Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — October to December 2015

Published: 2 January 2016 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways

• Paris attacks reshape the immigration debate: The coordinated ISIS terrorist attacks across Paris on 13 November 2015 — which killed 130 people in shootings and bombings at the Bataclan concert hall, the Stade de France, and restaurant terraces — produced an immediate and damaging conflation of immigration, refugees, and terrorism in political discourse across Europe and North America. For Jamaican-American and British-Jamaican communities, the attacks’ aftermath produced the familiar and unwelcome experience of immigrant communities bearing suspicion as policy debates around refugees, border security, and Muslim immigration intensified. Caribbean advocacy organisations worked to distinguish the region’s documented diaspora communities from the refugee crisis narratives that were reshaping transatlantic political debate.
• Trudeau elected in Canada: a changed tone for Jamaican-Canadians: Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party victory in Canada’s October 19 federal election — defeating the incumbent Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and winning a surprising majority government — produced a markedly different political tone for the Jamaican-Canadian community in Toronto, Montreal, and other Canadian cities. Trudeau’s campaign’s emphasis on diversity, openness to immigration, and a welcoming posture toward refugees contrasted directly with the Harper government’s approach. The Jamaican-Canadian community’s engagement in Canadian politics as voters, candidates, and advocates was reflected in a result that many community members welcomed as a positive signal for Canada’s multicultural future.
• Jamaica election approaching: February 2016 campaign underway: Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller’s PNP government, now in its fourth year, had been governing in the shadow of an election that constitutional rules required by February 2016. The campaign season was effectively underway through Q4 2015, with Andrew Holness’s JLP positioning itself as the agent of economic change and the PNP defending its record of IMF programme management and macroeconomic stabilisation. Diaspora community members followed the campaign closely, with significant interest in the competing parties’ positions on returnee facilitation, investment promotion, and crime reduction.
• Syrian refugee crisis: Caribbean diaspora perspectives: The Syrian refugee crisis — with over one million asylum seekers entering Europe through the Mediterranean during 2015 — was reshaping political debate across the UK and North America in ways that had direct implications for all immigrant communities. The crisis was producing a political environment in which immigration, borders, and national identity were centre-stage in ways that Caribbean diaspora communities recognised from their own experience, and in which the community’s settled, documented, and contributing presence was a counterpoint to the crisis narratives being used to restrict all migration.
• Christmas remittances: a positive close to 2015: Bank of Jamaica preliminary data pointed to 2015 closing as a solid remittance year, with total annual flows estimated at approximately US$2.3 billion. The US dollar’s continued strength against the Jamaican dollar had enhanced the domestic purchasing power of remittances from the largest source market, and December’s traditional gift-giving and family support surge closed the year on a positive note. The IMF programme’s fiscal framework continued to provide the stable macroeconomic environment within which remittance-receiving families could manage their finances with reasonable predictability.
• UK and Britain’s Caribbean communities: year’s end review: British-Jamaican communities closed 2015 in a context of continued austerity under David Cameron’s Conservative government, elevated concern about the approaching Brexit referendum — announced in February 2016 for a date no later than the end of 2017 — and a public debate about immigration in which Caribbean communities’ distinctive history as Commonwealth citizens was rarely acknowledged. The community’s cultural contributions — visible in Notting Hill, in Jamaican restaurant culture across British cities, in music and sport — continued to thrive, but the political environment for immigrant communities was uncomfortable.

Introduction: A Quarter of Political Change

The fourth quarter of 2015 was defined by political change in Canada, terror in Paris, and the approaching inflection points of a Jamaica election and a UK Brexit referendum that together would make 2016 a year of extraordinary consequence for Jamaica’s diaspora communities. This update draws on Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, CBC, and Caribbean diaspora media through 31 December 2015.

Paris, Terror, and the Immigrant Communities’ Dilemma

The Paris attacks of 13 November 2015 produced a response in North American and European political discourse that followed a by-now familiar pattern: an immediate security narrative that quickly expanded to encompass immigration, borders, and the identity of those who had come to Western countries from elsewhere. For Jamaican-American and British-Jamaican communities, none of whose members were involved in the attacks and whose presence in their host countries long predates the contemporary refugee crisis, the conflation was frustrating but not surprising. Caribbean advocacy organisations moved quickly to distinguish the community’s documented, contributing, and civically engaged members from the crisis narratives that were reshaping political debate.

In the United States, the political response to Paris — with governors announcing their states would not accept Syrian refugees and Donald Trump’s immigration rhetoric reaching new extremes — elevated the stakes of the 2016 presidential election for all immigrant communities. The community’s voter mobilisation work, already underway through the naturalization campaigns of the first half of 2015, took on greater urgency as it became clear that immigration would be the defining issue of the general election campaign.

Trudeau’s Canada: A Changed Climate

Justin Trudeau’s majority Liberal government — which included the most diverse Cabinet in Canadian history, with fifty per cent women and representation from multiple ethnic communities — signalled a Canada whose official self-presentation aligned more naturally with the Jamaican-Canadian community’s experience of multicultural Canadian life. The new government’s immediate commitment to welcoming 25,000 Syrian refugees demonstrated a practical openness to immigration that contrasted with the political currents in the US and UK. For Jamaica’s returnee and diaspora engagement offices, Trudeau’s election was a prompt to re-engage with Canada as a diaspora source country and to ensure that the diaspora community structures connecting Jamaica to the Jamaican-Canadian community were as well-developed as those connecting Jamaica to the US and UK communities.

Jamaica: Election Season Begins

The Portia Simpson Miller government’s final quarter before the February 2016 election was marked by a continuation of the IMF programme’s economic framework alongside the political imperatives of a campaign that would determine Jamaica’s direction for the following parliamentary term. The diaspora’s engagement in Jamaica’s electoral politics — through community media, political donations from the diaspora, and the personal networks of diaspora community members who maintained close family and political ties to Jamaica — was visible and active. The campaign’s framing around economic management, crime, and public services would be followed by diaspora communities as closely as by domestic Jamaican voters.

Outlook for 2016

2016 opens with Jamaica’s election in February, the 7th Biennial in June, the UK Brexit referendum (date to be confirmed but no later than end-2017), and the US presidential election in November. It is likely to be the most politically consequential year for Jamaica’s global diaspora since the early years of large-scale migration. We report next from 2 April 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, CBC, and PICA. All figures and developments are accurate as of the publication date, 2 January 2016.

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