that between
1950 and 1968 almost 15,000 cases of repatriation were
reported by the I.N.S. service.4 But, based on the news
one would conclude differently; that immigration is just
that -- no emigration, no return migration. And, as
the new immigrants or new ethnics enter the population
soars; resources and employment are strained; and
comfort and culture are spoiled! Few consider that a
good many will be themselves or will bear new Americans;
many perhaps fear that they will bring about a new
America.
Under such conditions and influences, it is
understandable that "national" and "local" dimensions of
the immigration problem have been exaggerated in the
minds of the American people, even among native-born
minorities and older established elements of the new
immigrant populations. Most people are unsophisticated
about the more complex international interests and
therefore about the risks and responsibilities this
nation must take as the leading claimant of wealth,
advancement, opportunities and power in the world,
a position which it still finds necessary and worthy to
compete for, maintain and expand.
Too many segments of the American public may
have lost sight or concern with the "international"
nature of the immigration problem, that is where and how
it fits into the United States' roles and aspirations in
world affairs. So many people in the United States
today do not see why they should remember, care or know
what immigration means to new immigrants or to the
peoples and societies they leave behind. They certainly
do not understand beyond chauvinistic romanticism and
gross misperceptions why so many foreign people clamor
to enter the United States. They are not aware of this
country's contributions to these so-called "invasions"
because they do not understand the relationship between
immigration and international relations, world economy,
persuasive politics and big business in which the United
States is so aggressively involved.
This narrow attitude has been reflected even on
the highest levels of U.S. government where for sometime
policies of immigration have been developed and executed
without explicit, rational relations to policies of
development assistance, international relations and
trade (or for that purpose with policies of local ser-
vices and domestic governance) and vice-versa. In fact,
even today, there is still no comprehensive body of
knowledge or guidelines for coordinating contemporary
immigration/emigration dynamics between recipient and
donor societies (or for anticipating local versus
national needs arising out of such movements). Even
more telling is the almost universal absence of reliable
data on emigration, brain drain, return migration,
remittances, remigration and other phenomena reflecting
the situation of source rather than recipient countries.
Ever since its inception, the Research Institute
has been proposing a just, balanced, comprehensive
and international approach to immigration studies and
policies among governments and levels of governments
concerned. Its pleas seemingly ignored and sometimes
misunderstood, perhaps have been too difficult to absorb
or acknowledge in the adversary atmospheres and competi-
tive circles in existence now. Perhaps we, at RIIES,
are too impatient, but we are chagrined that so many of
the needs we have been articulating for almost a decade
continue to exist; that governments have been so slow in
responding to them. Convinced with the validity of our
messages and the relevance of our challenges, conscious
of the criticism and ostracism we have drawn because of
our position, we feel compelled to cooperate and now to
celebrate with those colleagues and supporters who have
come to share with us the broader conception of immigra-
tion and how it should be dealt with. It is for these
reasons that the themes and contents of this volume and
the context in which it emerged are so pleasing to us at
RIIES.
This collection focuses on two themes -- return
migration and remittances -- conceptually different but
not convincingly unrelated aspects of the phenomenon of
immigration, especially as it applies to developing
societies or regions and their emigrants. The notions
of return migration and remittances should bring to the
minds of the readers immediately that immigration is
indeed a complex, multi-level phenomenon with potential
for endurable historical and transnational linkage; it
can also be an infinite human experience. They remind
us that immigration is just one part of an equation;
emigration is another. To have come to a new place of
residence is to have left some place else; but having
adopted a new place need not mean abandoning the old
xvii
one. Hence, to have emigrated does not mean never to
return or have the desire of returning nor does it mean
never to remit materiel (that is ideological, symbolic,
structural or tangible goods) and service of worth
to the place of one's origin, belonging and early
upbringing. Accordingly, immigration does not begin or
end automatically with the initial movement and reloca-
tion from one country to another of new residence. It
has macro-structural as well as individualistic dimen-
sions which are registered throughout the process and
which may not be congruent or compatible with each
other (or at least not so easily recognizable as such
without profound or projected study.)
Why do people leave? How much is their leaving
beneficial to them or their country? When and in what
conditions do they desire or actually return? When or
what do they remit in the absence of their physical or
permanent return? To what extent or in what manner are
these beneficial to them or their country or region?
And in what ways and on what levels should these tenden-
cies become parts of the planning and policies of the
related governments? Obviously, the answers to these
questions will be relative and varied. At this time,
however, they are unknown. There is no body of data or
theory on return migration or remittances. Even the
relations between these two forms of behavior are not
clear at this point. These are important issues in
xviii
understanding immigration and immigrants, the behavior
of immigrants in their host and source countries, the
relations between two or more countries because of
immigrants, and eventually the role of immigration in
the problems of mobility and internal distribution of
opportunities or resources as well as those of inter-
national inequality, disequilibrium and conflict in the
world order.
Points such as the above are discussed in the
papers and notes of this collection. That they are done
with a Caribbean focus and from a Caribbeanist perspec-
tive is both proper and necessary. After all, seen
historically, the region has experienced both periods of
intense immigration and intense emigration. In fact,
some current states within the region even experience
high circular migration both in the repetitive seasonal
sense of the word as well as persons who re-emigrate
after a period of stay as expatriates in the old
country. Caribbean links through immigration/emigration
extend to many other countries beyond the United States,
but the region's proximity to that country and its
Caribbean holdings, i.e., Puerto Rico and the Virgin
Islands, the demand of prearranged bonds,contracts and
round-trip tickets to ensure repatriation at the end of
temporary stays and, of course, deportation and related
activities make for heightening the probability of
return migration. The sending of remittances back
home can be enhanced by fluctuations in local market
situations and also by discrepancies in economic needs
and potentials between immigrant recipient and sending
countries. Moreover, among the Caribbean people expec-
tations of return and remittances are part of their
immigrant ethos and tradition. But, to date very little
has been published on these subjects as aspects of
Caribbean immigration, and they are not yet parts of
their governments' policies and planning.
Impressed that the issues of emigration, return
migration and remittances are as important from a
contemporary Caribbean perspective as immigration is
today from an American vantage point, RIIES has never
hesitated to include them as part of its concerns.
Hence, note may be taken of the prominence given these
subjects in its programs and publications. For example,
it has published verbatim the articulation for clarity,
coordination and compatibility between the emigration
policies of Jamaica and the immigration policies of the
United States by a diplomat who participated in the
Institute's first planning seminar in 1975.5 Dedicated
to Caribbean immigration, the Institute's first publica-
tion of occasional papers, contain two specific articles
on barriers to returning for West Indian professionals
and one on brain drain by transplanted West Indian scho-
lars, plus several related comments by the editors and
other contributors.6 In a number of RIIES publications
pertinent commentaries and methodological critiques are
offered about both return migration and remittances;7 in
others, especially its volume on female immigrants,
these two specific aspects of international migration
are treated on the personal level as well.8
In my own case, leaving my family behind, I came
to the United States as a foreign student with serious
intentions of returning to my native Panama or other
countries in the larger circum-Caribbean region where I
can trace my ancestral background and follow my extended
kinship. However, I was disposed to extend my stay
and change my status, if necessary, if extraordinary
opportunities arose which could render greater security
or development for me and my family or to improve my
skills, status and saleability or strategic re-entry
into my country or region of origin. Not having
returned nor having had an opportunity for such a re-
entry, I (as a black, alien scholar) do suffer what may
be termed the underside or psychological anxieties of
the brain drain. These are feelings of alienation and
ambivalence of identity, despite my relative success in
the United States. Consequently, as an apparent compen-
satory readjustment to the ever-compelling sense of
indebtedness and commitment to those left behind, the
causes of small developing countries, minorities and
immigrants (especially those with circum-Caribbean
affiliations) have become the objects of my service and
of my United States-acquired scholarship. I suppose
these efforts constitute personal forms of remittances
in lieu, or in anticipation, of returning.9
Hence, going back to my early writing, it is
possible to find many points which may still be relevant
for consideration as minimal objectives for realizing
such plans and policies; for example:
1. Balanced, integrated and well-planned bilateral
and regional programs in economic development,
population control, and international migration
(including the consideration of new targets or
arrangements for Caribbean migration).
2. Equitable international and internal redis-
tribution of wealth and industries as long-term
projects ... instead of massive movements of people
to the United States as permanent immigrants you
[may] have massive movements of them to the United
States as non-immigrants, largely as tourists and
students.
3. Coordinated evaluation of data, research and
policies, particularly on demographic and economic
strategies, with the intention of enabling the
pan-Caribbean community to monitor migration and
trade within the region and also to operate as
a single economic community when dealing with
countries outside the region, or with other regions
of international economic cooperation and inter-
national consortia.
4. ... If emigration becomes an explicit policy
of these islands, aid in cosmopolitanizing and
upgrading educational systems is necessary to
prepare prospective immigrants and to develop
skills and scientific methods to increase and
improve their own economic development therefore
reducing the need for massive unqualified out-
migration in the long run.
5. Protection of welfare and rights of migrants,
tourists, and investors; also the discontinuation
of exploitation of recent immigrants in terms of
low-paying jobs and poor living and working condi-
tions.
xxii
6. Redefinition and extension of the concepts of
nation, nationality, citizenship, and so forth, so
as to project over boundaries of time and space and
allow source-countries to share the benefits of
immigrants leaving their shores and locating in
other countries their offspring and repatriates.
Among other things, this means a serious look at
the institutionalization of remittances and
repatriation as part of an additional or indirect
source of revenue, investment capital, manpower
and intellectual resources which the region and
source-countries may begin to anticipate in their
long-term developmental planning. u
Thus, I make a case for my long-held concern
that Caribbean countries should pursue a careful formu-
lation of developmental plans and policies which capita-
lize on the Caribbean emigration tendency, the presence
of large numbers of Caribbean immigrants and offspring
as workers and professionals in advanced industrial
societies, their tenacious identification with the home
region and consequently their disposition to return or
to send remittances back home. Indeed, since these
ideas were published some Caribbean countries and orga-
nizations, e.g., Cuba, Guyana, Grenada, U.S. Virgin
Islands and UNICA (Universities of the Caribbean Associ-
ation) have sought to pursue innovative methods for
re-establishing instrumental linkages and instituting
recruitment and research programs directed to West
Indian expatriates and their offspring to consider
returning or rendering service to the region or their
respective countries of origin. For this and other
reasons, hitherto scattered as minor items within larger
works or other discussions, the topics of Caribbean
xxiii
return migration and remittances now deserve treatment
in an exclusive and prominent manner.11
In that sense, this volume fills a critical
void in the state of the literature. Perhaps it also
represents the beginning of a thrust toward serious
discussion of the topic and the larger matter of
Caribbean immigration from an instrumental but strictly
Caribbean perspective. It is important to note here
that unlike other RIIES publications this volume did
not originate from the Institute's initiative but was
created from panels of two important regional studies
associations -- Caribbean Studies Association and the
Latin American Studies Association. In reality the
papers were drawn from proceedings of three different
panels. Originally intended as a volume on the CSA
panel on return migration, organized by my two
colleagues and held in Curacao, Netherlands Antilles, in
1980, the principal papers constitute the first section
of the collection. Critical statements on the less
attended notion but closely related item of remittances
comprise a second section. These papers were drawn from
the panels of a LASA meeting held in Washington, D.C. in
1982 and the CSA meetings held in Kingston, Jamaica, in
the same year.
The order of presentation of the contents is
intended to carry the reader from general to specific
treatments of each subject -- return migration and
xxiv
remittances. In the process neither chronology nor the
analysis of sub-cultural variants will be observed in a
strict manner, though some degree of clustering will be
attempted. As a pioneer collection and also because the
entries still comprise part of an incipient literature,
theoretical gaps and data limitations are to be expected
in their contents. Similarly, crosscutting themes
rather than thematic coherence prevail helped along by
the inclusion of two useful composite bibliographies,
each presented at the end of the appropriate section of
the book.
