Edited Book: Reconceptualizing Caribbean Migration: Contemporary and Critical Perspectives
CFP Edited Book: Reconceptualizing Caribbean Migration: Contemporary and Critical Perspectives
Edited by Natasha Kay Mortley and Andrea N. Baldwin
Caribbean migration is a dynamic and complex phenomenon that has shaped communities, societies and cultures across the globe and remains one of the most researched phenomena in the Caribbean. From historical forced migrations to contemporary patterns of free movement, labour mobility and diasporic communities, Caribbean migration defies simplistic categorizations and Westernized models. Traditional migration research has framed Caribbean migration in economic and socio-historic terms including discourses on trends, limited opportunities, family networks, movement for employment and education, brain drain and remittances. Further, these discourses have often adopted and applied Westernized and androcentric lenses to migration. This narrative usually presents migration as having a destabilizing effect on Caribbean families, households and communities. While migration studies have grown vastly in the past 30 years, there remains a need to accurately assess the distinctive culture, identities, and overall social structures of Caribbean societies and the impact on migration.
This book will present contemporary and critical perspectives on Caribbean migration. It seeks to reconceptualize Caribbean migration by adopting a transnational perspective, which acknowledges the interconnectedness of sending and receiving societies, as well as the fluidity of migrant identities and experiences across borders. Further, the book will also focus on emerging trends and issues in Caribbean migration including displacement, accelerated free movements, return migrations, human mobility in the context of natural disasters, conflict situations and situations of crises and violence. The contributions will include interdisciplinary perspectives and critical insights on these under-researched areas of Caribbean migration. The scholarship contained in this volume will also have implications for broader frameworks of action and policy for better migration management and governance as Caribbean small island developing states are being confronted by and grappling with other regional and global crises.
