HOW RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN HAS AFFECTED THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY IDENTITY OF JAMAICAN WOMEN MIGRANTS

By

JOHN ALAN SUTHERLAND

Integrated Studies Project

submitted to Dr. Paul Kellogg

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts – Integrated Studies

Athabasca,

August, 2013

ABSTRACT

The Final Project examines how the identity of Jamaican women – within the transnational family created by their act of migration to Canada – has been impacted by racial discrimination they experience here. It affects their identity by limiting the type of work they had to accept in order to legally come to this country. This in turn imposes upon them a lifestyle opposite to the close family life they had in their home country. It affects their identity by creating certain stereotypes – stereotypes which still impact the lifestyle they can have in Canada. It restricts their opportunities to integrate into Canadian society. It forces them to “act defiantly” to deal with racial prejudice. It strengthens their ties to the Jamaican and to their families back home. It made them more “Canadian Jamaican” than “Jamaican Canadian”. Since the 1980’s it has been a major factor in immigration policies which eliminate migration opportunities for them in Canada. The experiences of Jamaican women migrants illustrate clearly how the immigration experience in Canada is gendered and racialized. Migration is usually characterized by an acquisition of permanency and acceptance by the receiving society after a period of temporary residence. While Jamaican women filled domestic jobs in Canada during the period following the Second World War they were not generally welcomed by native nor by their government as prospective permanent immigrants. Evidence shows that they were exploited and expendable. Racial discrimination against them currently expresses itself in Canadian immigration laws and regulations requiring formal educational requirements for domestic workers which allegedly they do not possess. Yet comparing Jamaican educational standards to those of non black women from other countries who are accepted leads to the conclusion that despite a more racially diverse Canadian population racial discrimination still exists towards

Jamaican women.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...... 1

Jamaica and Canada ...... 4

Jamaican Women and Canada ...... 7

Women and identity formation in the Diaspora ...... 11

Family ...... 12

Resistance to Racism ...... 16

Feminization of Migration ...... 16

‘Agents of Change’ ...... 18

‘My Jamaican Family’ ...... 20

Empirical evidence? ...... 21

Oral Histories? ...... 22

Conclusion – the ‘transnational family’ ...... 24

Bibliography ...... 27

Introduction

“Family” is at the heart of Jamaican society. It survives because of the bonds between the women members of the family. As Jamaican women migrate to Canada on their own, they act as agents of change by transforming their Jamaican family into a transnational one. This ‘transnational’ relationship between the migrant and her family back home allows her “to identify in terms of (her) original ethnicity and relate both to the host state(s) in which (she) resides and (her) home country” (Plaza & Henry, 2006, p. 7) from which she originated. The nature of this new relationship and the migrant’s identity within it are affected by outside forces including the racial discrimination these women experience in Canada, Discrimination based on being female, black, and Jamaican. The racial discrimination they experience is unlike anything they have been conditioned to deal with by their family upbringing in . “Most women are faced with problems related to the survival of their households and with developing strategies for coping” which i “extend far beyond conventional concepts.” (Senior 1991, p.176).

Jamaican women have developed personal characters as “resilient, independent people with a strong sense of personal agency” (Alfred 2004, p. 21). A resiliency which is expressed by the Jamaican saying that “time langa dan rope”. The translation of which is that “You can hold me back, oppress me, abuse me, do negative stuff to me, despise me, even enslave me, hurt me, etc. but you can’t do them / it to me forever because time and my will/determination is on my side” (Bandele 2013, p. 7).

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This Final Project frames the creation of the Jamaican transnational family, the migrant’s place in it and how both respond to Canadian racial discrimination against the migrant Jamaican woman of African descent. It uses existing studies of female migration in general, histories of Jamaican women migrants in Canada as domestic workers and the literature written by these migrants and their descendants. It reviews literature on the development of the family in Jamaica including its development under the stark and traumatic history of slavery. It centres the discussion within the general literature on migration and globalization. It also highlights the fact that the process of “gate keeping”

(Stasiulis & Bakan 1997, pp. 123-4) used by the federal Department of Citizenship and

Immigration (and its predecessors) in relation to source countries for domestic and other foreign worker programs, is based on racial discrimination and that these practices have a major effect on the type, size and composition of the transnational Jamaican family.

While the writer is a naturalized Jamaican by marriage the opportunity to observe four generations of Jamaican women in my wife’s extended family over the last twenty years has given me a deeper and personal insight into the issues discussed.

As a receiving society for migrants, it is important for current and future generations of Canadians to understand not only the existence of our society’s racial discrimination towards any ethnic group of immigrants but to understand how these discriminatory attitudes affect the way migrants to this country see themselves and their families. If we expect Canada to be a welcoming society it is essential that we work towards eliminating discrimination against any ethnic group.