To help set the stage my colleagues, co-editors
Stinner and Albuquerque, present an introductory essay
which discusses levels, attributes and dynamics of
return migration. Their framework guides the readers to
the location and importance of crosscutting commentaries
on the same, and raises a set of questions which not
only prepare the readers for the readings which follow
but leaves them impressed by the many outstanding
challenges which still remain to be researched by those
of us who wish to understand or act upon the Caribbean
tendency of return migration. Rubenstein's review com-
mentary on return migration in the English-speaking
Caribbean and Richardson's historical specifications
on Leeward Islanders add depth and insight about the
return migration pattern of the creole population whose
initial outward movements have been somewhat familiar to
XXV
students of the history of the region. But, Samaroo
goes beyond specification and introduces novelty and
comparison by bringing to our attention East Indian
immigrants who left the Caribbean to go back to the
Indian peninsula.
Imbalances in our knowledge and distortions of
our stereotypes of Caribbean return migration are even
sharper in the case of Hispanic variant countries. With
the exception of Puerto Rico we have mistakenly assumed
emigration to the United States to be low from the
Hispanic Caribbean countries when not politically stimu-
lated. We often forget that even prior to Castro, Cuba
was the leading source of immigration to the United
States among the sovereign countries of the region.12
By their articles Ugalde, Langham and Poitras share with
us characteristics of repatriates from "new" source
countries such as the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica or
El Salvador whereas Johnson and Levine provide us in-
depth views of the experiences and aftermaths of Puerto
Ricans, a people with a long, extensive history of
immigration and return. Epics on return immigrants are
part of the lore and literature of many of the Caribbean
islands; excellence, sometimes excesses, in leadership
among repatriated statesmen and politicians has char-
acterized much of contemporary Caribbean history.
Probable consequences of return migration as this
translates into mobility, success, and status acqui-
xxvi
sition among returning Surinamese are discussed by
Bovenkerk. His conclusions, like those of the studies
of remittances which follow, suggest the need for
caution and specification rather than gross, overly
optimistic generalizations about the impact of return
migration; the same we shall see is true of remittances.
The second section begins with a useful transi-
tion provided by Rubenstein which shows the connection
between return migration and remittances as parts of the
return expectation syndrome which characterizes Carib-
bean immigrants. The two research notes which follow
testify to the yet unheralded status of the subject.
The survey of the literature on remittances to the
Eastern Caribbean by the Brana-Shutes and the empirical
observations of Wood on English-speaking West Indian
canecutters in Florida are, in their own rights, reports
on works-in-progress which will begin to fill an
unfortunate void. All three of these works represent,
as well, encouraging strides in our attempts to deal
with the impact of remittances on both macro- and
micro-levels. For, the subjects of return migration
and remittances, as we have said before, are not
only essential for acquiring a knowledge of Caribbean
history, society and culture but for arriving at
adequate development plans and appropriate policies for
the mobility of people as well as the development of
countries in the region. Their varied and limited
xxvii
impact at this time may as well be the function of their
low use as variables and low priority as targets in more
comprehensive development planning.
Pulling these two themes -- return migration
and remittances -- under one cover necessarily has
delayed the publication. But in the long run it will
have enriched the conceptualization of their individual
and interconnecting importance to the Caribbean in the
interests of regional development. As for us at RIIES,
the publication of this particular volume rendered
us the manifold encouragement to have witnessed the
diffusion of our concerns among other Caribbeanist
scholars and their associations, and to have partici-
pated in the production of a pioneering effort in the
discussion of Caribbean immigration from a Caribbean
perspective. The interdisciplinary, interinstitutional,
international collaboration it represents augers well
for the future of the kinds of insiders-outsiders
dialogues and deliberations which RIIES has sought to
promote in the study of international immigration and
shaping of related policies. The balance in such
determinations demands active participation and there-
fore various levels of input from scholars and experts
not only from recipient but source countries as well.
We hope that the readers will therefore appre-
ciate this work not simply for what it says or what it
asks, but we hope that they would appreciate it as well
xxviii
for what it means. It is a statement of a growing sense
of purpose, priority and perspective among scholars
committed to encouraging more Caribbeanist studies
of Caribbean immigration. It may be a signal that
we are at the threshold of conscientious, competent
collaboration between Caribbean scholars, officials,
experts and their counterparts in the United States and
other target countries toward more comprehensive and
complementary policies in international migration and
development. Its contents point to specific kinds of
transnational/transregional interactions, bonds, struc-
tures and processes which emerge from significant or
sustained movements of people, resources, technology and
ideas across international borders in a world of unequal
development and which deserve continued expert atten-
tion.
Hence, in terminating, it seems useful to
restate what I think comprise some imperatives for
scholars of international migration, especially those
in the developed recipient societies, particularly as
their works should relate to the subject matters of
this volume -- return migration and remittances to less
developed, source societies:
Immigration of any sort has not rendered any
emergent country (or colonized state for that
matter) free of the influence of its emigrants
Scholars (word inserted by author) must attend
to the yet unheralded, in some cases unrecog-
xxix
nized, linkages and organizations which migra-
tion represents and the trajectories of those
various structural forms which emerge in the
process of migration. They must begin to
contribute their specific expertise and infor-
mation into channels directed to the formation
of comprehensive, multilateral views of devel-
opment ... and (word introduced by author)
must demonstrate their sensitivity by offering
appropriate opportunities for truly equal
coparticipation with their 'ethnic' colleagues
in source countries and various points along
the migrant stream (italicized by author).13
If and when such considerations begin to be the
regular practices among Caribbeanists, then the perspec-
tive promised by this volume will become an heralded
reality in itself.
Roy S. Bryce-Laporte
XXX
NOTES
lSee brochure defining functions of Research Institute
on Immigration and Ethnic Studies.
2NS Reports, 1965-1979.
3Census Report 1980; "The Numbers on America," Washing-
ton Post, 20 April 1982, p. A-l; "American Society A
Changing Mosaic, Census Ancestry Study Shows," Press
Release CB82-66 U.S. Census Bureau, 11 May 1982, p. 2;
and "Table 1. Reported Single and Multiple Ancestries:
November 1979," Ancestry and Language in the United
States: November 1979, Current Population Reports,
Special Studies Series P-23, No. 116 (Washington,
D.C.: U..S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census),
p. 7.
4Van B. Shaw, "Greener Pastures: American Expatriation
and Expatriates," in Quantitative Data and Immigration
Research, eds. Stephen R. Couch and Roy Simon Bryce-
Laporte (Washington, D.C.: RIIES, Smithsonian Institu-
tion, 1979), p. 185.
5"Appendix A. Preliminary Planning Conference, Source-
book on the New Immigration: Supplement, Vol. II, ed.
Roy S. Bryce-Laporte with Delores M. Mortimer and
Stephen R. Couch (Washington, D.C.: RIIES, Smithson-
ian Institution, 1979), pp. 220-243.
6Carribean Immigration to the United States, eds.
Roy S. Bryce-Laporte and Delores M. Mortimer, RIIES
Occasional Papers No. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution, 1976), see particularly Theodore A.
Bremner, "The Caribbean Expatriate: Barriers to
Returning -- Perspectives of the Natural Scientist,"
pp. 149-157; Edwin H. Daniel, "Perspectives on the
Total Utilization of Manpower and the Caribbean
Expatriate: Barriers to Returning," pp. 158-168; Rawle
Farley, "Professional Migration: The Brain Drain from
the West Indies and Africa -- Abbreviated Remarks,"
pp. 169-181.
7See list of RIIES publications in Appendix.
8Female Immigrants to the United States: Caribbean,
Latin American, and African Experiences, eds. Delores
M. Mortimer and Roy S. Bryce-Laporte, RIIES Occasional
Papers No. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institu-
tion, 1981), see particularly Dorothy Payne Bryan,
"Nigerian Women and Child-Bearing Practices in
Washington, D.C.: A Summary of Research Findings and
Implications," pp. 157-170; Donna Grey, "Caribbean
Women and the Brain Drain" (Quotation), p. 171;
xxxi
Barbara T. Christian, "Black, Female, and Foreign-
born: A Statement," pp. 172-176; Eugenia A. Franklin-
Springer, "Ma, I Remember" (Poem), p. 177; and Roy S.
Bryce-Laporte, "Obituary to a Female Immigrant and
Scholar: Lourdes Casal (1938-1981)," pp. 349-355.
9Roy S. Bryce-Laporte, "The New Immigration: A Chal-
lenge to Our Sociological Imagination," in source-
book on the New Immigration: Implications for the
United States and the International Community, Vol. I,
ed. Roy S. Bryce-Laporte assisted by Delores M.
Mortimer and Stephen R. Couch (New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction, Inc., 1979), pp. 459-472.
10Roy S. Bryce-Laporte, "Black Immigrants: The
Experience of Invisibility and Inequality," Journal of
Black Studies 3:1(September 1972): 29-56; "Options for
Consideration in Caribbean Education," in Caribbean
American Scholars Exchange Program (New York: Phelps-
Stokes Fund, 1973), pp. 67-74; "Black Immigrants" in
Through Different Eyes, eds. P.I. Rose, S. Rothman and
W.J. Wilson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973);
"Migration and Ethnicity: A Commentary on Inequality,
Power and Development," in Migration and Development:
Implications for Ethnic Identity and Political
Conflict, eds. Helen Safa and Brian Du Toit (Paris:
The Hague, Mouton Publishers, 1975), pp. 311-318;
"Redefining the Role of the United States in Caribbean
Migration and Development," in The Caribbean Yearbook
of International Relations, 1976, ed. Leslie F.
Manigat (Leyden, Netherlands: A. W. Sijthoff, 1977),
pp. 287-310; "Caribbean Migration to the United
States: Some Tentative Conclusions," in The Brain
Drain from the West Indies and Africa, eds. Norma A.
Niles and Trevor G. Gardner (East Lansing: West
Indian Student Association, Michigan State University,
1977), pp. 137-143; "Migration to the United States:
Some Implications for Caribbean Governments and Their
Educators," in Caribbean-American Perspectives (New
York: Phelps-Stokes Fund, 1978), pp. 75-78.
llMost discussions of Caribbean return migration con-
centrate on Puerto Rican migrants. A principal study
on this is J. Hernandez Alverez, Return Migration to
Puerto Rico, Population Monograph Series, No. 1
(Berkeley: Institute of International Studies,
University of California, 1967); see also Frank
Bonilla and Ricardo Campos, Labor Migration Under
Capitalism: The Puerto Rican Experience, (New York:
History Task Force, Center for Puerto Rican Studies,
CCNY, 1981); Adalberto Lopez, "The Puerto Rican
Diaspora: A Survey" in Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans:
Studies in History and Society, eds. Adalberto Lopez
and James Petras (New York: John Wiley and Sons,
xxxii
1974), pp. 316-346; George C. Myers and George
Masnick, "The Migration Experience of New York Puerto
Ricans: A Perspective on Return," International
Migration Review, 2:2 (1968): 89-90; Eva E. Sandis,
"Characteristics of Puerto Rican Migrants To and From
the United States," International Migration Review 4:2
(1970): 22-43.
12See INS Reports 1951-1965.
13Roy S. Bryce-Laporte, "Migration and Ethnicity: A
Commentary on Inequality, Power and Development," in
Migration and Development: Implications for Ethnic
Identity and Political Conflict, eds. Helen Safa and
Brian Du Toit (Paris: The Hague, Mouton Publishers,
1975), pp. 317-318.
xxxiii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This production is a bit more involved than
ordinary, in that it represents sustained collaborative
efforts, interpersonal communication and a sense of
collective commitment among its contributors over long
distances and much time. Originally drawn from papers
read at three different conferences, this integrated
collection is the result of a wide variety of inputs of
different kinds and from different sources culminating
in another publication in the occasional series of the
Research Institute on Immigration and Ethnic Studies.
Without promising perfection, we hope that all who read
it and we want to believe that all who have contributed
to its realization will find it reasonably satisfactory
in form, content, message and significance given the
special circumstances in which it developed.
There is always the high risk involved in such
cooperative efforts that all those who deserve public
mention and thanks are not covered or covered appropri-
ately. We hope to avoid such blunder but to be doubly
sure, we the editors in a collective fashion begin the
acknowledgements with a general and sincere announcement
of thanks to all who contributed to the completion of
the project -- one of significance not only because it
xxxiv
has been at last realized but because it could be the
first of a new direction of concern and yet another form
of cooperation among Caribbean-oriented scholars located
across and beyond the region itself. In like fashion,
we acknowledge Professor Anthony Maingot, now Caribbean
Studies Association President, for his cooperation then
as program chairman in facilitating the original meeting
from which the main papers were drawn; Dawn Marshall,
Val Carnegie and others, including the late Vera Green
for their participation as presenters and commentators
on that panel; and the local institutions which cooper-
ated in planning and hosting each of the panels from
which papers were drawn to make up this publication. We
also thank the authors for the diligence and patience
they displayed in face of the length of time involved in
the creating of an integrated collection from the
individual submissions they presented us.
