7 - Not So Anchored: The Remigration of Indians within the Caribbean Region

Summary

Caribbean migration studies have focused overwhelmingly on the forceful and semi-free movements of Africans and Asians during the period of slavery and indentureship as well as the extra-regional movement of Caribbean nationals to Europe and North America following the Second World War. These studies have done remarkably well in excavating the dynamics so associated with the aforesaid patterns of Caribbean migration, namely how migrants were uprooted from their homeland and transported across the Atlantic and Indian oceans to provide the oxygen of labour on the Caribbean plantations. Studies of migration from the Caribbean following the Second World War show how Caribbean nationals have been pushed out of the region and pulled to developed destinations. Moreover, these studies have provided the fundamental reasons for the leaving and settling of the migrants. They have revealed how the migrants have adapted, settled and even reconfigured the demographics, economics and cultures of the receiving enclaves. Howbeit, studies of migration within the Caribbean pale in comparison to the larger influx during the period of slavery and indentureship as well as out-migration following the Second World War. Still, even when studies are conducted on migration within the Caribbean, they are ethnically imbalanced, focusing largely on Africans and Hispanics. Yet when studies are conducted on Asians, the remigration of them within the Caribbean is largely absent.

The academic exclusionary treatment of Indians in the general Caribbean migration narrative is rather unfortunate since Indians have been on the move since the mid-nineteenth century from India to the Caribbean, within the Caribbean, from the Caribbean to Europe and North America and back to the Caribbean. Crispin Bates and Marina Carter ask, ‘Why did such a large number of Indian labour migrants who had completed one term of service overseas return to India, and then remigrate, or move from one colonial territory to another?’ These scholars espouse that ‘the frequency of remigration, and of onward migration to other colonies suggests considerable enterprise and strategic thinking on the part of labour migrants seeking out opportunities within the interstices and constraints of the colonial labour economy’. Until we understand how wide and complex the remigration of Indians has been, one important aspect of their migratory experience will remain a puzzle and buried in the lower depths of Caribbean migration.