It is the position of this Final Project that Jamaican women – through their resistance to racial discrimination against them in Canada – have become stronger as

3 individuals and emerged as powerful leaders within their own transnational family and within the here and in Jamaica. Resisting racial discrimination has strengthened firstly their ties to the their family back home in Jamaica; secondly their commitment to the Jamaican diaspora here and abroad; and thirdly their ties to their home country at the expense of stronger ties to Canada – creating Canadian , rather than . Jamaicans have “successfully established a legitimate and recognized role in advocating for greater citizenship rights within Canadain social,economic and political structures”

Jamaican women migrants represent one segment of international labour migration which today sees mass movements of women migrating on their own across national borders to find work to feed their families (Tastsoglou & Dobrowolsky 2006, p.

4). Their story differs from that of other groups of ethnic women migrating to Canada from developing countries. The migration of Jamaican women on their own through formal and informal means spans a period of over fifty years and started long before talk of globalization and the global economy. The primary reason for this Caribbean migration is and has always been “the gap between life aspirations and expectations and the means to fulfill them in the country of origin” (Alfred 2004, p. 4). International labour migration is not a new phenomenon confined to the late 20th and the 21st century. It has however exploded in importance during this period. It has been defined as the movement of people from one country to another for the purpose of employment. Global markets and global industries force movement of workers to wherever manpower shortages exist.

Labour mobility from poor countries to richer developed countries has become a key feature of the present day global economy. It benefits both the sending and receiving

4 country. Migrant workers earned US $440 billion in 2011. The World Bank has estimated that more than $350 Billion of that total was transferred to developing countries in the form of remittances (IMO 2013). Migrating women “tend to work to support the basic needs of their families rather than for personal consumption” (Bakan & Stasiulis 2008, p.

275).

Jamaica and Canada

Jamaica and Canada have been involved in a female labour migration relationship primarily since the end of the Second World War with peak periods during the 1960’s and 1970’s: Jamaica as the sending country of female workers and Canada as the receiving nation; Jamaica as a poor overpopulated developing country and Canada as the developed nation.

Jamaica sends people to work abroad because it is a small island country located in the Caribbean Sea with an English speaking population of approximately three million, a very high birth rate and high rates of unemployment. British planters colonized the island in the 17th century. They converted much of the island into large sugar plantations through the use of thousands of African slaves. This forced migration of Africans as slaves to the Caribbean – though traumatic and inhumane – created a population unafraid to seek opportunity abroad when opportunities were non-existent at home. As well slave owners often practiced migration by sending their slaves, between sugar crops, to work in the cotton fields in the (Alfred 2004, p.3). Jamaica became an independent country in 1962 with the majority of its people descendants of those slaves. Without the benefit of any industrial base and with an ever-increasing population, migration abroad has been and will continue to be an inevitable fact of life for Jamaicans.

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Jamaicans are not conditioned to being racially discriminated against in Jamaica as they are raised in a society where there is no racial discrimination against black people.

In fact its culture is often described as “Creole” because of the many races and ethnic groups that mixed in the Caribbean. This harmonious state of race relations is possible because white Jamaicans form a very small minority of the population. On or prior to independence, white people who were intolerant of black Jamaicans left the country.

Even the national motto of the country affirms this lack of racial discrimination by saying

“Out of many, One people”.

Canada has a history of racial discrimination against black people. This may have had its origin in a period of African slavery practiced on a small scale in the 18th century primarily in Eastern Canada by settlers from Britain and the United States. Certainly it can be tied to the fact that for the first 300 hundred years of its colonization most of

Canada’s settlers came from Europe. They brought with them racial intolerance and prejudice towards black people.

Since its birth as a country in 1867 Canadian federal immigration policies have reflected many of these white prejudices by seeking to limit the number of immigrants of

African heritage from countries like Jamaica. The use of allowable quotas for people from sending countries is a form of “gatekeeping” which the government uses to justify racial discrimination against people of African heritage. One example can serve to starkly illustrate this state-sanctioned racism. In the period following World War Two the feeling of the Canadian Department of Immigration towards black people was summed up in the words of its Director who opposed the entry of West Indian women as domestic workers because “ coloured people in the present state of the white man’s thinking are not a

6 tangible asset…They do not assimilate readily and pretty much vegetate to a low standard of living” (Macklin 1992, p. 689).

Canadian society, despite supporting a policy of “multiculturalism”, has continued to use racial profiling in its relations with black immigrants as a way of reinforcing their “separateness” from the majority of the Canadian population. An example of this is the first question most commonly asked of black people by many

Canadians: “Where are you from?” (James 2009, p. 104). This type of racial profiling implies that the black person must be from some place other than Canada because he or she is different from the questioner. Nothing could make a person more uncomfortable and unwanted than to feel excluded from the mainstream population. Much of this racial profiling by Canadian society comes from a lack of exposure to people of African descent. As a child growing up in Northern in the late 1940’s and 50’s it was uncommon for me to see a black person unless they were associated with railroad porter jobs. More exposure to black people by each successive generation may gradually remove this race loaded question yet the belief remains in the minds of many Canadians that black people are different from the majority of Canadians.