There are acknowledgements which each of us
would like to make as well. William Stinner wishes to
acknowledge the excellent secetarial assistance of Cindy
Williamson and the support services provided by the
Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology
and the Population Research Laboratory at Utah State
University. Special acknowledgements go to Dr. William
F. Lye, Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts and
Social Sciences, and Professor Yun Kim, Director of the
Population Research Laboratory and former Head of the
XXXV
Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology,
Utah State University for their consistent encouragement
and support of his research efforts; Dr. Gordon F.
DeJong of the Department of Sociology and Population
Issues Research Office of the Pennsylvania State
University who alerted him during his postgraduate
training to the interesting challenges awaiting someone
who elects to explore the interconnections between
sociology and demography; and his colleague, Dr. Michael
B. Toney, for constructive and valuable comments on a
draft of the Introductory Essay. A special debt of
gratitude goes to his mother and late father, immigrants
themselves to this country, without whose persistent
sacrifices very early on, his academic odyssey would
not, in the very first place, have been possible; his
brother, Bob, for his unswerving support during his
undergraduate years at Columbia; and, his wife, Carol,
for always being the beacon bringing him through the
many uncharted waters he has travelled.
Klaus de Albuquerque wishes to acknowledge the
support he received from his colleagues and the staff of
the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the
College of Charleston, South Carolina.
Roy S. Bryce-Laporte wishes to acknowledge
Constance Trombley and Katherine Williams for their
persistent and reliable technical assistance in the
preparation and proofreading of the manuscript, respec-
xxxvi
tively; Betty Dyson and Sherill Berger for their timely
administrative interventions, and the staffs of the
Smithsonian Institution Press and the Contracts Office
for their continued support of RIIES' efforts to comply
with its objectives to disseminate knowledge about yet-
unappreciated areas of crucial importance in U.S.-
Caribbean relations.
Neither the contents nor the ideas of this
volume represent policies of the Smithsonian Institu-
tion; they are the responsibilities of the editors and
respective contributors.
William F. Stinner
Klaus de Albuquerque
Roy S. Bryce-Laporte
xxxvii
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY:
THE DYNAMICS OF CARIBBEAN RETURN MIGRATION
William F. Stinner and Klaus de Albuquerque
The past decade has witnessed the emergence of a
sizeable interest in return migration encompassing both
internal and international migration flows.1 Respecting
internal migration, one body of research has been
focused on the role of return migration in the reversal
of long standing rural to urban and intraregional migra-
tion flows in many postindustrial societies.2 The other
body of research on internal migration patterns has been
undertaken in peripheral societies with a concentration
on return migration flows between urban centers and
rural villages.3
Shifting the attention to the international
sphere, research has primarily been couched within a
sociospatial framework of return migration from metro-
pole to peripheral societies.4 In the specific empiri-
cal instance of the Caribbean, this research is
inclusive of return migration from the United States and
Europe.5 Of additional interest and importance within
the Caribbean setting are the myriad intraregional
return migration streams which have prevailed both
xxxviii
historically and in contemporary times as well as the
return of indentured East Indians from the Caribbean to
India.
Migration and return, and oftentimes remigration
and return, have been an institutionalized aspect of
Caribbean societies. Specifically, Caribbean people
have utilized migration to either neighboring islands or
more distant places as "... a basic means of individual
and societal survival."6 In some Caribbean societies
this "livelihood mobility" dates back to the period
following slave emancipation (1838 in the British West
Indies) when landless peasants were lured to labor short
areas (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Puerto Rico and
Trinidad) by promises of free passage, higher wages and
better living conditions.7 Continuing through the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries, discernible population
movements have been evident among societies within the
Caribbean region and also between the Caribbean and
North America and Europe.8
While the general contours of intraregional
Caribbean migration are fairly well-known, specific
details, and in particular, quantitative data, are
scarce. For this and for other reasons as well,
students of Caribbean migration have focused their
attention almost entirely on the outward migratory
movements between the Caribbean and North America and
Europe, choosing either to ignore the phenomenon of
xxxix
"return" or, while acknowledging its social and
psychological importance, discounting its significance
in terms of numbers.9
But migrants to the metropole and to other
societies within the region do return and this return
conveys important demographic, socioeconomic, and poli-
tical implications for the original sending society and
the migrants, themselves. Therefore, this collection of
eight papers, an outgrowth of a panel on "Return
Migration" organized for the Fifth Annual Conference of
the Caribbean Studies Association in Curacao, May 7-10,
1980, represents the first attempt to present a compre-
hensive portrait of return migration within the context
of the Caribbean region. One set of papers is expli-
citly about return migration from the metropole
societies to specific Caribbean societies. Included in
this coverage are analyses of return from the United
States to the Dominican Republic (Ugalde and Langham),
Costa Rica and San Salvador (Poitras), and Puerto Rico
(papers by Johnson and Levine) and from Holland to
Surinam (Bovenkerk). English Caribbean societies are
the focal point in the historical overviews of Ruben-
stein and Richardson. Rubenstein's focus is on return
from both metropole societies and societies within the
region while Richardson analyzes primarily intraregional
return to St. Kitts and Nevis. Samaroo's paper stands
by itself since it covers return migration of Caribbean
East Indians to India in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. In the above endeavors, a variety of
materials are brought to bear including archival
materials, national sample surveys and anthropological
field studies.
Like Pirandello's six characters in search of an
author, the papers provide much interesting new infor-
mation that needs to be put into an adequate framework
if it is to inform the current state of knowledge on
return migration and suggest avenues for future
research. One way of accomplishing this is to view
return migration as a process with identifiable dimen-
sions. The first dimension includes attributes of the
return flow itself including its prevalence, selectivity
and direction. More concretely, this initial dimension
relates to the specific issues of the scope of return
migration, the characteristics of the return migrants
and their destinations within the original sending
society. A second dimension revolves around the motiva-
tions for return, not merely in isolation, but as they
relate to structural and individual conditions. A final
dimension encompasses the consequences of return migra-
tion for the returnees, nonmigrants as well as the
original sending society. Our review highlights and
integrates the major findings emanating from the papers
and provides directions for future research.
PREVALENCE, SELECTIVITY AND DIRECTION
The papers contained in the first section of
this volume approach the issue of the prevalence of
return migration in several ways: (1) actual volume of
return flows; (2) propensity of emigrants to return; and
(3) the demographic representations of returnees in the
populations of their islands or home communities.
Regardless of the type of data, "... in sheer
demographic terms and in relation to the number of
territories affected, return migration is an extremely
significant part of the Caribbean migration phenome-
enon."10 Rubenstein illustrates this prevalence in his
overview of prior research, whether the measure is
actual volume or demographic representation of returnees
in the populations of their islands or home communities.
Ugalde and Langham, focusing on the propensity to
return, estimate that about two out of five original
outward migrants to the United States from the Dominican
Republic returned. In a similar vein, Samaroo, in his
historical piece, notes that close to one-fourth of the
East Indians, who came under indentureship to the Carib-
bean, returned to India. Bovenkerk provides longi-
tudinal data, indicating a trend towards a declining
propensity to return from the 1950s (25 percent) to the
1970s (2 percent) in Surinam.
Who are the returnees? Like outward migration,
return migration is selective. Return migrants are
xlii
older than outward migrants and often include retirees
among their number. Samaroo reports that older East
Indians were more likely to return to India because they
wanted to die in the mother country. Although not pro-
viding specific age data, Johnson alludes to the retire-
ment phenomenon. Alternatively, Ugalde and Langham
report that rates of return to the Dominican Republic
tend to decrease with age but they attribute this to the
high rate of return among students who have completed
their studies. Poitras finds that Costa Rican return
migrants tended to be older than Salvadorean return
migrants; however, no response distributions are given
and no data are provided to assess the divergence be-
tween returnees and nonmigrants within each society.
Limited data are available on sex selection.
Ugalde and Langham find no evidence of sex selectivity
among return migrants to the Dominican Republic.
Poitras finds a higher prevalence of males among return
migrants to Costa Rica than to El Salvador.
Both Samaroo in his historical analysis of the
return of East Indians and Bovenkerk in his investiga-
tion of returnees to Surinam stress the complexity of
stream composition regarding social class. Specifical-
ly, they both point to a U-shaped pattern encompassing
both the upper and lower rungs of the class hierarchy.
Bovenkerk relates this heterogeneity to the eventual
segmentation and compartmentalized reintegration of
xliii
return migrants in the original sending society. Ugalde
and Langham, however, employing rates of return, find in
the Dominican Republic a positive relationship between
social class and the rate of return. Nevertheless,
divergencies by occupational situs within social class
categories are evident. They conclude that these
occupational differences may be due to differences in
status, opportunities and income between the original
sending and recipient society.
Both Bovenkerk and Levine suggest the presence
of temporal changes in selectivity. Bovenkerk points
to changes in political ideology (from conservative to
left wing) among return migrants between the pre- or
immediate post-World War II period returnees and the
most recent returnees in Surinam. In Puerto Rico,
Levine notes less selectivity over time in such domains
as education, income and skill levels.
There is a continued need for more systematic
data on selectivity encompassing both comparisons with
nonmigrants at original point of origin and emigrants.
Moreover, these analyses need to be placed in a specific
longitudinal framework.
The next major issue to be addressed is the
destination selection of return migrants within the
original sending society. Ugalde and Langham find the
majority of return migrants to the Dominican Republic
residing in the capital city of Santo Domingo with the
xliv
remainder evenly spread between rural and urban areas.
Furthermore, they find a close parallel between resi-
dence at departure and residence upon return. This
latter finding diverges from Taylor's (see references)
earlier study of Jamaican return migrants. Although
Jamaican return migrants tended to gravitate primarily
to urban areas as did the return migrants in the
Dominican Republic, there was a much greater tendency
for the post-return residence to be in an urban area
than either the pre-migration residence or birthplace.
Further analysis needs to link destination selection of
returnees to their pre-immigration migration patterns in
the original sending society.
To what extent is destination selection related
to specific attributes of returnees? Levine, in his
Puerto Rican analysis, finds a tendency for the unsuc-
cessful to return to their birthplace, frequently
a rural area or small town. Although this type of
destination most likely allows the unsuccessful returnee
access to primary group support networks, it does not
provide an especially viable opportunity structure for
socioeconomic mobility.
A final point in the analysis of destination
selection is the residential location of returnees
within communities. For example, Johnson alludes to the
concentration of Neoricans in residential enclaves.
Given the close parallel between residential segregation
and social segregation, further investigations should
attempt to delineate the degree of residential segrega-
tion among returnees and also to relate residential
segregation to the degree of residential segregation
among returnees and also to relate residential segrega-
tion to the degree of closure in return migrants' social
circles.
A prime problem in determining the scope and
form of return migration, aside from data deficiencies,
is the difficulty of explicitly defining what consti-
tutes return migration. Implicit in most of the papers
is a definition of return migration as movement back to
one's country of origin. Bovenkerk, in an earlier
work,11 uses a rather limiting definition of return
migration, choosing to define it as the return after
the first migration. In his paper in this volume,
Rubenstein identifies three types of return migration
based on the form and frequency of return migration to
the home community -- commuting,12 temporary migration
and recurrent migration. Of these three types, com-
muting and recurrent migration best describe intrare-
gional migration in the Caribbean while temporary
migration best describes extra-regional migration.
Further work empirically delineating the relative preva-
lence of each of these types of return migration is
sorely needed.
A specific element in the definitional problem
xlvi
is the apparent expectation of return upon initial
emigration. Chaneyl3 has suggested that a distinctive
difference between today's Third World international
migrants and earlier migrants is that their migration is
intended to be temporary and not permanent. Philpottl4
in his earlier study of Montserratian emigration,
concluded that even when return is no longer a viable
alternative, migrants continue to act as if they will
return. Rubenstein, both in an earlier article15 and
in his contribution to this collection, speaks of an
ideology of return migration and details the precise
mechanisms by which migrants maintain ties with home
communities in the original sending society so as to
provide a context for return, thereby enabling an
actualization of intentions. In this respect, Poitras
in his examination of migrant interchange among Costa
Rica and El Salvador and the United States notes the
necessity of not viewing movements to the United States
and from the United States to the two sending societies
as separate events; rather, the decision to migrate ori-
ginally is linked to the decision to return so that the
return decision is not whether to return but when to
return.
