Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — July to September 2022

Published: 2 October 2022 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways

• 9th Biennial Conference: three months of implementation momentum: Three months after the landmark 9th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference in June 2022, inter-ministerial working groups were translating conference commitments into early-stage implementation, with diaspora investment facilitation, housing for returnees, and youth mentorship programmes among the priority areas seeing active development through Q3.
• Hurricane Fiona: eastern Caribbean devastated, Jamaica spared: Hurricane Fiona struck Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic in September 2022, causing catastrophic flooding and infrastructure damage in Puerto Rico. Jamaica was not directly affected, but the storm’s scale prompted the Jamaican diaspora’s Caribbean solidarity response and renewed attention to Jamaica’s own hurricane preparedness investments.
• Global inflation: Russia-Ukraine war effects sustained: The Russia-Ukraine war’s cascading effects on global food and energy markets continued to dominate the economic environment through Q3 2022. Global food price indices remained elevated, energy costs in Europe and North America were high, and diaspora household budgets in the UK, US, and Canada faced sustained pressure that was affecting both living standards and remittance-sending capacity.
• Strong GDP growth: Jamaica’s post-pandemic momentum continues: Jamaica’s economy maintained its strong post-pandemic recovery trajectory through Q3 2022, with PIOJ data confirming continued growth across tourism, construction, and services. The tourism sector’s sustained recovery — with stopover arrivals approaching pre-pandemic figures — was the primary driver, providing positive economic context for returnee property market activity.
• Remittances: easing from 2021 peak but sustaining historically high levels: Year-to-date remittances through Q3 2022 were running modestly below the equivalent 2021 period as the exceptional pandemic-era surge normalised. Global inflationary pressures on diaspora household budgets contributed to a slight moderation, but the absolute level of inflows remained well above pre-pandemic years, confirming the structural resilience of Jamaica’s remittance corridor.
• National Diaspora Policy: final consultations ahead of adoption: The National Diaspora Policy, in development through multiple years of consultation and drafting, was moving through its final inter-ministerial and public consultation phases through Q3 2022, with adoption anticipated before the end of the year. The policy represented Jamaica’s most ambitious and comprehensive formal commitment to diaspora engagement in the nation’s independent history.

Introduction: From Conference to Implementation

The third quarter of 2022 was above all the post-conference quarter — the period in which the energy, commitments, and working group outputs of the 9th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference (held in Montego Bay in June) needed to be converted from documents and intentions into early-stage delivery. This is historically the most demanding phase of any biennial conference cycle, the moment when the gap between ambition and institutional capacity becomes visible.

The external environment complicated the implementation task. Global inflation, driven by the Russia-Ukraine war’s disruption of food and energy markets, was at its most acute phase through the summer and early autumn of 2022. Diaspora households in the UK, United States, and Canada were managing higher cost-of-living pressures than at any point since the 1970s for many of them. The economic environment for remittances was under more pressure than at any time since the pandemic’s onset, even as Jamaica’s own domestic economy maintained its strong recovery momentum.

This quarterly update draws on the Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Nationwide News Network, RJR News, Caribbean National Weekly, Bank of Jamaica, Planning Institute of Jamaica, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, and PICA.

9th Biennial Conference: Working Group Implementation

The 9th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference, held on 18–21 June 2022 in Montego Bay, had been a landmark event: the first in-person biennial gathering since COVID-19, it brought together an estimated 3,000 diaspora members and government representatives. Its working groups produced recommendations across the full agenda of diaspora engagement — investment, housing, health, education, cultural connections, youth, and governance — and the government made specific commitments in response to each.

Three months on, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade’s conference implementation unit was engaged in the detailed follow-through work. In the investment facilitation area, the focus was on developing the diaspora investment pipeline product that would give overseas investors vetted, accessible opportunities to deploy capital into Jamaican projects. In housing, the working group’s recommendation for an NHT diaspora and returnee housing product was under feasibility assessment. The youth empowerment recommendations were being channelled into a mentorship programme framework connecting diaspora professionals with Jamaican secondary students.

