HOW RACIAL DISCRIMINATION in CANADA HAS AFFECTED the TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY IDENTITY of JAMAICAN WOMEN MIGRANTS by JOHN ALAN SUTH
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HOW RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN CANADA 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, Alberta 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 diaspora 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 Canadians 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. 2 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 Jamaica. “Most Caribbean 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). 2 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 Jamaican diaspora 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 Jamaicans, rather than Jamaican Canadians. 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