Gould and Prothero16 have argued that if there
is specific intent to return among individuals who
migrate, and that this intent is clear at initial depar-
ture, the movement should be considered circulation
xlvii
rather than migration since the essential element of
permanency is missing. Goldstein,17 however, has cau-
tioned against strict reliance on intentions primarily
since there is "... no assurance that moves intended to
be temporary do not in fact become permanent, and that
many of those initially planned to be permanent ...
become temporary when disillusionment sets in because of
unachieved goals." In either event, clarification of
this matter will require analyses which are longitudinal
in scope encompassing initial intentions, length of
tenure in the recipient society, and return migration
propensities.
MOTIVATIONS FOR RETURN
The bulk of the studies presented in this volume
contain discussions of "reasons for return." Some of
the authors merely catalogue reasons, whereas others
provide actual response frequencies. In either case, a
myriad number of reasons is evident. Nevertheless, most
of these reasons can be distilled into a more parsimoni-
ous set of five generic domains (see Table 1). These
domains include: (1) socioeconomic maladaptation; (2)
life course transitions; (3) expiration, termination, or
violation of contractual arrangements; (4) "homeland"
linkages; and (5) societal socioeconomic situations. A
residual domain labelled "other" includes two reasons
not easily embedded within the five domains. These
REASONS FOR RETURN
TABLE 1
BY DOMAIN FOR SOCIETIES/CULTURE GROUPS
DOMAIN
Society/ (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Culture Socioeconomic Life Course Expiration/ "Homeland" Societal Other
Group Maladaptation Transitions Termination/ Linkages Socioeconomic
Violation of Situations
Contractual
Arrangements
(Push) (Push) (Push) (Pull) (Push/Pull) (Push/Pull)
Puerto Rico
(Levine) 1. "Unpleasant 1. Family 1. Decreasing
life"a reunifica- demand on
2. Difficulties tion Mainland
in child 2. Discrimina-
raising tion
3. Low job
status
4. Health
problems
(Johnson) 1. Retirement 1. "Illness of 1. U.S. reces-
a relative" sion
2. Spouse "left 2, Discrimination
behind"
3. Inheritance
4. "Romantic"
attachment
Dominican
Republic
(Ugalde and
Langham) 1. "Way of 1. Termination 1. Deporta- 1. Family 1. Sufficient
life"b of studies tionc reunifica- savings
(19%) (20%) tionc (7%)
2. Accompany-
ing family
Table 1. Continued
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Costa Rica
(Poitras) 1. No job in 1. Deportation 1. Family
U.S. (1.5%) (3.2%) Reunification
2. Visa (31.5%)
Expiration 2. Homesickness
(12.4%) (ca 25%)
3. Job in home
country (15%)
El Salvador
(Poitras) 1. No job in 1. Deportation 1. Family
U.S. (2.58%) (27.4%) Reunification
2. Visa (33.2%)
Expiration
(22.8%)
Surinam
(Bovenkerk) 1. Inability to 1. Completion
find employ- of studies
ment/job (33%)
dismissal
2. "Marriage
Problems"
3. Status
deprivation
English
Speaking
Caribbean
(Rubinstein) 1. Labor contact
termination
East Indians
(Samaroo) 1. Economic 1. Family
hardship reunification
2. Religious
ritualism
"drugs, language, persistent hassle of everyday life"
bInterpreted by authors to mean maladaptation.
cSuspected by authors to be part of "other category. The
"( )" response percentages
"other" category comprised 54% of responses.
domains can also be construed in terms of "push" and
"pull" dimensions impacting on the decision to return.
Data on response distributions are provided where
available.
Socioeconomic maladaptation is inclusive of
reasons focused on economic dislocations, marriage
problems, child raising difficulties, health problems
and status deprivation. The domain generally relates to
day-to-day exigencies which impair effective functioning
and adaptation in the recipient society and, hence,
"push" people back to the homeland. Life course tran-
sitions include various career and familial transitions
such as retirement, termination of studies, marriage or
marital dissolution which "push" people towards the ori-
ginal sending society. The third domain comprises
reasons linked to the termination, expiration, or viola-
tion of a contractual arrangement. Included within this
domain are reasons such as termination of a visa or
labor contract or actual deportation. These reasons,
therefore, involve societal determinations of length and
conditions of stay; thus, return migration under these
circumstances is best thought of as compulsory rather
than voluntary. "Homeland" linkages is the fourth
domain. This domain consists of various economic,
sociological, and psychic ties which serve to "pull"
former emigrants back to the society of origin.
Specific reasons embedded within this domain are family
reunification, whether in general or for specific
reasons such as the "illness of a relative" or "claiming
an inheritance"; a job lined up in the home country;
religious shrines available for worship; or "romantic
attachment" and "homesickness."
Societal socioeconomic situations include
conditions within either the recipient or the original
sending society which "push" or "pull" the migrant. We
would expect these conditions to work themselves out
through individual and familial circumstances. Thus,
cyclical changes in the economy of the recipient or
sending society would be expected to impact on their
respective economic opportunity structures and, hence,
on individuals in such areas as job layoffs, and job
prospects.
Both in the studies contained in this volume and
investigations conducted elsewhere18 noneconomic reasons
predominate. Moreover, even though economic circum-
stances may mitigate return, these circumstances tend
to be outweighed by various sociological, cultural and
psychological conditions. Furthermore, these noneco-
nomic reasons can be operant in either the host society
or the original sending society.
Specific data on the impact of socioeconomic
maladaptation following emigration on the propensity to
return is available in three studies. Bovenkerk finds
that two-thirds of his sample of Surinamese returnees
returned because they failed to adapt to the recipient
society. Ugalde and Langham note in the Dominican
Republic that one of five returnees returned due to the
"way of life" in the recipient society, which they
interpreted to mean maladaptation. It is interesting to
note, however, the prominence of noneconomic types of
maladaptation. Bovenkerk, for example, notes not only
the difficulty of finding or maintaining jobs in
Holland, but also marital problems and psychological
problems associated with status deprivation. Difficul-
ties with child raising in the United States as well as
health problems, are mentioned by Neoricans (Levine).
Moreover, Poitras notes that only a minimal proportion
of Costa Rican and San Salvadorean returnees came back
to their homeland because they were unable to secure
employment. Finally, Ugalde and Langham uncover various
correlates of maladaptation.
Of special note in the area of "homeland"
linkages is the role played by family linkages in the
homeland. In six of the seven studies containing a
discussion of reasons, some form of family linkage is
mentioned. An example of the magnitude of this factor
can be found in the Poitras study of Costa Rica and El
Salvador, wherein about one-third of returnees came home
to be reunited with their kin. In addition to family
linkages, mention is also made of psychological attach-
ment (Johnson for Neoricans and Poitras for Costa
liii
Ricans) and religious linkages (Samaroo). Various
career transitions either at the beginning with "term-
ination of studies" (Ugalde and Langham; Bovenkerk)
or at the end with "retirement" (Johnson) also figure
prominently.19 Recognition of societal socioeconomic
situations includes not only economic demand factors but
also discrimination (Levine and Johnson). Finally, the
role of compulsory return is evident in the studies of
the Dominican Republic (Ugalde and Langham), Costa Rica
and El Salvador (Poitras) and the English Speaking
Caribbean (Rubenstein). In El Salvador alone, visa
expiration or deportation accounted for about one-half
of the reasons advanced.
A full portrait of motivations for return should
also include an analysis of why some emigrants choose to
remain in place despite socioeconomic maladaptation,
"homeland" linkages, life course transitions and poor
societal socioeconomic situations. In fact, Rubenstein
raises the question of nonreturn in the face of the
substantial strength of the return ideology. His accom-
panying set of reasons are in many ways similar to the
reasons for return already discussed. This leads one to
the conclusion that our proffered set of analytical
domains should not be interpreted as discrete but rather
as interpenetrating. Therefore, future research on
motivational determinants of both voluntary return and
nonreturn needs to go beyond the mere cataloging of
reasons and be guided by an interactive framework which
encompasses: (1) macro socioeconomic situations in the
recipient and homeland society; (2) the various econo-
mic, sociological, cultural and psychological linkages
to one's homeland; (3) the degree of adaptation in the
recipient society, not merely in some vague general way,
but in specific life spheres and the specific roles the
emigrant occupies (or fails to occupy) in those spheres;
and (4) career and familial transitions as part of
progression through one's life course. Furthermore, the
interaction among these components needs to be addressed
in a specific longitudinal context inclusive of elements
of the original sending and receiving societies, the
emigrants and the members of their social networks.
CONSEQUENCES OF RETURN MIGRATION
Evaluations of the consequences of return migra-
tion have been generally about one or both of two
levels, i.e., micro or macro. At the micro level, the
focus has been on the individual adaptations of return
migrants and nonmigrants to various economic, social and
political roles. At the macro level the emphasis has
been on the broader economic, social and political
structure and the role played by return migration in
overall societal change.
Richardson points to the significant prestige,
respect and admiration accorded returning migrants and
the attendant ceremonial expression accompanying return
in the Lesser Antilles. However, excepting Richardson's
finding, the other contributors (Bovenkerk, Johnson and
Samaroo) covering this subject suggest difficulties
among returnees in reintegrating into their original
sending society. Bovenkerk concludes that the returnees
become a "new minority" and suffer all of the disadvan-
tages minority status confers with none of the advan-
tages. Samaroo notes how the majority of East Indian
returnees returned to a "strange land." Johnson points
to Neoricans as "cultural pariahs" in their homeland.
Thus, a sentimental attachment to the home country does
not necessarily translate into a "successful" return for
the returnee. In fact, nostalgic attachment finds
itself in direct competition with a new frame of
reference for evaluating conditions in the original
sending society upon return and the way in which this
new frame of reference is received by nonmigrants.
What are the bases of successful versus
unsuccessful adaptations? Following Goldlust and
Richmond's20 generalized model of immigrant adaptation
we can view the adaptation of returnees as predicated
upon their migration experience, characteristics, and
situational determinants in the original sending soci-
ety. However, unlike the case of immigrants, returnees
are reentering a society where they had originally
resided.
Initially, Richardson argues that the successful
reintegration of returnees in the Lesser Antilles lies,
at root, in the functional importance of migration in
these societies. Richardson, given his holistic treat-
ment, does not, however, explore the ways in which
divergent migration experiences or migrant character-
istics articulate with aspects of the societal situation
and how these may or may not temper the prestige
accorded returning migrants. Samaroo does illustrate
how both factors associated with the migration experi-
ence and attributes (loss of caste, conversion to
Christianity, and general changes in personality, habits
and ideas) combine with situational determinants
(climate, low wages, rising cost of living as well as
general nonreceptivity) to engender adaptation dif-
ficulties. Bovenkerk, focusing on Surinam, refers to
the increasing democratization of the emigration process
and how this removed the glamour from return. Thus,
residence in the Netherlands was not necessarily status
conferring in the home society; instead, returnees had
become the targets of ridicule, stereotyping and employ-
ment discrimination. Additionally, returnees were per-
ceived as threats in the housing and labor markets and
also as transgressors (in the moral sense) for having
"turned their backs" on society by emigrating. Johnson,
likewise, depicts how the experiences of Neoricans on
the Mainland, through selective interpretation on the
Ivii
part of nonmigrants, vitiate their security upon return.
Returnees are viewed as "pushy and aggressive" and
"tainted" by mainland life styles and clothing. She
further argues that the barrier of language reinforces
segmentation and isolation.
Response to imposed marginality might consist
of: (1) withdrawal (either individually or collective-
ly); (2) sociopolitical activism; or (3) remigration.
Samaroo finds evidence of both withdrawal and remigra-
tion. Specifically, some East Indian returnees eked out
a meager existence in the slums of Madras and Calcutta.