Racial profiling as a form of racial discrimination not only includes noting the physical differences of black people it also leads to the creation by society of stereotypes of them with certain characteristics which are usually negative. These stereotypes serve as a basis for further discrimination against them. This racial stereotyping often arises because of the job situations in which most Canadians encounter black people. Yet this stereotype of black people as being suitable only for lower paying and unskilled jobs was not true as many first generation migrants from Jamaica took low paying domestic jobs in

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Canada as the only means that they could use to migrate to this country given the

Canadian government’s policies. This was particularly true in the case of women migrants from Jamaica. Racism (and its stereotyping) operates to limit social and economic opportunities and possibilities (James 2009, p. 94). The description of this correlation is found in studies of ‘critical race theory’ that includes “systemic and subtle forms of racism that have had the effect of subordinating people of colour” (James 2009, p. 93).

Jamaican Women and Canada

After the end of the Second World War Canadian federal government immigration policies were focused on attracting women (not men) from the Caribbean to come to

Canada to fill low paying jobs in the field of domestic care. That these were women of colour was “not a prerequisite to (their) exploitation” (Macklin 1992, p. 754) but certainly facilitated it. They were needed to substitute for Canadian women who sought higher paying work outside the home. In order to make the government’s offer more attractive to these women, it added a promise to allow them the chance to remain in

Canada if, and only if, they fulfilled their domestic work contracts. “Racist beliefs about the sexual behaviour of black women motivated the government to ensure that new arrivals were ‘healthy’ by subjecting them to extensive gynaecological examinations for venereal disease when they arrived” (Macklin 1992, p. 689). Despite low wages and poor working conditions associated with these jobs many Jamaican women elected to work under these conditions rather than be unemployed in Jamaica. In a time prior to globalization this set a precedent for a rich developed country like Canada to create a class of private servants to white employers. Subsequent “wide-scale exploitation of

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Third World women domestic workers, through their construction as non-citizens”

(Stasiulis & Bakan 1997, p. 132) has became an intrinsic aspect of globalization.

Caribbean governments, anxious to see the postwar domestics’ program succeed in order to ensure jobs and remittances from its migrants, gave priority to educational attainment and ambition over domestic skills. Many candidates were actually nurses, teachers or civil servants in search of better job opportunities in Canada (Macklin 1992, p. 690). A Trinidadian newspaper featured a cartoon showing a Caribbean girl saying

“I’ll be a Civil Servant when I grow up and get a chance to go to Canada as a Domestic

Servant” (Macklin 1992, p. 690). Despite their prior education attainments and work experience in Jamaica domestic work reinforced a racial stereotype in Canada of

Jamaican women as domestic servants, inferior in class to Canadian women (mostly white) and only capable of jobs not requiring a high degree of education. The reality was that many only took these jobs in order to look after their families back home. Many were mothers who left their children in the care of other female family members. Their meagre earnings were often sent back to their families in the form of barrels of household goods and food. The effect this had on these “barrel” children (Marshall 2011, p. 10), many of whom were later sponsored to come to Canada to join their mothers, is the subject of psychological studies on the “attachment” theory between mother and children, studies which document the negative effects this can have on these children in their adult lives.

While Jamaican women were welcomed to Canada by their employers as a source of cheap labour their colour made them largely unwelcome as permanent residents, in the eyes of the largely white Canadian population and their governments. These women were quick to learn that Canada was still a society where racial discrimination was often overt

9 and certainly an everyday fact of life. One example of this underlying racial discrimination against black Jamaican women was the Canadian federal government’s decision in the 80’s to facilitate migration to Canada of “domestics” by those it said were more highly educated non-black women from the and other parts of Asia.

According to an historical overview of federal policy preferential admission was given to these applicants over black women from the Caribbean (Hsiung & Nichol 2010, p. 768).

Jamaican women migrants working as domestics in Canada were non-citizens deprived of the same rights as Canadians much like the current-day Temporary Foreign

Workers Program. As such they were subject to abuse, violence and human rights violations (Stasiulis & Bakan 1997, p. 122). West Indian domestics, primarily those from

Jamaica, reacted to the racism in Canadian society by disputing their position through anti-racist organizing and advocating “for greater citizenship rights within Canadian social, economic and political structures” (Stasiulis & Bakan, 2003, p. 123). These openly defiant stands became underlying justifications for the later federal government policies to prefer non-black Third World women as domestics.

