Session 9: Fluidity
7th Global Conference
Monday 12th March – Wednesday 14th March 2012
Prague, Czech Republic
From Migrants to Retail Small Businessmen: Perspectives on the East Indians of Barbados 1910 – 2010
Natalie J. Walthrust Jones and Trevor G. Marshall
Barbados Community College, Barbados
The study of labour migration within the Caribbean region is a new field of study, although it is one which may grow and bulk large within scholastic circles. By contrast, the examination of labour migration into CSME territories from beyond the Caribbean region is of long vintage, beginning with the work of K.O. Lawrence, R.T. Smith and Donald Wood, each of whom chronicled the 19th century movement of nationalities and ethnicities from outside the region into low-density British colonies such as Trinidad and British Guiana.
By far the largest grouping of new citizens in these Anglo-phone Caribbean colonies were the Hindus and Muslims from the sub-continent of India, more popularly referred to in offical literature as East Indians, although smaller numbers of Chinese, Syrian-Lebanese, Portuguese from Madera and the Azores and liberated Africans wee brought into these same territories. Indians and the Middle Eastern and Chinese migrant labourers also sojourn in Jamaica, St. Vincent, St. Lucia and Grenada during the period of indentured immigrant indentureship between 1838 and 1917.
Until recently few persons in the wider commonwealth Caribbean were aware that Barbados has also been the host territory to measurable numbers of East Indians, who have been journeying from their native sub-continent to this tiny Caribbean island over a period of 100 years, 1910 to this year, 2010. The census year 2010 seems appropriate for the authors to firstly measure the aggregate number of sub-continental Indians who have made the 11,000 mile journey across the Indian and Atlantic oceans to make Barbados their new home. This is considered to be a necessary contribution to academic research, partly because it is a means of establishing concretely the number of such new activities in this island, and partly to differentiate this grouping from more recent East Indian sojourners to Barbados from Trinidad and Guyana respectively.
Secondly, we have undertaken this research in order to refute the ‘received wisdom’ that East Indians came to this island directly from the sub-continent to ‘cut sugar-cane till it burn their hand’; in other words, that they were indentured immigrant labourers in Barbados in the early 20th century. Due to the fact that no scholarly research of East Indians has been conducted this totally inaccurate notion is widely believed.
The researchers have conducted extensive documentary and oral research which provides irrefutable proof that, far coming to Barbados to be agricultural labourers, the East Indians became a unique group, namely itinerant retail sales-persons throughout the first five decades of their sojourn 1910- 1960, later transforming themselves into Bridgetown businessmen and women.
The third and major point in this paper is that the East Indians of Barbados have in the main become nationalised citizens of Barbados, have progressed from being pioneer peddlers to successful businessmen across the spectrum of commercial life. They have established themselves as an Indian community, complete with entire extended families, religions and kinship systems, places of worship, namely mosques and temples and even faith-based schools. They have also kept their native Indian languages including Urdu which is incomprehensible to the remainder of Barbadians.
The fourth point of focus is the interaction between these natives of the Asiatic sub-continent, on one hand and the other ethnic, cultural and racial groupings in the society over the period of 100 years. We contend that, after 100 years of living and working in this former sugar plantation society, East Indian migrants from the sub-continent have successfully avoided the indignity of indentureship and have carved out for themselves a significant socio-economic niche in Barbados without the attendant racial bitterness.
Citizenship, National Identity, and the Challenges of Political Participation in the UAE
Kenneth L. Wise
B’huth Dubai and Creighton University, Dubai
Excluded minorities together comprising majorities in their states have shown the potency of their discontents during the months that Jasmine has filled the air of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). How the United Arab Emirates copes (UAE) with its risks of minority rule, young population (Cincotta) and the pressures for change that globalization is bringing universally offers a test bed for imagining a route toward global governance.
In the UAE, the formerly separate political agenda of public/state and private/nonstate idealized in older states tend to merge. This merging, though positive in its economic outcome so far, could become negative. It could stir up previously submerged conflicts. By releasing sentiments of self-determination in less-rewarded emirates or sidelined expatriates, it could threaten the integrity of the territorial sovereign. It could set loose demagogues to prey on values of identity and the less-enfranchiseds’ hopes for prosperity and justice, tarnishing the reputation of the country’s political management. Such a challenge would resemble potential global level conflict and the need there for management as well.
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