Others returned to the colonies as either reindentured
laborers or as free workers. Both Johnson and Bovenkerk
point to the tendency of returnees to withdraw and
interact within their own social circles. However,
Johnson finds strong support among Neoricans for the
Statehood Party in Puerto Rico as a way of opting for
the security of the American way of life. Bovenkerk,
however, concludes that Surinamese returnees are too
fragmented to consolidate for purposes of collective
action.
The earlier observations of Romalis regarding
Jamaican returnees still appear relevant:
It will be interesting to see how many and
which types of discontented returned migrants
gravitate into an alienated, sterile withdrawal,
and which channel their resentment into active
attempts to transform their situation through
social and political organization.21
Future investigations will need to articulate more
Iviii
clearly the conditions under which marginality results
in alienation, activism or remigration among returning
migrants.
We now turn to a discussion of the implications of
return migration for the original sending society at
large. In this respect we shift the level of discussion
from a micro to a macro level, from speaking about the
consequences of return for returnees to addressing the
impact of the return migrant collectivity on the
socioeconomic and political structure of the society.
To begin, we contend that the societal level consequen-
ces of return migration are dependent upon a number of
factors including: (1) the size of the return migration
stream relative to the population base of the society;
(2) the selectivity of the return migration stream;
(3) societal receptivity; (4) the degree of solidarity
among returnees; and (5) the prevalence of remigration.
Initially, for return migration to have a more than
minimal societal impact, we argue that the size of the
return migration stream must be large relative to the
base population of the original sending society so that
returnees constitute a significant portion of that
society. Thus, Bovenkerk suggests that even if only a
small percentage of emigrants return, this could have a
notable impact if the society is small. For example,
in Surinam 30,000 returnees translates into approxima-
tely 10 percent of the population. Johnson, although
focusing on numbers returning in an absolute rather than
in a relative sense, links large numbers of returnees to
the level of statehood sentiment and election outcomes
in Puerto Rico. Other areas which could be impacted
include labor markets, consumption levels, and service
delivery systems.
Although relative size might be viewed as a
necessary condition for societal level change, it is by
no means a sufficient condition. Indeed, Bovenkerk
argues that the critical factors are qualitative rather
than quantitative. One factor in this respect is the
selectivity of the return migration stream relative to
that of the nonmigrant population which we discussed
earlier. Selectivity in the return migration stream
manifests itself not only in terms of an average level
of a given attribute but also in terms of the complexity
of the attribute's distribution. Thus, we might argue
that the greater the extent of physical and human
capital (educational level, skills level, and work
attitudes) in return migration stream the greater the
prospect for socioeconomic development, ceteris
paribus. A related issue in this respect is the use to
which physical capital is put, namely, productive as
opposed to consumption oriented investments. On the
other hand, as Bovenkerk suggests, stream complexity
militates against the development of solidarity. In
Surinam the main axes in this respect were social class
and ethnic complexity which eventually translated into a
variety of readaptation patterns within the returnee
population. In sum, there was no common basis for
collective mobilization for joint action. Only among
the young cadre of noncommissioned army officers who
engineered the recent coup d'etat in Surinam was homoge-
neity apparent.
Even with a high level of human capital, the
efforts of the collectivity of returnees might be
frustrated given a hostile reception on the part of non-
migrants. In fact, a high level of human capital in the
aggregate among returnees could militate anxieties among
nonmigrants in the constricted labor and housing markets
in Caribbean societies. That such hostility is indeed
apparent in a number of Caribbean societies, has already
been discussed. Bovenkerk presents an extensive discus-
sion of the implications of this hostility for the
social change role of returnees in Surinam. His conclu-
sions are not too encouraging. The Surinamese returnee
collectivity was characterized by high estrangement,
correspondingly high frustrations and subjection to
ridicule and employment discrimination. Given this
context, one would not anticipate returnees, as a
collectivity, to contribute notably to societal change.
Another factor of importance is the degree of soli-
darity among returnees. Bovenkerk traces the lack of
solidarity among returnees, despite the sharing of
and ethnic complexity which eventually translated into a
variety of readaptation patterns within the returnee
population. In sum, there was no common basis for
collective mobilization for joint action. Only among
the young cadre of noncommissioned army officers who
engineered the recent coup d'etat in Surinam was homoge-
neity apparent.
Even with a high level of human capital, the
efforts of the collectivity of returnees might be
frustrated given a hostile reception on the part of non-
migrants. In fact, a high level of human capital in the
aggregate among returnees could militate anxieties among
nonmigrants in the constricted labor and housing markets
in Caribbean societies. That such hostility is indeed
apparent in a number of Caribbean societies, has already
been discussed. Bovenkerk presents an extensive
discussion of the implications of this hostility for the
social change role of returnees in Surinam. His conclu-
sions are not too encouraging. The Surinamese returnee
collectivity was characterized by high estrangement,
correspondingly high frustrations and subjected to ridi-
cule and employment discrimination. Given this context,
one would not anticipate returnees, as a collectivity,
to contribute notably to societal change.
Another factor of importance is the degree of soli-
darity among returnees. Bovenkerk traces the lack of
solidarity among returnees, despite the sharing of
Ixii
minority status, to the complexity of the migration
stream, the shift in stream composition over time and
the fact that earlier returnees were already occupying
the key rungs in the socioeconomic hierarchy. In the
latter regard, the outcome was intergenerational
conflict as opposed to solidarity. Johnson's conclu-
sions, however, would seem to suggest some basis for
collective action among Neoricans rooted in the common
Mainland experience.22
A final factor bearing on the issue is the preva-
lence of remigration. To the extent that a sizeable
portion of returnees are not committed to remaining and
eventually remigrate, the collective mobilization and/or
contribution of returnees to the original sending
society is mitigated. That this is a real alternative
can be seen in the fact that 45 of the original 75
respondents in Bovenkerk's sample of Surinamese
returnees had remigrated to Holland in the relatively
short period of eight years subsequent to his original
interviews. Poitras, in his analyses of Costa Rica and
San Salvador, finds in both societies that more than
one-half of returnees were fairly certain they would
return to the United States.
In summary, a full analysis of the societal level
consequences of return migration would require studying
a number of Caribbean societies with an approach focused
on the interaction among the above factors. How, for
Ixiii
example, is the nature, type, and intensity of societal
receptivity linked to the size and selectivity of the
migration stream? To what extent are the previously
stated relationships transmitted through actual competi-
tion for scarce resources and/or the status pretensions
associated with the overseas experience as tempered by
selective interpretations on the part of nonmigrants?
To what degree and in what way do returnees actually
become a minority? How do the size and complexity of
the return migration stream impact on returnee
solidarity? Is their impact direct or transmitted via
societal receptivity? Under what conditions does
hostile societal receptivity produce collective or a
sizeable amount of individual withdrawal among returnees
and under what conditions does it yield collective
action? Finally, how prevalent is remigration and how
does it defuse the role of the return collectivity as an
agent of social change or a force for coordinated poli-
tical action? All of these questions need to be
addressed more systematically in future investigations.
Ixiv
NOTES
lSee, for example, the bibliographic essays of Frank
Bovenkerk, The Sociology of Return Migration (The
Hague: Martinus Nijoft, 1974); and George Gmelch,
"Return Migration," Annual Review of Anthropology 9
(1980): 135-159; as well as the compendium of studies
in Robert E. Rhoades, ed., "The Anthropology of Return
Migration," Papers in Anthropology 20:1 (Spring 1979).
2For more detailed discussions of the emergence of this
reversal in postindustrial societies, its underpin-
nings and implications, see the collection of articles
in David L. Brown, and John M. Wardwell, editors, New
Directions in Urban-Rural Migration: The Population
Turnaround in Rural America (New York: Academic
Press, 1980). For specific treatments of return
migration within the context of this turnaround see
R. R. Campbell, D. M. Johnson, and Gary J. Stangler,
"Return Migration of Black People to the South," Rural
Sociology 39 (1974): 514-528; Daniel Johnson,
"Community Satisfaction of Black Return Migration to a
Southern Metropolis," American Journal of Community
Psychology 3:3 (1975): 251-259; Larry Long and Kristin
A. Hansen, "Trends in Return Migration to the South,"
Demography 12 (1975): 601-614; and Edwin H. Carpenter,
"Metropolitan Migrants to Nonmetropolitan Migrants in
the United States: Are They Being Retained?" in Robert
E. Rhoades (ed.) "The Anthropology of Return Migra-
tion," Papers in Anthropology 20:1 (Spring 1979):
145-154. For specific examples of empirical research
on internal return migration within a postindustrial
society grounded in a specific theoretical formulation
see Julie DaVanzo, "Differences between Return and
Nonreturn Migration: An Econometric Analysis,"
International Migration Review 10:1 (Spring, 1976):
12-27; and Julie DaVanzo and Peter A. Morrison,
"Return and Other Sequences of Migration in the United
States," Demography 18:1 (1981): 85-101.
3See, for example the reviews in Nancy B. Graves and
Theodore D. Graves, "Adaptive Strategies in Urban
Migration," in Bernard J. Siegel (ed.) Annual Review
of Anthropology, vol. 3 (Palo Alto, California: Annual
Review, 1974), pp. 117-151; Sidney Goldstein, Circu-
lation in the Context of Total Mobility in Southeast
Asia (Papers of the East-West Population Institute,
no. 53, August 1978); and Sally Findlay, Planning for
Internal Migration: A Review of Issues and Policies
in Developing Societies (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau
of the Census, ISP-RD-4, 1974).
4Recent coverage of this type of study conducted out-
side the Caribbean region is presented in the over-
view of George Gmelch, "Return Migration," Annual
Review of Anthropology, vol. 9 (1980): 135-159; and a
specific sampling can be found in Robert E. Rhoades,
ed., "The Anthropology of Return Migration," Papers in
Anthropology, vol. 20, no. 1, (Spring 1979).
5See recent discussions in Stuart B. Philpott, "West
Indian Migration: The Monserrat Case." London School a
of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology, no. 47
(London: Athlone Press, 1973), pp. 108-111; Edward
Taylor, "The Social Adjustment of Returned Migrants to
Jamaica," in Ethnicity in the Americas, ed. F. Henry
(The Hague: Mouton, 1976); Nancy Foner, Jamaica
Farewell: Jamaican Migrants in London (Berkeley,
California: University of California Press, 1978),
pp. 234-236; Orlando Patterson, "Migration in
Caribbean Societies: Socioeconomic and Symbolic
Resource," in Human Migration: Patterns and Policies,
eds. William H. McNeill and Ruth S. Adams
(Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press,
1978), p. 122; Hymie Rubenstein, "The Return ideology
in West Indian Migration," in The Anthropology of
Return Migration: Papers in Anthropology, ed. Robert
E. Rhoades 20:1 (Spring 1979) (Norman, Oklahoma:
Department of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma)
pp. 21-38; and Antonio Ugalde, Frank D. Bean, and
Gilbert Cardenas, "International Migration from the
Dominican Republic: Findings from a National Survey,"
International Migration Review, 13 (Summer 1979):
235-263.
60rlando Patterson, p. 106.
7See Roy Augier, S. C. Gordon, Douglas Hall, and Mary
Record, The Making of the West Indies (London:
Longmans, 1960); Michael Garfield Smith, Kinship and
Community in Carriacou (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale
University Press, 1962); and Julia G. Crane, Educated
to Emigrate: The Social Organization of Saba (Assen,
The Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1971).
8See Malcolm J. Proudfoot, Population Movements in the
Caribbean (Port-of-Spain, Trinidad: Caribbean Commis-
sion Central Secratarist, 1950); Sheila Patterson,
Dark Strangers: A Sociological Study of the Absorption
of a Recent West Indian Migrant Group in Brixton,
South London (London: Tavistock Publications, 1963);
Orlando Patterson, op. cit.; R. B. Davison, Black
British: Immigrants to England (London: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1966); Ceri Peach, West Indian Migration
to Britain: A Social Geography (London: Oxford
University Press, 1968); David Lowenthal, West Indian
Societies (London: Oxford University Press, 1972); Roy
S. Bryce-Laporte and Delores M. Mortimer, eds.
Ixvi
Caribbean Immigration to the United States. RIIES
Occasional Papers No. 1 (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution, Research Institute on Immigration and
Ethnic Studies, 1976); H. E. Lamur and J. D.
Speckmann, editors, Adaptation of Migrants from the
Caribbean in the European and American Metropolis
(Leiden, The Netherlands: CARAF, 1978); and Robert A.
