Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — July to September 2015

Published: 2 October 2015 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways

• Bolt and Fraser-Pryce lead Jamaica at World Championships Beijing: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics, held in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium from 22 to 30 August 2015, were a showcase for Jamaican sprint dominance at its most comprehensive. Usain Bolt, whose 100 metres crown had been under genuine threat from American Justin Gatlin throughout the season, delivered his most dramatic championship performance, holding off Gatlin in a 9.79-second 100 metres final that the Beijing crowd greeted with a roar heard around the world. He followed with the 200 metres gold and anchored Jamaica’s winning 4×100 metres relay team, completing a treble that announced, for the third major championship in succession, that Bolt was the undisputed king of the sprint. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce won the women’s 100 metres gold, becoming the first woman to win three consecutive World Championship 100 metres titles. The Jamaican squad’s total medal haul confirmed the island’s position as the world’s pre-eminent sprint nation.
• Pope Francis in America: immigration addressed with moral force: Pope Francis’s historic visit to the United States from 22 to 27 September 2015 — only the fourth papal visit to America and the first for Francis, whose pastoral emphasis on the poor, migrants, and the marginalised had defined his pontificate — placed immigration at the centre of moral discourse in ways that resonated across Catholic and non-Catholic Caribbean communities alike. In his address to Congress — the first ever delivered by a Pope to a joint session — Francis spoke of a continent of immigrants, of Moses the migrant, and of the Golden Rule as a framework for immigration policy. For communities whose members were navigating complex legal statuses and enforcement anxieties, the Papal moral framing of immigration as a human dignity issue provided both comfort and civic currency.
• Syrian refugee crisis: Mediterranean crossing numbers overwhelm Europe: The scale of the Syrian refugee crisis — more than 500,000 Mediterranean crossings by the end of September 2015, with the photograph of Alan Kurdi’s body on a Turkish beach producing a moment of global moral reckoning in early September — was dominating European and North American political debate in ways that had direct if indirect implications for Caribbean diaspora communities. The crisis was hardening public opinion about immigration in the UK and feeding the early Brexit debate, was elevating Donald Trump’s restrictionist immigration rhetoric in the US primary season, and was generally making the political environment for all immigrant communities more difficult than it had been for years.
• UK after the Conservative election victory: austerity continues: David Cameron’s surprise majority Conservative victory in the UK’s May 2015 general election — which had confounded polling predictions — was consolidating through Q3 2015 into a government programme of continued austerity, immigration restriction, and the renegotiation of EU membership terms that would precede a referendum no later than end-2017. British-Jamaican communities, concentrated in urban areas most affected by public service reductions, were experiencing the austerity programme’s impact directly. The Conservative government’s net migration reduction targets — and the political salience of immigration reduction as an electoral commitment — created a political climate in which Caribbean community concerns about their settled status and future rights received little positive government attention.
• Jamaica economy: IMF programme milestones: Jamaica’s IMF Extended Fund Facility programme, under PM Portia Simpson Miller’s PNP government, continued to pass its quarterly reviews through Q3 2015, with the Programme’s fiscal targets being met and the macroeconomic indicators — inflation, foreign exchange reserves, and debt-to-GDP trajectory — moving in the right direction. Unemployment remained elevated but declining. Tourism performed well through the summer season, and BOJ data showed Q3 2015 remittance flows continuing the year’s positive trajectory toward an estimated annual total of approximately US$2.3 billion.
• Jamaican-American voter registration: naturalization drives accelerate: With the 2016 presidential election now thirteen months away and Donald Trump’s candidacy demonstrating unexpected resilience through the summer, Caribbean community voter mobilisation organisations had accelerated their naturalization and voter registration campaigns. The calculation was straightforward: every Jamaican-American permanent resident who became a US citizen and registered to vote was a potential electoral voice on the immigration policy questions that would determine the community’s future. Community organisations in New York, South Florida, and Atlanta reported significantly elevated interest in naturalization preparation workshops.

Introduction: Sprint Glory and a Troubled World

Q3 2015 gave Jamaica’s diaspora the incomparable pleasure of watching Bolt and Fraser-Pryce dominate the world’s greatest athletics stage while the broader political context — the Syrian crisis reshaping European politics, Trump’s unexpected primary strength, and austerity’s UK impact — provided the counterweight of concern that has characterised diaspora community life for much of the decade. This update draws on Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, and Caribbean diaspora media through 30 September 2015.

Beijing: Jamaica’s Greatest World Championships

The 2015 IAAF World Championships were a moment of profound sporting validation for Jamaica and its diaspora. Bolt’s 100 metres victory over Justin Gatlin — who had been the faster man for most of 2015 and had won the US championships with a sub-9.8 time — was a reminder that Bolt in major championship competition was a different athlete from Bolt in the regular Diamond League season. The crowd’s identification with Bolt, the drama of the race, and the margin by which he won — 0.01 seconds — made the Beijing 100 metres one of the most watched and most replayed moments of 2015 in every diaspora community. Fraser-Pryce’s three consecutive World Championship 100 metres golds placed her in sprint history’s elite company and confirmed that Jamaican women’s sprinting, like the men’s programme, had achieved a sustained dominance that was reshaping the events’ history.

Pope Francis and the Moral Case for Migrants

Pope Francis’s congressional address and his subsequent visit to New York — where he spoke at the United Nations General Assembly and visited Harlem’s Our Lady Queen of Angels school in a neighbourhood whose Latino and Caribbean Catholic community knew his pastoral priorities well — put the moral case for immigrants before the world’s most powerful legislative audience. For a Caribbean community in which Catholic identity is significant and whose members had experienced years of political discourse that dehumanised the undocumented and treated migrants as threats rather than contributors, the Pope’s framing was both politically and spiritually resonant. “Our world is facing a refugee crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Second World War,” Francis told Congress. The statement connected the Syrian crisis to a broader moral framework that Caribbean advocacy organisations could use in their own community and political engagement.

Outlook for Q4 2015

The final quarter of 2015 brings Canada’s October 19 federal election — which polls suggest may produce a significant change of government — the continuation of the Syrian crisis, the maturing of Donald Trump’s Republican candidacy, and Jamaica’s slide into campaign season as the February 2016 election approaches. Remittances will close the year with December’s traditional surge. We report next from 2 January 2016.

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 2015.

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