Racial stereotyping of Jamaican women migrants continued after they completed their contracts as domestics. Through all the iterations of federal legislation governing domestic work – whether that be the Foreign Domestic Movement Program (FDMP) or the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP), one of the most enduring legacies has been that many Jamaican women legally entitled to full citizenship rights continue to work as caregivers and unskilled employee despite their higher level of education.

When Jamaican women completed their terms of service and gained permanent residence many of them gravitated to to live. Their reasons often were related to

10 the fact that there they could take advantage of the large community of Jamaicans living there. The Jamaican diaspora there has been a source of security and support and a refuge from the loneliness and racial discrimination endured by these women while living and working in white households. Further it has provided cheap urban living for women who found themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder. However living in a low income area exposed them to the problems of urban North America which include crime, family breakups, high rates of school dropouts by their children and welfare conditions for their families. As a result many characterized them as authors of their own low status and stereotyped them and their families as capable only of a welfare type life style. Some government agencies, social workers and law enforcement officers have associated the lifestyle of these Jamaican women and their families with welfare and crime. In reality they are the victims of an economic system which brought them to this country for exploitation and then abandoned them when it had finished with them and had found non- black migrants from other Third World countries to do the same work.

Despite restrictive changes in Canadian government policies Jamaican women continue to seek to migrate to Canada often through informal channels as visitors. They work as domestics in contravention of current immigration laws and continue to be exploited without the benefit of any legal protection (Stasiulis & Bakan 1997, p. 121).

Today some still come through formal channels to fill the role of the “temporary foreign worker” who works in low skill jobs for not much more, if any, than the minimum wage.

Perception about the person’s skill level and education is often based on the public’s impression of the job’s importance in terms of the salary paid for its performance.

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Canadian society’s low impression of the Jamaican woman’s work holds her back from being considered for more highly skilled jobs despite her educational attainments.

Women and identity formation in the Diaspora

For the past 20 years I have been intrigued by the fact that Jamaican women such as my wife have come to Canada as migrants on their own and without family support and are able to find the strength to persevere in their quest to forge new lives here. Their quest at times seems hopeless in the face of racial and economic discrimination against them by many Canadians including the policies of our federal government. Their narrative stories paint a picture of being needed by the Canadian economy but not necessarily welcomed to stay. Despite these obstacles they have faced, including discrimination based on skin colour, they have survived and created one of the largest diasporic communities outside of their island home. Jamaican transnational migration behavior can be described as

“inherently flexible, strongly strategic and rationally satificing” (Conway 2007, p. 416).

Relying on Webster & Watson (2002), I would argue that three important factors underlie the perseverance of these women to battle against racial discrimination and to create their own identity within the Jamaican transnational family.

The first is the nature of the institution and the bonds of the Jamaican “family” which give Jamaican women a strength of character and independence. The responsibilities learned from birth that the “family” places on Jamaican women to keep the family together creates strong willed women who are adaptable to whatever situation they encounter. The Jamaican family life-world “extends beyond the traditional nuclear family and it includes parents, grandparents, siblings, offspring of siblings, aunts, uncles

12 as well as other community members, all of whom contribute to the knowledge base of the developing individual” (Alfred 2004, p. 7).

The second factor is that the act of resisting racial discrimination changes the

Jamaican woman’s identity both within and outside the “family”. It is an evolutionary change for both herself and her family. Migration and identity change creates the transnational family (Conway 2007, p. 421), which links the migrant not only with her family back in Jamaica but with diasporic communities in Canada and on a global scale.

Finally the third factor is that the migration process of adapting to Canadian society is an emancipation of both the particular Jamaican woman and Jamaican women in general. Freedom from a male dominated society on the island is achieved only through migration. Today power within the transnational family rests with the transplanted Jamaican woman who is free to pursue on her own, without male domination, her life both in Canada and on her visits back to Jamaica as an equal with her male counterparts. She is released from a society which still clings to “cultural values of masculinity that encourage intimate partner violence in men and with values of femininity that pressure poor women to bear children and take full responsibility for their upbringing” (Aymer 2002, p. 210).