* Myers, "Emigration's Impact: A Review of the
Literature for the British and Dutch Islands, with
Special Attention to Dominica, W.I." Paper presented
at Fourth Annual Meeting of the Caribbean Studies
Association, May 28, 1979, at Fort-de-France,
Martinique.
9Some of the reasons advanced for the imbalanced focus
on the Caribbean-North American/Europe flow include:
(1) Intraregional migration in the Caribbean currently
is of much smaller magnitude than the migration from
the Caribbean to North America and Europe, (2) the
metropolitan orientation of many students of Caribbean
migration has led them to discount the significance
and importance of intraregional migration. Ugalde, et
al., pp. 235-263 have suggested that the relative
neglect of return migration is due to the tendency to
view migration as an irreversible flow as well as
practical problems associated with locating returnees
given their geographical dispersion. Rubenstein in
this volume points additionally to the rural to urban
concentration in migration research, static theoreti-
cal models, the brevity of the fieldwork period, and
deficient governmental return migration statistics.
10See Hymie Rubenstein, this volume.
11See Bovenkerk.
12See also J. P. Fitzpatrick, Puerto Rican Americans:
The Meaning of Migration to the Mainland (Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1971).
13Elsa M. Chaney, "The World Economy and Contemporary
Migration," International Migration Review 13:1
(Summer 1979):204-212.
14Philpott.
15Rubenstein.
16W.T.S. Gould and R. Mansell Prothero, "Space and
Time in African Population," in People on the Move,
eds. Leszek Kosinksi and R. Mansell Prothero (London:
Methuen and Company, 1975), pp. 39-49.
17Goldstein, p. 13.
Ixvii
18See Gmelch, p. 129.
19Since emigrants on student visas may be obliged to
leave after completion of studies this type of return
may not necessarily be a voluntary return.
20See John Goldlust and Anthony H. Richmond, "A Multi-
variate Model of Immigrant Adaptation," International
Migration Review 3:2 (1974): 196 ff.
21Coleman Romalis, "Some Comments on Race and Ethnicity
in the Caribbean," in Ethnicity in the Americas, ed.
Francis Henry (The Hague/Paris: Mouton Publishers,
1976), p. 421.
22She is, however, quick to point out that the experien-
tial differences between returnees and nonmigrants are
differences of degree rather than kind.
Part I
Papers on Return Migration
RETURN MIGRATION TO THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING CARIBBEAN
REVIEW AND COMMENTARY
Hymie Rubenstein
Wage-labor migration and other forms of physical
mobility have always been distinctive features of West
Indian societies. The prehistoric movements of various
groups of native peoples, European invasion and coloni-
zation, the forced migration of several million African
slaves, the postemancipation immigration of indentured
agricultural workers from various parts of the globe,
and more contemporary regional and international popula-
tion shifts are all part of the constant human flux in
the area, testimony to the fact that migration is an
integral Caribbean phenomenon.
Of all movements since Emancipation in 1838, the
migration of English-speaking West Indians to Britain
during the 1950s and early 1960s and to the United
States and Canada starting from the 1960s has received
scholarly attention. This is largely because these
migratory flows represented the largest net removal to
have ever taken place from the former British West
Indies. By 1966, for example, there were some 330,000
native West Indians in Britain, exceeding by a con-
siderable margin the previous highest movement to
Central America and the United States between 1881 and
1924.1 The majority of these immigrants and their
overseas-born offspring are now long-term residents in
their new homelands. Although many of the native-born
West Indians may continue to view return to their
countries of origin as at least a distant goal, except
for the occasional short visit home, few have yet chosen
to act on this goal. Indeed there is reason to suspect
that permanent removal may well be the outcome of these
most recent migration streams despite the operation of
the return intention.2 For example, estimates that
although most Montserratians in London view migration as
"a temporary phase," no more than 20 percent may ever
return to the island to resume permanent residence. The
high rate of contemporary permanent removal is only one
of several reasons that most studies of migrants (as
well as the families and countries they have left
behind) have tended to ignore the issue of return migra-
tion. Other reasons for this neglect are: (1) the sheer
scope of West Indian urbanization since Emancipation has
led to unidirectional, rural-to-urban focus in migration
studies; (2) the nature of the theoretical models, espe-
cially structural-functionalism, used in Caribbean
research has resulted in the exclusion of the study of
all sorts of dynamic processes such as various sorts of
extra-community movements; (3) the length of the field-
work period -- generally no more than one year -- has
resulted in migration being viewed as a static, one-way
movement; and (4) the difficulty in collecting national
return migration statistics, given the tendency of
governments to be concerned only with the exit of citi-
zens and the entry of aliens, has masked the extent of
the homeward flow of migrants.
As a result, most migration studies have focused
on the newcomer in the host society. In addition to a
large body of literature devoted to race relations,
there are studies of migrant social organization, ethnic
identity, religious behavior, social integration, and
physical and emotional well-being.
In recent years, however, there has been a
shift in research direction from a preoccupation with
the migrant in the receiving society to a study of the
consequences of the overseas removal of people for the
home society. While only a couple of these studies
deserve careful attention, they still provide some
information on the effects of emigration on such sending
unit phenomena as demographic composition,3 local-level
and national development,4 social differentiation,5 and
nonmigrant social and economic well-being.6
Yet, although a handful of studies are beginning
to ask what happens to West Indian societies when so
many people leave, hardly any effort has been made to
find out what happens when migrants return. For the
reasons already stated, this is not unexpected. For
other reasons, however, this omission does come as
something of a surprise. First, various forms of tem-
porary exodus have characterized the greater part of
West Indian emigration.7 Second, a study of the
homeward flow of migrants allows research in the kind of
bounded, face-to-face rural locale traditionally favored
by anthropologists as opposed to the open, complex,
urban metropolis favored by contemporary migrants, but
one which produces difficulties in regards to informant
statistical representativeness8 and the collection of
ethnographic material using participant observation.
Third, although most migrants in England and North
America may never resettle in their native lands, a
significant minority do participate in a counter move-
ment home.9
The Caribbean is far from the only region in
which return migration has not been adequately treated.
Either in a theoretical way or in relation to particular
geographical areas numerous researchers have pointed out
that return migration has not received its due in migra-
tion research.10
Although interest in it has been overwhelmed by
the more dramatic and demographically significant exodus
of people, this is not to say that the homeward flow of
migrants has gone totally unnoticed. In fact, the open-
ing statement in Bovenkerk'sll recent survey of return
migration clearly applies to the West Indian literature
taken as a whole:
It is customary for the author on return
migration to complain about the lack of
theoretical and empirical knowledge on his
subject ... It is true that not so many books
and articles are devoted exclusively to return
migration ... But this does not imply that no
further research has been done and that there-
fore every new student of return migration had
(sic) to begin from scratch. In numerous
studies on emigration, migrant labor, immigra-
tion, integration, and assimilation, room has
been made for a chapter or a paragraph on
"those who returned" or "the migrants's
return."
Thus, in the Caribbean literature there is to be found
the occasional brief discussion of or passing reference
to such topics as the "push" and "pull" factors encour-
aging the return of migrants,12 the disposition of
migration earnings and the effects of the migratory
experience on the social position and economic well-
being of the returnee,13 the expectation of return and
the continuing involvement with or sentiment towards the
home area,14 the effects of return migration and remit-
tances on economic development and social change,15
residential choice among those who return,16 and the
consequences of the return of migrants for family and
household organization.17
What is lacking in the individual studies is
the kind of detailed, synthetic treatment of the
multiple features of return migration that can only be
obtained through a systematic investigation of the
topic within and between particular Caribbean socie-
ties. While such an undertaking is well beyond the
scope of a short paper, I wish to discuss three of the
many issues that need to be addressed if such a study
is to be carried out. These are: (1) types of return
migration; (2) extent of return migration; and
(3) ideology of return migration. Each is dealt with
in comparative terms rather than in relation to any
particular Caribbean locale. This may help counter-
balance the piecemeal way in which return migration
(and, for that matter, the entire topic of migration)
has been treated so far. No effort has been made to
compare the findings from different migrant popula-
tions so as to distinguish the general from the unique
in the West Indian migratory process.
TYPES OF RETURN MIGRATION
The nature and scope of return migration in the
English-speaking Caribbean is dependent upon the forms
that the migratory process takes. Based on the form and
frequency of return to the home community, three general
Caribbean migration movements may be identified -- com-
muting, temporary migration, and recurrent migration.
In turn, each may be divided into two varieties based on
the seasonality of the removal. More than one type may
be present simultaneously in a given community and may
even characterize, in sequential terms, the experience
of individual migrants. In each case the period of
return may be either well defined, as in a prearranged
visit of a few days or weeks, or it may involve per-
manent resettlement, as in the case of retirement, or it
may consist of an indeterminate but emically defined
temporary layover.
1. Commuting. Given the strong social and emotional
ties to the home community, the intention to some day
resettle in their homelands, the predominance of econo-
mic motives for emigrating, the periodic or frequent
return visits, the term "commuting" could probably be
used to describe many persons who are usually labelled
"migrants."18 For the purpose of this paper, however, I
reserve "commuting" for a form of physical mobility in
which participants leave their home communities on a
wage-labor or self-employed basis for short periods of
time ranging between overnight and a week or two.
Commuters retain their primary residence and the bulk of
their personal and household possessions in their home
communities. At the same time, I distinguish between
the persons I have in mind here and the better-known
type of commuter who leaves the home area only during
the work period itself, an interval which often lasts no
more than a few hours.19 This is because the latter
movement does not involve duality of residence and the
concomitant social and economic arrangements charac-
terizing what is normally considered true migration.
Commuting may take place on a seasonal or non-
seasonal basis. Solien de Gonzalez's20 description of
seasonal migration generally fits much of the Caribbean
situation.
Seasonal migrants are those who travel once a
year, either as completed or partial families
or as single adult individuals, to areas in
which great numbers of workers are needed
temporarily in such occupations as harveting
or processing of raw food items.
Commuting occurs where either the source of
agricultural and related forms of wage labor does not
involve great travel distances or where there are inade-
quate accommodations for the migrant worker at the place
of employment.
2. Temporary Migration. This type of migration usually
occurs during young adulthood and consists mainly of one
or more wage-labor expeditions ranging from a few months
to ten or more years followed by permanent resettlement
in the home community.21 Generally involving unmarried
males, it may also include females as well as married
men of up to middle age. Migratory periods may be
separated by lengthy intervals at home where traditional
economic activities are carried out. Even if the
migrant does not return for several years, involvement
with and commitment to the sending unit are usually
maintained.
Where temporary migration is on a seasonal
basis, the first experience often consists of young
unmarried males employed as seasonal agricultural
laborers for several months at a time some distance from
their home community.
3. Recurrent Migration.22 This type of movement has
often been identified in the migration literature and
has been referred to variously as "circulation,"
"cyclical migration," "circular migration," "temporary,
recurrent migration," as well as "recurrent migration."
Douglass refers to the participant in this type of
movement as a "bird of passage" to emphasize the repeti-
tiveness of the migratory process.
While some varieties of temporary migration
share the oscillatory character of recurrent migration
(e.g., repeated seasonal migration during young adult-
hood) they differ from the latter in the extent to which
the original movement is repeated over and over so as to
become a permanent fixture in the economic lives of its
participants. No longer involving mainly young single
males, migrants now consist of mature married men who
leave their dependents behind, often for long periods of
time. Contacts with and an orientation towards the home
area are nevertheless maintained.23
Recurrent migration may be either seasonal or
nonseasonal. In the former, adults, particularly, but
not exclusively males, make repeated trips of several
months each from their homes to areas of seasonal wage
work, a practice which continues throughout their pro-
ductive lives. Although the period of employment is
defined by the regular but seasonal occurrence of some
resource (agriculture, tourism, food processing, etc.)
this does not mean that all migrants will participate in
it on an annual basis. A decrease in labor needs in the
region of employment or the presence of more remunera-
tive nonseasonal alternatives will affect the cyclical
nature of employment.
In nonseasonal, recurrent migration, adults,
again mainly males, are involved in a pattern of
repeated to and fro movements from the home area to the
same or different places of employment throughout their
working careers. The migrant may return at frequent
intervals, or remain away for several years without
revisiting. Return trips, as in the case of temporary
migration, may consist of short visits of only a few
days or weeks or they may involve indefinite periods of
inactivity or engagement in traditional community econo-
mic endeavors.
