Jamaica Diaspora Annual Roundup 2015

Annual Review | Published: 31 December 2015 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways: 2015 in Six Lines

• Cameron Wins Unexpected UK Conservative Majority in May General Election
• Europe’s Migrant Crisis: One Million Reach European Shores
• Paris Attacks of 13 November Kill 130 in the French Capital
• Baltimore Uprising Follows Freddie Gray’s Death in Police Custody
• Iran Nuclear Deal Reached: Multilateralism Scores a Victory
• Jamaica Remittances Pass US$2.2 Billion as Economy Stabilises

The Year in Review

The United Kingdom’s general election of 7 May 2015 produced a result that confounded virtually every prediction: David Cameron’s Conservatives won an outright majority of twelve seats, ending the coalition with the Liberal Democrats and producing a Conservative government that was immediately committed to the EU referendum that Cameron had promised as a concession to Eurosceptic backbenchers. The result shaped the political environment for British-Jamaican communities in ways that extended well beyond the immediate policy positions of the new single-party government: the elimination of the Liberal Democrat check on Conservative immigration and social welfare policy, and the commitment to an EU referendum that would restructure the political landscape of the UK, were both of direct long-term significance.

Europe’s migration and refugee crisis — which saw approximately one million people reach European shores in 2015 alone, fleeing conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, and Iraq — reshaped the continent’s politics and provided the most compelling human rights story of the year. The images of refugees in the Aegean and families on Balkan roads activated humanitarian responses from diaspora communities across Europe, including Caribbean-British community organisations that drew on their own histories of migration to give meaning to the crisis. The Paris attacks of 13 November — co-ordinated by ISIS, killing 130 people at the Bataclan concert hall, the Stade de France, and several restaurants — were the bloodiest attacks on European soil since the 2004 Madrid bombings and reactivated the security and identity debates that had been opened by 7/7 in 2005.

In the United States, the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore police custody in April, and the subsequent uprising in the city, extended the Black Lives Matter mobilisation that had grown from Ferguson in 2014 into a national social movement of sustained impact. The landmark Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges in June, guaranteeing same-sex marriage rights nationwide, was a constitutional milestone whose significance for diaspora communities from socially conservative Caribbean backgrounds was filtered through complex generational and religious lenses. Jamaica’s remittances passed US$2.2 billion as the island’s economic reform programme began to deliver early stabilisation dividends.

Jamaica Diaspora Annual Roundup 2015 | Jamaica Homes News. Compiled from four quarterly editions published April, July, October 2015, and January 2016.

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