Family

To understand the importance of the “family” in Jamaica one has to not only define the term but also put it into historical context. The concept of “family” is very important to

Jamaicans and to Canadians of Jamaican-descent. The term includes persons, however remotely related to the speaker, whether on the island of Jamaica or spread over the entire globe. Studies of family reunions of Caribbean people and their descendants illustrate the

13 strong ties that continue to exist between those who continue to reside in the Caribbean and those who have migrated over the last century to Europe and North America (Sutton

2004). Yet “family” in the Jamaican culture is more than kinship to a group of people. It also encompasses a national way of dealing with the unexpected problems that arise wherever Jamaicans migrate. The saying “no problem” sums up an attitude towards dealing with life that says that no matter how bad things get these problems can be overcome. “I think because we were surrounded by strong women, we grew up to be strong women who go after what we want today, even though we have to struggle to get it” (Alfred 2004, p. 8). When Jamaicans migrate they not only carry this strength of

“family” with them they create transnational family networks to continue to keep in close contact with their family back home. These transnational family networks “constitute one of the major channels of transmission for important exchanges-economic, political and cultural” (Sutton 2004, p. 244). It “facilitates the survival of its members“, serving as a buffer against the intrusiveness of individual state policies; it fosters the social reproduction of its members, their class formation and mobility; and as the repository of cultural practices and ideology shaped in the home society, it mediates identity formation in the new setting as it socializes its members into a transnational way of life” (Basch et al 1994, p. 79).

When the Jamaican woman elects to migrate abroad she remains part of the

Jamaican “family”. This connection is reinforced both by the Jamaican diaspora within

Canada as well as by the official programs of the Jamaican government focused on its citizens abroad and their descendants. These contribute to the fact that she never has to experience leaving her family behind wherever she goes. Describing a fellow Jamaican of

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“having gone a foreign” conveys a message that he or she may be currently off the island but eventually he or she will return. It is this sense of a greater community of family that creates the strength in the Jamaican woman migrant. Societies which confine themselves to the traditional definitions of family, lack the flexibility to create this bond within their national community.

The Jamaican family is not usually a “traditional” family with two partners living in a permanent relationship jointing sharing the duties and responsibilities of raising children. Rather it is distinguished by its lack of permanence in relationships between men and women. Non legally-sanctioned relationships have characterized the majority of family structures in Jamaica since the days of slavery. It benefitted slave owners to prevent the creation of traditional families so that male and female slaves could be easily sold off separately. After slavery was abolished the practice of couples simply living together in non legally-binding unions was continued out of sheer economic necessity.

Most men were unable to find good paying work on the island and therefore unable to find financial security to support a wife and children. This situation continues to be the case in Jamaica even up to the present day especially in the rural areas and among the urban poor. Both of these groups form the bulk of the Jamaican population. Even today

85% of Jamaican children are born to unmarried parents (World Bank 2002, p. 62).

Jamaican migrants have brought this aspect of their culture with them to Canada with the result that many Jamaican men and women and their offspring continue to be involved in multiple family relationships.

As a result of this attitude towards relationships, many children in the Jamaican diaspora in Canada are born into female dominated single parent families. This fact along

15 with economic status may contribute to tragic social consequences ranging from higher levels of poverty, higher school dropout rates and higher levels of crime than the national averages. It also fuels the stereotype of an ethnic community having few morals in the areas of sexual encounters and conjugal fidelity.

The attitudes of the Jamaican community regarding conjugal relationships run counter to the concept of marriage and common law relationships accepted by mainstream Canadian society. In the 1960’s social scientists and government leaders in

North America concluded that absent fathers, single parenthood and female headed households, all of which are descriptive of the predominant “family” relationship in

Jamaica and in a large part of many within the Jamaican diaspora in Canada, created a

‘tangle of pathology’that was associated with “poor school performance, street crime

,delinquency and drug use” (Gans 2011). This is contrary to studies done in Jamaica in this century which conclude that “conjugal multiplicity, a female reproductive pattern characterized by multiple unions, maternal unmarried status and absent father does not necessarily result in poorer developmental outcomes for preschool-aged children”

(Dreher & Hudgins 2010, p. 495).

Economic necessity related to high unemployment, not lack of morals, is the driving force behind the statistic in Jamaica where forty-five percent of households are headed by women (p. 496). In Jamaica these consensual unions are considered “a socially acceptable context for child bearing and family life, and the offspring of these unions are not socially disadvantaged” (p. 496). That same degree of social acceptance is not found within the larger Canadian society. As a result it leads to a further stereotyping of and discrimination against the Jamaican community.

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Resistance to Racism

The second factor underlying the success of Jamaican women successfully migrating to

Canada and meeting the challenges of racial discrimination is that her act of migration creates an identity change both in herself as an individual and as a member of this new transnational family which she creates by her act of migration. No longer is she simply a female member of a Jamaican “family”. She is now a person with roots in both the island and abroad. She sees herself and is seen by her family back home as a “transnational” person no longer bound by her original role within the island family. While she may initially meet with “culture shock, ridicule, aloneness and a lost sense of self” and becoming “marginalized” (Alfred 2004, p. 11) she realizes upon connecting with the

Jamaican diaspora that she is not alone. Her sense of intuition learned from the family allows her to utilize “ the context of networks and kinships consisting of extended family and community members” (Alfred 2004, p. 21).