EXTENT OF RETURN MIGRATION
Commuting, temporary migration, and recurrent
migration have all played a role in the migratory move-
ments of West Indians.
Less reported on than the other two movements,
presumably because it is not as dramatic a residential
shift and because its socio-economic consequences appear
to be far less significant, commuting, as defined here,
occurs throughout the region. A few examples are the
regular weekend visits home of seasonal agricultural
laborers, the two to three day sales circuits of itin-
erant dry goods peddlers and food vendors, the trips
home on days off of domestic servants employed in urban
areas, and the weekly traveling of carpenters, masons,
and other construction workers between their home com-
munities and scattered building sites.
The more conspicuous forms of mobility, tempo-
rary and recurrent wage-labor migration, also have been
pervasive features of West Indian social and economic
history since the abolition of slavery. Taking place on
both a seasonal and nonseasonal basis they have involved
internal, regional, and circum-Caribbean destinations.
To begin with, the internal migration of season-
al cane cutters in Guyana, Jamaica, and Martinique has
been an important form of voluntary mobility since 1838.
R. T. Smith,24 for example, found that out of a total
adult male population (those over 18) of 151 in one of
the Guyanese villages he studied in the early 1950s,
90-100 men regularly spent the cane cutting season in
distant Demeraran sugar estates.
Regional and circum-Caribbean migration also
began immediately after emancipation. Large numbers of
ex-slaves from Barbados, St. Vincent, Grenada, and even
such Leeward Islands as Montserrat25 moved to labor
starved Trinidad and Guyana to take advantage of higher
agricultural wages and better working conditions.26
Undoubtedly much of this resulted in permanent removal
although Hill27 argues that in the case of Carriacou:
... much of this was seasonal and some Carria-
couans returned to their homeland with money
not locally available.
Crane28 also refers to the six month periods of
seasonal migration of cane cutters from St. Maarten and
from Saba after 1848 and 1863, respectively, to the
Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.
Similarly, it is likely that at least some of
the several thousand Jamaicans and other islanders who
migrated to Panama from 1853 as railway construction
workers29 eventually returned home.
Overpopulation, limited employment prospects,
and inadequate wages accelerated such movements and from
the 1860s Jamaicans, Barbadians and other islanders
migrated to Central America to work on coffee, sugar,
and banana plantations.30 The movement of agricultural
laborers to Honduras, Guatemala, and Costa Rica contin-
ued into the 1880s when Nicaragua, Cuba, and Colombia
appear to have joined the Latin American list of destin-
ations.31 Removal to these areas, while never on a
tremendous scale, and nearly coming to a halt in the
last decade of the nineteenth century, only ceased with
the coming of the depression in the early 1930s when
restrictive immigration regulations were put in
place.32 The extent of return from these countries is
difficult to ascertain although between 1928 and 1934
Jamaica experienced a net inflow of 28,000 persons, most
of them returnees from Latin America.33 Proudfoot34
also argues that migrant workers were being expelled
during the Depression.
Less well-known movements resulting in return
migration also occurred during the last third of the
nineteenth century. In Andros Island, Bahamas, males
were involved in recurrent sponge fishing expeditions of
several weeks or months at a time interrupted by short
visits home.35 Far to the south in former British
Guiana, the beginning of gold and diamond mining from
around 1880 attracted many men from coastal villages who
made regular extended trips to the interior mining
areas.36 Gonzales37 also reports on various types of
temporary and recurrent migration both seasonal and non-
seasonal among the coastal dwelling black Caribs of
Honduras and Belize. Since 1980 almost all Carib men
have been employed in some type of wage labor, often
close to their villages. The most important labor
outlets have included dock work, ship loading, and wood-
cutting. Up to 1930 the following pattern existed:38
The money earned through these jobs brought
many items which early became necessities
rather than luxuries. Still, the money
received was not sufficient to support their
families completely. Therefore they continued
to fish and to help with cultivation, even
though wage labor gradually came to be their
dominant work. But fishing and cultivation
were still thought of as essential, as they
actually were under the circumstances. For
this reason, a Carib man had to be in a posi-
tion to return to his home from time to time
when his presence was demanded.
A little-known movement is also reported by
Dirks39 who refers to what appears to be extensive
temporary and recurrent migration of over 100 years
standing from Tortola, B.V.I., to the more prosperous
American Virgin Islands.
The largest movement during the last two decades
of the nineteenth century occurred between 1884 and 1888
when large numbers of West Indian construction workers
were involved in the first effort to build the Panama
Canal.40 Foner41 tells us that over 84,000 Jamaicans
alone were employed in the unsuccessful project. Large
scale counter migration characterized not only the
abandonment of the project but the intervening years
as well. For example, although over 24,000 Jamaicans
migrated during the 1883-1884 construction season,
nearly 12,000 workers returned during the same period.42
When the project was aborted in 1888, only 6,000
migrants were not repatriated.
The rebirth of the canal project in 1905 again
witnessed the involvement of thousands of workers.
Although Jamaica once more headed the list, 43 islanders
from all parts of the Caribbean including Vincentians,44
Nevisians,45 Montserratians,46 and Carriacouans47 were
employed as construction laborers. According to
Proudfoot:48
From 1905 till 1913 there was a constant
number working in Panama of 35,000, most of
whom were employed on a temporary basis. As
one batch of workers returned to their home
islands, a new group would come in.
Many of those who did not return after the completion of
the Canal were deported during the depression,49
although repatriation to Jamaica was still taking place
up to 1945.50
The first decade of the twentieth century also
saw the resumption of migration to Cuba of seasonal cane
cutters, especially Jamaicans. This movement continued
until 1925 when the flow began to reverse in ever
increasing rates.51
Migration of banana plantation workers to Costa
Rica52 also occurred during the early years of the cen-
tury. Like other migrant agricultural workers in the
Hispanic Caribbean and Central America, they were
obliged to return to their homelands during the 1930s.
Perhaps the largest migratory movement during
the first quarter of the century was the removal of
thousands of West Indians to the United States between
1900 and the passage of exclusionary immigration regula-
tions in 1924.53 Between 1911 and 1921 alone, 30,000
Jamaicans migrated to the United States.54 Although
most of these migrants settled permanently in north-
eastern cities a substantial number are known to have
returned to the region.55
Interisland migration of seasonally employed
cane cutters continued throughout the 1920s and 1930s
with laborers from Nevis, Anguilla, the Grenadines, and
Montserrat being recruited for work in St. Kitts,
Trinidad, and the Dominican Republic.56
An especially important removal resulted from
the development of oil fields in Venezuela in 1916 and
provided employment for several thousand British West
Indians, particularly Trinidadians and Barbadians, until
a prohibition on the entry of "foreign-born Negroes" was
enacted in 1929.57 Migration to Venezuela foreshadowed
the even more significant movement of oil refinery and
industrial workers to Trinidad and Curaao from 1915 and
1916, respectively, and to Aruba from 1925.58 Large-
scale migration to these areas from the entire Eastern
Caribbean continued throughout the 1920s, 30s and 40s.59
All workers in Curacao and Aruba, including those from
the English-speaking Windward Netherlands Antilles, were
hired on a temporary basis and large-scale layoffs and
early retirement sent thousands back to their home
islands during the early 1950s.60
Of all the migratory movements during this cen-
tury the best-known and most intensively studied one has
been, of course, the mass migration to Great Britain
beginning in the early 1950s.61 Sparked by an initial
shortage of unskilled workers in vocational areas which
gave promise of long-term employment prospects, the
movement nonetheless has been far from unidirectional.62
It is estimated that while a total of 86,000 Jamaicans
departed for England between 1956 and 1959, 11,600
returned home during the same period.63 Similarly, be-
tween 1965 and 1968 -- a period of very little migration
from Jamaica to England -- some 52,000 Jamaicans left
for home.64
The most recent example of large-scale physical
mobility, removal to the United States and Canada from
the early 1960s, has also resulted in at least some
return migration. For example, West Indians holding
student visas in Canada are constrained from working
during their residence and most are obliged to leave
after their studies are completed.
The importance of return migration in the
English-speaking Caribbean may also be judged by its
scope in particular communities.
R. T. Smith65 tells us that in two of the com-
munities he studied in Guyana "... probably most of the
older men have worked in the interior of the colony at
some time or other." Concerning the tiny island of
Providencia, Wilson66 states that "... most men leave
the island during early manhood ..." In the community
he studied in Andros Island, Otterbein67 found that 42
percent of the adult male population spends most of its
time away from the island and that two-thirds of the men
have engaged in at least one period of seasonal agricul-
tural labor in the United States. Similarly, Betley68
found that 42 percent of the 630 household heads in a
Vincentian village he studied were returned migrants.
The obvious conclusion from all this evidence is
that in sheer demographic terms and in relation to the
number of territories affected, return migration is an
extremely significant part of the Caribbean migration
phenomenon. But return migration has far more than just
population or geographical referents. As a long-
standing institutionalized aspect of the region's popu-
lation mobility, it also has important economic, social,
and cultural implications.
THE RETURN IDEOLOGY
Some of these implications are readily seen when
account is taken of what I have called elsewhere the
"return ideology" in West Indian migration.69 This
ideology consists of a set of beliefs and values forming
one part of what Philpott70 has termed the "migrant
ideology," "...the cognitive model which the migrant
holds as to the nature and goals of his migration."
This migrant ideology is a feature of the institutiona-
lization which normally takes place when some usage
becomes a persistent multi-generational phenomenon. The
return sentiment as an aspect of this ideology includes,
among other things, ideas about the proposed length of
the migration period, especially that it will be less
than lifelong. Migration conceived as a temporary phe-
nomenon is undoubtedly a notion which largely originated
from the nature of the migration outlets and associated
employment opportunities which were available before the
opening up of England.
Several studies report the presence of a return
ideology among West Indian migrants. In her book, Dark
Strangers71 Sheila Patterson argues that:
.. apart from some earlier arrivals, most
West Indians are still migratory in intention.
All their efforts and hopes are directed
towards accumulating sufficient capital or
acquiring a new skill so that they may return
to a future in the West Indies.
In a study of immigrant absorption among tran-
sit workers in London, nearly all of whom were from the
West Indies, Brookes72 found that 44 percent originally
had intended to remain in Britain for up to five years,
37 percent had had no specific time for returning in
mind, and only 4 percent stated that they wished to
settle in England permanently. The need to distinguish
between migrant motivation and the causes and reality of
the migration process73 is highlighted by the fact that
81 percent of the sample had already been in England for
at least five years. Brookes74 also found that although
65 percent of the sample now had no definite idea about
when they wished to return to the West Indies, only 7
percent had no plans to return at all.
Comparable findings are also present in other
studies conducted by Rex and Moore75 and R. B.
Davison.76 Each of these studies took place between the
late 1950s and mid-1960s, i.e., within a few years of
removal to England. More recent work in the early 1970s
conducted by Foner77 and by Midgett78 show no signifi-
cant lessening of the return intention.
The return intention is not confined to West
Indian migrants in England. Crane79 tells us that
returning to retire on Saba has always been a definite
goal of many migrants while Hill80 argues that the
general content of the migrant ideology among Car-
riacouans in New York corresponds to that found by
Philpott81 among London-based Montserratians. Sutton
and Makieskvy82 also report that most West Indians in
New York intend ultimately to return to their home
societies.
If the return ideology is as strong as the
literature suggests then why have more contemporary
migrants not transformed their desire to return into
reality? Although there is no simple answer to cover all
cases, economic considerations of various sorts act to
discourage many would-be returnees. As R. B. Davison83
has stated:
Coloured immigrants in Britain have moved in
response to economic, rather than political,
forces and the way they view an eventual
return to their homeland will depend on their
view of the future economic circumstances
there. Their assessment of the possibilities
of securing the financial means to return is
another important factor, as is their expec-
tation of the future for themselves, and
their families, in Britain.
Thus, uncertain economic conditions in the home society,
especially a lack of jobs,84 a reluctance to go back to
former activities such as peasant cultivation with their
low rates of economic return and prestige, the pos-
session of skills acquired abroad for which there is
no market in the West Indies,85 the failure to achieve
financial or occupational success,86 greater overseas
occupational opportunities and security of job tenure,87
and a desire to see their children complete their
education abroad88 all constrain the homeward flow of
migrants.
