Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — July to September 2013

Published: 2 October 2013 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways

• Moscow World Championships: Bolt’s authority restored: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics, held at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow from 10 to 18 August 2013, provided Usain Bolt with the platform to reassert his authority over the sprint world following the disqualifying false start that had denied him the 100 metres title at the 2011 Daegu World Championships. Bolt’s Moscow 100 metres — won in 9.77 seconds, holding off American Justin Gatlin — was the championship’s defining moment and produced the relieved celebration across Jamaican diaspora communities that the Daegu false start had denied. He followed with the 200 metres gold in 19.66 seconds. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce won the women’s 100 metres and 200 metres — Jamaica’s first women’s sprint double at a World Championship — in a performance that confirmed her status as the era’s defining women’s sprinter. The relay teams added gold, and Jamaica closed Moscow with a medal haul that asserted the island’s continued sprint supremacy.
• Zimmerman acquittal and the birth of Black Lives Matter: The 13 July acquittal of George Zimmerman — who had shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida in February 2012 — produced shock and grief across Black American and Caribbean-American communities. The verdict’s immediate aftermath generated the social media phrase “Black Lives Matter,” coined by community organiser Alicia Garza and amplified by activists Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, which would evolve into one of the most significant social movements of the decade. For Caribbean-American communities, the Zimmerman acquittal connected to a long history of community experience with racial profiling, Stand Your Ground laws, and the differential treatment of Black lives in the American justice system.
• US immigration reform: Gang of Eight bill in limbo: The comprehensive immigration reform bill passed by the US Senate on 27 June 2013 — with 68 votes including 14 Republicans, the most bipartisan immigration vote in a generation — remained in limbo in the House through Q3 2013, with Speaker Boehner declining to bring it to the floor. The bill’s provisions — a 13-year path to citizenship for the undocumented, enhanced border security, expanded temporary worker programmes, and new family reunification frameworks — were the most comprehensive immigration reform proposals since the 1986 amnesty. Caribbean community advocacy organisations maintained their mobilisation pressure on House Republicans while watching the bill’s prospects narrow.
• US government shutdown begins: as we publish: As this edition goes to press on 2 October 2013, the United States federal government is in its first day of a shutdown after the Republican-controlled House refused to pass a continuing resolution that did not include provisions to delay or defund the Affordable Care Act. Non-essential federal services are closed, federal workers are furloughed, and the shutdown’s impact on immigration processing, passport services, and other federal services used by diaspora community members is immediate and real. We will report on the shutdown’s full impact in our Q4 edition.
• 5th Biennial: fifteen months of follow-through: Fifteen months on from the 5th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference of June 2012, MFAFT’s implementation tracking showed continued progress across the conference’s working group commitments. The 6th Biennial planning was underway for June 2014, with the 5th Biennial’s implementation record informing the next conference’s agenda design and the advisory committee structures determining which thematic areas required the most intensive Q3–2014 preparation.
• Remittances Q3 2013: steady in a complex environment: Bank of Jamaica data for Q3 2013 showed positive but modest year-on-year remittance growth, reflecting the US economy’s continued gradual recovery from the financial crisis, the UK’s improving economic conditions, and the sustained commitment of diaspora community members to their family support obligations. Total 2013 annual flows were tracking toward approximately US$2.1 billion.

Introduction: Gold Medals and Justice Denied

Q3 2013 gave Jamaica’s diaspora Bolt’s Moscow redemption and Fraser-Pryce’s historic double, while the Zimmerman acquittal forced a reckoning with racial justice that Caribbean-American communities engaged with from their own distinct and complex position. This update draws on Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, and Caribbean diaspora media through 30 September 2013.

Moscow: Bolt’s Championship Return

Bolt’s Moscow campaign was shaped by the two-year shadow of the Daegu false start, which had given his rivals and critics a narrative of vulnerability that his London Olympic performances had quieted but not entirely silenced. Moscow’s 100 metres final — run in conditions that produced slower times than a normal championship final — was won by execution rather than devastation: Bolt controlled the race, held his form, and crossed the line with enough margin to signal mastery without the abandonment of the finish-line showboating that his wider advantages in previous seasons had allowed. Fraser-Pryce’s double — the first women’s sprint double at a World Championship for a Jamaican athlete — was the championship’s most complete individual performance and produced across diaspora communities the specific pride of seeing a Jamaican woman claim both sprint crowns simultaneously.

The Zimmerman Verdict: Community Engagement and BLM’s Emergence

The Caribbean-American community’s engagement with the Zimmerman verdict drew on its own distinctive experience of racial profiling in the United States — the “driving while Black” stops, the shopping mall security attention, the taxi refusals in predominantly white neighbourhoods — while also recognising the specifically African-American dimensions of the case’s history. The community’s response was engaged and thoughtful: not an uncritical adoption of every element of the African-American community’s framing, but a genuine solidarity grounded in shared experience of racial hierarchy in the United States and a common stake in a justice system that should work equally for all.

Outlook for Q4 2013

The government shutdown’s resolution and its immigration processing impact, the continued immigration reform debate, Mandela’s health (now a daily concern as this edition publishes), and Christmas remittances will define Q4 2013. We report next from 2 January 2014.

This Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora and Returnee Update is researched and published by Jamaica Homes News. Sources include Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, and PICA. All figures and developments are accurate as of the publication date, 2 October 2013.

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