Feminization of Migration

Finally the third factor in the process is that migration by the Jamaican woman is an emancipatory act for herself. It frees her from a culture dominated by men where women are seen as wives, mistresses and girlfriends and as producers of children and keepers of the family, a society where men are free to roam and have multiple sexual partners.

Prior to the 1960’s migration of Jamaican women on their own was not studied as a distinctive phenomenon as earlier waves of Jamaican migrants within the Caribbean region and to the were predominantly of men who went “off island” to search for work in order to remit funds to their families back home. These were the absentee fathers and husbands known only to their children through their remittances.

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Their wives, girlfriends, mothers and grandmothers were left in charge of the families and the raising of the children (hence the words of the Harry Belafonte (1956) song,

“Brown Skin Girl Stay Home and Mind Baby”). This matrifocal form of family structure had its roots in the days of slavery when women were cast in the role of maintainer of the family as men were sold off to other owners.

The earlier male migrations were mainly temporary in nature, undertaken with the intention of returning rather than settling permanently in distant lands. The few that remained in the countries of destination did not create the “cultural diaspora” which we see established since the mid twentieth century when the migration of large numbers of women took place. They had little effect on changing the makeup of the Jamaican family back home which has always functioned under the guidance and control of women whether the men were at home or away from Jamaica.

However as the flow of Jamaican migrants changed to predominantly women during the mid twentieth century (called by Tsakiri (2005, p. 102), the “feminization of migration”) this changed both the society they left and that of the receiving countries

(Aymer 2005, p. 210). The feminization of migration has provided “a fertile ground for the reinforcement of transnational communities since the majority of women migrating for employment purposes leave their families behind” (Tsakiri 2005, p. 102). Most of these women migrants never returned to Jamaica but established new lives away from

Jamaica by settling permanently in the receiving societies of Canada and the United

States. (The Immigrant Experience, 2002) Many were mothers who left their children in the care of their own mothers or older female relatives to raise. As indicated earlier, their only contact between mother and children would be the barrels of goods sent back to

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Jamaica by the mothers, hence the term “barrel” used as an adjective to describe these left-behind children (Seeman 2011, p. 466). After these women had settled in their new homes they would often send for their children. Yet these were mothers who would be strangers to their own sons and daughters. Their children had grown up without their mothers and would become more independent because of this. This would run counter to arguments suggesting that lack of attachment may have negative effects on children

(Arnold 2011). This was the historical pattern of migration of Jamaican women who came to Canada to fill jobs as domestics and caregivers from the 1950’s onward. A migration openly encouraged and promoted by Canadian government policies trying to fill a need for unskilled or semiskilled women who could take on the household chores shunned by the post war North American woman.

‘Agents of Change’

Why were these Jamaican women successful in their migration to Canada despite encountering many obstacles here in the form of discriminatory barriers? Many writers believe that this was because of their independent personalities, which gave them the inner strength to overcome the challenges they faced. A strength of character that had been developed in a home society which required women to take the dominant role in holding the family together. In addition, they had the long experience of a home society in which women through the kinship ties of the extended family worked together for the raising of children when Jamaican men shunned their responsibilities as fathers and husbands.

Others point to the creation and enlarging of the Jamaican “diaspora” especially in

Toronto, something which provided the cultural support network for women alone in a

19 new homeland without their families to rely upon. Today over 70 percent of African

Caribbean Canadians live in Toronto (James 2009, p. 93). The existence of a large group of black people living in the same area has also given rise to negative factors such as the

“systemic and subtle forms of racism that have had over the years the effect of subordinating people of colour (James 2009, p. 93).

Migrants are “agents of change and contribute to growth” (Tsakiri, p. 103). This is particularly true of women migrants. Jamaican women by their act of migration have shaped the societies of Jamaica and Canada in both positive and negative ways. They helped enlarge and strengthen the Jamaican “diaspora” within Canada while maintaining their ties to their home country. Their struggles to settle in Canada frame the “evolving role of and their impact on the development of their country of origin” (Tsakiri

2005, p. 103). In addition, we have to consider “the impact transnational communities have in receiving countries and the efforts these countries undertake to incorporate migrants in their societies” (p. 103). Integration into Canadian society has become possible for some who are well educated or who have entered into interracial relationships. But many who migrated to fill jobs requiring unskilled or semi-skilled requirements have not fared well in these areas, nor have their children if we are to believe studies done on the Jamaican community in the .

‘, compared to other Torontonians, were more likely to be unemployed, less likely to be self employed and less likely to be employed full time” (James 2009, p. 98).

Indicative of their problems or further evidence of racial discrimination are studies that show for the period from 1999 to 2002 black people represent nearly a quarter of all

20 arrests for simple drug possession in the Toronto area despite the fact that they make up only 8.1 percent of the population (Rankin 2002, p. 2).