While the importance of economic conditions
seems clear enough, occasionally the intention to return
may be simply a case of what Kenney89 has called
"institutionalized nostalgia" or what Connell et al.90
have labelled the "myth of return." As R. B. Davison91
states:
Distance lends enchantment and to ask a
Jamaican in the middle of an English winter
whether or not he would like to return to
Jamaica would be the most futile enquiry ima-
ginable.
Similarly, Foner92 suggests that:
Some migrants react to their failure to gain
full acceptance in English society by defining
their stay in England as a temporary one.
In other words, an orientation towards the home society
to some extent acts to reduce the social and psychologi-
cal impact of racism and other disappointing features of
life in England.
But even where the wish to return is an empty
dream or a rationalization for failure, as long as
migrants continue to act as if they will eventually
return to their homelands, there will be significant
consequences for both the migrant and the sending
society.93 Elsewhere,94 I have argued in relation to a
peasant village in St. Vincent that the mere desire to
return as distinct from actual physical return has had
the following effects: (1) affiliation among village
peers in the host society; (2) a preference for marriage
to fellow islanders; (3) a social and sentimental
involvement with the home community and the household
from which migration took place; (4) the support of the
migration of close kin and friends; (5) the remitting of
money to relatives back home; and (6) the overseas
purchase of village housing and other property. In
turn, the continuing home commitment of the migrant,
particularly the meeting of remittance obligations, and
the acquisition of property and other symbols of
prosperity, have significantly affected both the lives
of nonmigrants and prospects for local economic develop-
ment. Although remittances have enhanced the style of
life and material well-being of many of its recipients,
they have adversely affected village agricultural pro-
ductivity while perpetuating the emigration aspiration
among the young, an ambition that few may be able to
fulfill.
While the literature suggests that many of these
effects occur elsewhere in the region,95 a systematic
review of the available material combined with an in-
depth treatment of return migration in a particular
Caribbean society are needed to precisely document these
and other concomitants of the counterstream flow of
migrants.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION:
In this paper I have discussed three central
topics in the study of return migration in the English-
speaking Caribbean. A typology was necessary in order
to have some means of classifying the different homeward
movements that have occurred in the region for over a
century and a half. On the one hand, some rather simple
categorization system is needed to facilitate the
systematic description of the migration pattern within a
particular territory or community; on the other, the
comparative analysis of intraregional return movements
-- the next stage in the study of the phenomenon --
requires a standard classificatory framework to illumi-
nate similarities and differences.
The extent of return migration is another basic
topic that has to be considered in any study (whether
particularistic or comparative) of return migration.
While the scope of any social process demands documen-
tation in order to show that it is not a trivial or
unique phenomenon, and hence unworthy of intense
investigation, this is doubly true of return migration.
In order to counter the traditional idea of a one-way
movement from rural areas to urban centers or from less-
developed countries to regions promising higher stand-
ards of living, it needs to be shown that the homeward
flow of migrants is a demographically and historically
significant process.
The ideology of return migration is a third
feature of the process that deserves careful treatment.
Not only does the intention or desire to return home one
day motivate the homeward movement of many migrants, the
very idea of eventually going back (even where this is
mere nostalgia or a justification for an unpleasant
migration experience) has several important social and
economic consequences among migrants and nonmigrants
alike.
There are several other rather obvious candi-
idates for a list of topics that ought to be dealt with
in a full study (either in a particular society or in
wider comparative terms) of return migration. These
include the following:
(1) factors effecting the return of migrants
(objective factors causing the return; personal
motives and rationalizations for returning; push
vs. pull factors and their relative impact on the
decision to return; successful vs. unsuccessful
returnees; reasons for not returning);
(2) characteristics of returnees (sex, age, mari-
tal status, education, occupation, class, years of
absence; comparison of returnees to nonreturnees
and to nonmigrants);
(3) implications of returning for the existing
society (immigration policies and services; ethnic
and racial attitudes and practices; push and pull
factors effecting the decision of the migrant;
labor needs and shortages; shifting sources of
migrant workers);
(4) impact of the return of migrants on the origi-
nal sending society and community (implications for
economic development; introduction of new skills
and innovative behavior/ideas; investment of migra-
tion earnings; effects on pre-existing social orga-
nization and ideology; demographic and social
service impact of large-scale return movements);
(5) effects of return on the returnee (readjust-
ment and adaptation problems; social mobility and
economic well being; retirement; the decision to
re-emigrate).
What is required is a systematic investigation
of these and other features of the homeward movement of
West Indian migrants. Although logically research
should begin with a detailed ethnographic account of
return migration within a particular Caribbean society
in order to present a well-rounded and integrated pic-
ture of its empirical elements, from the point of view
of generalization and theory-building, the incorporation
of regional and extra-Caribbean comparative material
would seem to be essential. Such a study should receive
high priority in Caribbean ethnology.
NOTES
1Ceri Peach, West Indian Migration to Britain: A Social
Geography (London: Oxford University Press, 1968),
p. 1.
2See for example, Dennis Brookes, "Who Will Go Back?"
Race Today 1:5 (1969): 164; Nancy Foner, Jamaican
Migrants in London (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1978), p. 212; Stuart B. Philpott,
West Indian Migration: The Montserrat Case. London
School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology
No. 47. (London: The Athlone Press, 1973), p. 178.
3Julia G. Crane, Educated to Emigrate: The Social
Organization of Saba (Assen, The Netherlands: Van
Gorcum, 1971); Donald R. Hill, "The Impact of
Migration on the Metropolitan and Folk Society of
Carriacou, Grenada," Anthropological Papers of the
American Museum of Natural History 54, Part 2
(1977):189-392; Keith F. Otterbein, The Andros
Islanders: A Study of Family Organization in the
Bahamas (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press,
1966); Philpott (1973).
4Richard Frucht, "Emigration, Remittances and Social
Change: Aspects of the Social Field of Nevis, West
Indies," Anthropologica (N.S.) 10:2 (1968), 193-208;
Philpott (1973).
5Brian J. Betley, "Stratification and Strategies: A
Study of Adaptation and Mobility in a Vincentian
Town." Ph.D. dissertation, Anthropology Department,
University of California at Los Angeles, 1976;
Brookes; Crane; Betty Davison, "No Place Back Home: A
Study of Jamaicans Returning to Kingston, Jamaica,"
Race 9:4 (1968): 499-509; Frucht; Hill; Philpott
(1973); Peter J. Wilson, Crab Antics: The Social
Anthropology of English-Speaking Negro Societies of
the Caribbean (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University
Press, 1973).
6Crane; Frucht, Philpott (1973).
7Malcolm J. Proudfoot, Population Movements in the
Caribbean (Port of Spain, Trinidad: Caribbean
Commission Central Secretariat, 1950).
8Brookes, pp. 133-134; Foner, pp. 14-15; S. Patterson,
pp. 26-28.
9R. B. Davison, Black Britishi Immigrants to
England (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp.
2-3; S. Patterson, pp. 44-45; Peach, pp. 49-50.
10J. M. M. Van Amersfoort, "Migrant Workers, Circular
Migration and Development," Tijdschrift voor
Economische en Sociale Geografie 69(1/2) (1978): 18;
R. T. Appleyard, "Determinants of Return Migration --
A Socio-Economic Study of United Kingdom Migrants Who
Returned from Australia," The Economic Record 38:83
(1962): 352; Frank Bovenkerk, The Sociology of Return
Migration: A Bibliographic Essay (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1974), p. 1, 7; R. R. Campbell, Daniel M.
Johnson, and Gary Stangler, "Return Migration of Black
People to the South," Rural Sociology 39:4 (1974): p.
514; Francesco P. Cerase, "A Study of Italian Migrants
Returning from the U.S.A.," International Migration
Review (N.S.) 1:3 (1967): 67; John Connell, Biplab
Dasgupta, Roy Laishley, and Michael Lipton, Migration
from Rural Areas: The Evidence from Village Studies
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1976) pp, 3, 21;
Kingsley Davis, Foreword in Return Migration to Puerto
Rico by Jos4 HernAndez Alvarez (Berkeley: Institute
of International Studies, University of California,
1967) p. vii; Waltraut Feindt and Harley L. Browning,
"Return Migration: Its Significance in an Industrial
Metropolis and an Agricultural Town in Mexico,"
International Migration Review 6:2 (1972) p. 158;
Nancy B. Graves and Theodore D. Graves, "Adaptive
Strategies in Urban Migration," in Annual Review of
Anthropology, vol. 3, ed. Bernard J. Siegel (Palo
Alto, California: Annual Reviews, 1974), p. 126;
Billie Jean Isbell, "The Influence of Migrants upon
Traditional Social and Political Concepts: A Peruvian
Case," in Anthropological Perspectives on Latin
American Urbanization, eds. Wayne A. Cornelius and
Felicity M. Trueblood. Latin American Urban Research,
vol. 4 (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1974), p.
237; Russel King, "Problems of Return Migration: Case
Study of Italians Returning from Britain," Tijdschrift
voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 68:4 (1977):
241; Harold J. McArthur, Jr., "The Effects of Overseas
Work on Return Migrants and Their Home Communities: A
Philippine Case," Papers in Anthropology 20:1
(1979):85-104; Robert E. Rhoades, "Intra-European
Return Migration and Rural Development: Lessons from
the Spanish Case," Human Organization 37:2 (1978):
136 and "Toward an Anthropology of Return Migration,"
Papers in Anthropology 20:1 (1979):i-iii.
llBovenkerk, p. 1.
12B. Davison; H. Orlando Patterson, "West Indian
Migrants Returning Home: Some Observations," Race 10:1
(1968): 69-77; Edward Taylor, "The Social Adjustment
of Returned Migrants to Jamaica," in Ethnicity in the
Americas, ed. Frances Henry (The Hague: Mouton, 1976),
pp. 213-230.
13Betley, pp. 315-328; Crane, pp. 71, 101, 213; B.
Davison; Robert Dirks, "Networks, Groups and
Adaptation in an Afro-American Community," Man (N.S.)
7:4 (1972): 572; Frucht; Hill, pp. 227, 262, 286;
David Lowenthal, west Indian Societies (London: Oxford
University Press, 1972), pp. 221-222, 230; Otterbein,
pp. 33-34; Philpott (1973), pp. 50-51, 67-69, 80,
94-95, 108-112, 122; Michael G. Smith, Kinship and
Community in Carriacou (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale
University Press, 1962), pp. 58, 65, 110, 123-124;
Raymond T. Smith, The Negro Family in British Guiana:
Family Structure and Social Status in the
Villages (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956), p.
137; Taylor; Wilson, pp. 112-115, 155, 158.
14Brookes; Crane, pp. 71, 162, 210, 213, 244; Hill, p.
230; Lowenthal, 218, 227' Otterbein, p. 90; Philpott
(1973), pp. 69, 146, 154, 178-179, 187-190.
15Frucht; Hill, pp. 218, 227, 370; Lowenthal, pp.
221-222; Philpott (1973), pp. 190-191.
16Taylor, p. 221.
17Nancie L. Solien Gonzalez, Black Carib Household
Structure: A Study of Migration and Modernization
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969).
18Elsa M. Chaney, Foreword, The World Economy and
Contemporary Migration, International Migration
Review 13:2 (1979): 207-208.
19William A. Douglass, "Peasant Emigrants: Reactors or
Actors?" Proceedings of the Annual Spring Meeting of
the American Ethnological Society, 1970 (Seattle:
University of Washington Press), pp. 21-35.
20Nancie L. Solien de Gonzalez, "Family Organization in
Five Types of Migratory Wage Labor," American
Anthropologist 63 (1961), p. 1265.
21Amersfoort, p. 18; Solien de Gonzalez (1961), pp.
1266-1288.
22"Circulation," Bovenkerk, p. 5; "cyclical migration,"
Bovenkerk, p. 4; "circular migration," Amersfoort;
Connell et al, p. 121-125; Graves and Graves, pp.
119-120; "temporary, recurrent migration," Raymond E.
Wiest, "Wage-Labor Migration and the Household in a
Mexican Town," Journal of Anthropological Research
29:3 (1973), pp. 182-183; "recurrent migration,"
Solien de Gonzalez(1961), pp. 1268-1269; Douglass, p.
29.
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