Quarterly Jamaica Windrush & Diaspora Update | Published: 3 January 2009 | Period covered: July–December 2008
Key Developments at a Glance
- Lehman Brothers collapses September 15, 2008; global financial crisis triggers UK banking bailout of £500bn.
- Barack Obama elected 44th US President on 4 November 2008; Caribbean Britain erupts in celebration.
- UK Borders Act 2007 takes full effect; new powers to deny citizenship on character grounds concern diaspora groups.
- Golding government’s first full year marked by high murder rate and strained public finances.
- Jamaican remittances under pressure as UK jobs become less secure; Bank of Jamaica monitors the trend.
- Caribbean community marks 60th anniversary of the Windrush arrival throughout the year with pride and reflection.
The second half of 2008 is bookended by catastrophe and exhilaration: the near-collapse of the global financial system in September and October, and the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States in November. Both events land differently within the Caribbean diaspora in Britain, but both carry the weight of history. The financial crisis is an immediate material threat, arriving at the end of a year in which the 60th anniversary of the Windrush’s arrival was celebrated with justified pride. The Obama moment is experienced as something almost spiritual — a proof, however imperfect and however distant from the British experience, that the world is still capable of transformation. The task, as the year ends, is to hold both realities at once.
The Financial Crash: Caribbean Communities in the Storm
The collapse of Lehman Brothers on 15 September 2008 triggered a global financial crisis whose speed and severity shocked even those who had seen the warning signs building through the preceding year. In Britain, the government of Gordon Brown was forced to mount an extraordinary rescue of the banking system: a £500 billion package announced in October 2008, comprising bank recapitalisation, credit guarantees, and emergency liquidity support, saved the UK financial system from a collapse that would have been catastrophic for every household and business in the country. It also committed the government to a fiscal position that will require either tax increases or spending cuts — or both — on a substantial scale in the years ahead.
For the Caribbean diaspora in Britain, the immediate effects are felt through the labour market, the mortgage market, and the remittance channel. Job losses in financial services, retail, and construction have fallen partly on Caribbean workers. The housing market downturn, arriving after a decade of rising prices, has undermined the asset position of Caribbean homeowners who bought at or near the peak. And remittances to Jamaica, which represent the island’s largest single source of foreign exchange income, are already showing signs of decline as family members in Britain find their disposable income reduced. The Bank of Jamaica has issued guidance on the potential impact of reduced diaspora remittances, and the Jamaican government is watching the situation closely.
Jamaica is itself not immune to the crisis. The island’s economy is exposed through tourism — a sector highly sensitive to consumer confidence in its major source markets of North America and Europe — and through the financial system, which has links to institutions affected by the global crisis. The Bruce Golding government, barely a year in office, is managing an economy that was already carrying a heavy debt load before the crisis struck. The fiscal pressures of the coming period will limit the government’s room to invest in the social and physical infrastructure that Jamaica needs.
Obama: A Landmark That Belongs to Everyone
When the results of the United States presidential election were called in the early hours of 5 November 2008 British time, scenes of celebration broke out in Caribbean community centres, pubs, and homes across the United Kingdom. Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and a White American mother, had been elected the 44th President of the United States with 365 electoral votes and a popular vote margin of more than seven percentage points. For Black British people of Caribbean heritage, many of whom had parents or grandparents who came to Britain in an era of segregated public facilities and colour bars in boarding houses, the significance of the moment was almost impossible to articulate.
Jamaica’s Prime Minister Bruce Golding sent congratulations to President-elect Obama, as did leaders across the Caribbean. CARICOM issued a formal statement of congratulation and expressed hope that the new administration would engage with the Caribbean more substantively on issues including trade, climate change, and the treatment of Caribbean migrant communities in the United States. Obama’s own ancestral connection to the African diaspora, and his acknowledged connection to communities shaped by the Atlantic slave trade, gave his election a resonance across the Black world that transcended American politics.
The UK Borders Act and Tightening Controls
The UK Borders Act 2007, which received Royal Assent in October 2007 during Gordon Brown’s first months as Prime Minister, has continued to take effect across its various provisions in 2008. Among its most significant measures are the automatic deportation provisions for foreign nationals who receive custodial sentences of twelve months or more, and the expanded powers to deny naturalisation on character grounds. Caribbean community legal organisations and civil liberties groups have raised sustained concerns about the application of the automatic deportation provisions, which they argue disproportionately affect people who arrived in Britain as children, have no meaningful connection to their country of birth, and whose families are entirely British.
The newly established UK Border Agency — which brought together the functions of the former Immigration and Nationality Directorate, UKvisas, and border control elements of HM Revenue and Customs under a single executive agency in April 2008 — has expanded its enforcement capability and its presence at ports of entry. There are concerns in the Caribbean community about the experience of Jamaican and other Caribbean nationals at UK borders, including reports of lengthy questioning, fingerprinting, and detention on arrival. Community organisations are gathering evidence of these experiences and pressing for a more respectful and proportionate approach to the treatment of Commonwealth nationals seeking to enter the United Kingdom.
Sources: Jamaica Information Service; The Gleaner; Jamaica Observer; Bank of Jamaica; Caribbean National Weekly; BBC News; Reuters; AP; The Guardian; The Times; Runnymede Trust; Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants; CARICOM Secretariat; Jamaica High Commission London; Home Office (UK); UK Parliament Hansard; HM Treasury.
Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com
Visit our YouTube Community ↗