Today in the twenty first century the Jamaican woman’s journey from her home country to Canada occurs within the context of dramatic increases in worldwide migratory flows of people from developing to developed countries. Today’s migration involves a whole new generation of women who could be the granddaughters of those

Jamaican women who migrated to Canada in the 1950’s through the 70’s. Jamaican society has changed dramatically over those sixty plus years with its consequent effects on the Jamaican woman. It is a different Jamaican woman who seeks to migrate today.

She is more aware of her own independence and less inclined to worry about the effect of her migration on her family back in Jamaica. The Jamaican woman of today is usually younger and able to attract foreigners to assist her in her migratory plans. Her desire to migrate is driven by deteriorating conditions in her home country brought about by the effects of globalization of trade and lack of employment opportunities in developing countries (Aymer 2005, p. 210).

‘My Jamaican Family’

In Jamaica the role of the woman as wife and mother has been affected by the migration of so many young women leaving to seek a better life and opportunities abroad. The search for a “better life” has been a driving force behind this migration. Upon arrival in

Canada many of these women face uncertain futures as they compete with prior immigrants for low paying jobs. They leave behind their family support system and are forced to make new connections and relationships. These factors of separation and reunion and their effect on immigrant families have been studied in the context of the

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Caribbean family (Arnold 2011). In transforming their lives to fit their new surroundings they are creating new transnational identities for themselves (Usher 2005).

Yet certain elements of Jamaican society which created the first wave of successful independent woman migrant remain. As Sutton (2004) has described in her studies of Caribbean family reunions there is “an ideology of mutual support that links family members within and across households, communities and nations” (p. 254). This ideology is rooted in the strong acceptance of family as a “lifeline” (Aschenbrenner

1983). Family as defined as “broadly consanguineal rather than conjugally centred”

(Sutton 2004, p. 254). Family forms the backbone of Jamaican society and maintains a strong pull on Jamaicans wherever they go. Even the current Jamaican High

Commissioner to Canada (a woman) refers to Jamaicans in Canada as “my Jamaican family” (Monteith 2011). This connection to family both at home and abroad the source of her strength and what distinguishes the Jamaican woman migrant from many other women migrants in today’s global context.

The importance of these factors to the success of Jamaican women migrants is stressed in the studies (Bauer & Thompson 2004) done in the 1980’s which were the first to deal with these issues of the twenty-first century-“migration” and “gender” in the context of female migration from the Caribbean. What facts and evidence support and confirm these conclusions as to why Jamaican women are successful in their migration and where do we find this evidence?

Empirical evidence?

On the question of empirical evidence of success, one area which will be considered are

Canadian government statistics for income for women emigrants from the Caribbean and

22 of Jamaica in particular. This figure is weighted in favour of the majority of women who, while establishing themselves in the Canadian social fabric, continue to work at lower paying jobs. Statistics show only the average income of this group in relation to the

Canadian population as a whole and cannot demonstrate success in a financial way.

Another measurement would be statistics that measure the educational achievements of the children of these Jamaican women migrants measured against the Canadian population as a whole. But can statistics tell us what obstacles these women have had to overcome in order to ensure that their children succeed?

Oral Histories?

Where can we learn of their struggles against racial discrimination and how it has affected their identity? Many consider narratives and oral histories of Jamaican women migrants who have come to Canada as the best means of learning of the obstacles they have overcome in order to settle successfully here. However oral histories have their weaknesses. Reliability, finding a way to typologize idiosyncratic stories and how to avoid generalizing relationships from what are essentially individual case studies (Li

1985, p. 1) are some of the problems that are found in using these as an investigative tool.

Determining a general hypothesis as to how a particular group of migrants overcome racial discrimination requires that the interviewer in recording oral histories direct selective questions to assist a person’s recollections of a particular theme. Another rich source for these narratives are the works of literature by such migrants or their children which vividly describe the lives they have led in Canada (Hernandez 2003).

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What do we learn from narratives or oral histories? The motive to immigrate is based on more than just economic concerns (Skrbis 2008). Often it is family pressures on both ends of the journey. To move or to come involves a family decision (Cather 1994).

In discussing The Polish Peasant (Znaniecki & Thomas 1918-1920) Skrbis quotes the principal conclusion that the letters reveal which is that “wherever there is emigration, dissolution of the family is progressing more rapidly than in groups whose members remain territorially united and live in the same conditions as their forefathers did” (2008, p. 1134). Skrbis discusses the interrelationships between the social scientific concepts which come into play with the migration of the individual. These include: (1) the institution of the family; (2) the processes of transnationalism and migration; (3) emotions ; and (4) the complex question of belonging (2008, pp. 233-4). We must be careful to distinguish between autobiographies that are based on real life experiences and memory and nostalgia about events that may not equivocate about the truth (Chamberlain

& Leydesdorff 2004).

A family is held together not only by blood, common goals, values and history but above all the emotions felt to each other by its members – the so-called “glue of co- dependency” (p. 234). The richness and intensity of these emotions cannot be discounted.

In letters from and to the migrant (Znaniecki & Thomas 1918-1920) there is sadness, longing, dread, pain, happiness, love, faithfulness, betrayal and emotionalized claims about truth making. When an individual migrates a gap is created in the fabric of the family. This can be seen as the beginning of the dissolution of the family as migration results in the weakening of this co-dependency. “Migration is invariably a process that dissociates individuals from their family and friendship networks, as well as from other

24 socially significant referents that have strong emotional connotations” (p. 236). “Migrant stories are linked with the experiences of adjustment, settlement, nostalgia, a shattered sense of belonging, renewal, loss, discrimination, abrupt endings, new beginnings and new opportunities-all potent sources of emotions.” (p. 236) How to gather factual data from these expressions of emotions, aspirations and assessments of past events as emotions tend to affect details. Do the subjects fabricate parts of their stories; do they only remember and recite what they want to remember; is it anything more than their interpretation of what has happened; can it be corroborated from other sources. Studs

Terkel (1972) followed such a method of interviewing in his books dealing with the everyday lives of people. No picture of the difficulties faced by migrants would be complete without interviews of people both in Canada and in the home country to gain a more accurate picture of what migrants experienced and how it affected those left behind.

Conclusion – the ‘transnational family’

When the migrant puts down roots in his or her new home and makes his/her migration permanent the bonds of the relationship with the family left behind are further weakened.

Yet at the same time that the migrant is creating a new family abroad, he or she is still part of the original family. The relationship has been changed into a “transnational family” (Schiller, Basch, & Blanc-Szanton 1995). The strength or weakness of this new relationship is dependent upon the degree of interaction between the migrant, his or her new family and the original family and the strength of the emotional ties with the original family unit (Tastsoglou & Dobrowolsky 2006). The migrant initially draws strength from his or her original family when he or she makes the migration. The emotional closeness of the migrant to his/her original family may determine the degree of success of the

25 migrant in establishing him/herself in the new country. This closeness may be dependent upon the degree of performance of “emotional labour” by the migrant for the benefit of those left behind. This includes concepts of tradition, family expectations and a sense of duty and obligation. In addition there is also the strength of the co-presence of those left behind. This can be strengthened through “return migrant visits” and “transnational family reunions” (p. 238). The return visit with its drama and joy of homecoming and reunion at centre stage becomes an emotional event. It is an event that happens on the continuum of migration experience. It is important not only to the first generation migrant but also has profound effects on the second generation. The transnational family reunion becomes a site for the politics of family envy and celebration of family cohesion.

Emotions are found in situations which create a sense of nostalgia and longing for an imaginatively constructed home. Dreaming about a home country in terms of something that never was.

The emotionalization of “family” is an underlying discourse in diaspora communities. It becomes a key ideological premise upon which diaspora communities articulate their identities. The transnational family can be viewed as analogous to the rubber band which can be stretched and not broken, always pulling back to its original form, drawing members back into the fold of the widely dispersed family.

There are many areas to explore beyond the scope of this Final Project. When

Afro-Jamaican women migrate to Canada what effect does the continuing relationship with their family in Jamaica have on their chances for a successful permanent migration?

Does the strength of this new “transnational” family affect their chances of success in their new “home”? Does the literature of Caribbean women writers confirm this

26 hypothesis that emotional ties to their family in Jamaica is part of their success in establishing themselves in their new homeland? Many of these questions can be answered from studying the stories of migrants.

As the majority of migrants from Jamaica have increasingly been women, it is important to define how these women view the act of migration. Many have left conditions of poverty where men were not seen as the breadwinners and women had taken over much of the work within the family as well as the support of the family financially. Jamaican women tend not “to identify ‘home ‘ as a site of nostalgia” (Massey

1994). For them relocation is “a sign of change” and “a potential for transformation, an opportunity to choose new subject positions”. It is an opportunity for Jamaican women to escape from “ the space of silence, obedience and restriction where they were situated back home”. In their new countries through migration Jamaican women “ have the opportunity to reshape, revise and construct better places where home becomes their own site of possibilities and change”.

Today racial prejudice in Canadian society still continues to shape the identity of

Jamaican women migrants within their transnational family. It impacts on how they live, where they live, what they do in work and social life and how they relate to their family within the diaspora and back home in Jamaica. But their individual stories “demonstrate how, as Caribbean (Jamaican) women (they) reinvent (their) identities to resist the victim identity of an ‘immigrant woman’ pathologized through racism and sexism in the society of Canada” (Smith 2003, p. 5).

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