The conference’s cultural and social recommendations were progressing through the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, with several diaspora arts projects and cultural exchange initiatives in early planning. The health working group’s recommendations — focused on diaspora medical professional engagement and knowledge transfer — were under discussion with the Ministry of Health and Wellness. Implementation at this stage was necessarily preliminary, but the momentum from the conference was providing the political will and inter-ministerial coordination to keep the agenda moving.

Hurricane Fiona: Caribbean Solidarity and Jamaica’s Preparedness

Hurricane Fiona struck the eastern Caribbean in September 2022 with devastating effect. Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic bore the worst of the storm’s impacts, with Puerto Rico experiencing catastrophic flooding — the island’s worst storm since Hurricane Maria in 2017 — that knocked out power to the entire island and caused widespread infrastructure damage. The storm subsequently strengthened and struck Atlantic Canada, including Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, with unusual severity before its eventual dissipation.

Jamaica was not in Fiona’s path and was not directly affected. But the storm’s scale and the images of Puerto Rican communities’ devastation prompted Caribbean solidarity responses from the Jamaican diaspora, who contributed to relief efforts and shared preparedness information. For Jamaica’s government and diaspora community organisations, Fiona was a reminder of the vulnerability of the Caribbean island chain to major storm events and of the importance of the diaspora’s emergency response capacity.

The Jamaican diaspora’s Caribbean solidarity tradition — expressed in donations to Haiti earthquake relief in 2010 and 2021, to Dominica’s Hurricane Maria recovery in 2017, and to Puerto Rico through various mechanisms — reflects a shared regional identity that transcends national boundaries. For the Jamaican government’s diaspora engagement agenda, this tradition of Caribbean solidarity is both an asset and an opportunity: organisations with the capacity and will to mobilise quickly for Caribbean disaster relief have proven organisational infrastructure that can be engaged for broader development purposes.

Remittances: Easing Gradually from the Peak

Jamaica’s year-to-date remittances through the first three quarters of 2022 were tracking modestly below the equivalent 2021 period, confirming the gentle post-pandemic normalisation that analysts had anticipated. The 2021 peak of US$3.49 billion had reflected exceptional conditions — the combination of reduced travel expenditure by diaspora members who could not visit Jamaica, heightened generosity driven by pandemic anxiety about family welfare, and the direct and indirect liquidity effects of US government stimulus payments — that were not expected to be sustained as pandemic conditions resolved.

The pace of normalisation was, however, slower and shallower than some had projected. Jamaica’s remittance corridor proved more structurally resilient than a simple “stimulus bounce” hypothesis would suggest. Diaspora members who had increased their regular transfers during the pandemic appeared to have adjusted their household budgets to sustain higher remittance levels even as the pandemic emergency passed. This stickiness in remittance behaviour was a positive signal for Jamaica’s medium-term outlook, even as the 2022 year-end total was expected to show the first annual decline since the surge began.

Global inflation was the primary downside risk. In the United States, CPI inflation peaked at 9.1 per cent in June 2022 before beginning to ease, but remained elevated through Q3. The Federal Reserve’s aggressive tightening — with rate increases of 75 basis points at each of its June, July, and September 2022 meetings — was the most rapid tightening cycle in decades. For Jamaican-American workers whose earnings were being eroded in real terms by inflation and whose mortgage costs were rising, the scope for sustaining high remittance volumes was under pressure.

In the United Kingdom, the situation was more severe. UK inflation was running at double-digit levels through Q3 2022, driven by the energy price shock from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the real income squeeze on British workers was the worst since the 1970s. For British-Jamaican families managing energy and food bills that were 50–100 per cent higher than twelve months earlier, the pressure on discretionary income — including remittances — was acute.

Economic Performance: Tourism Leads the Recovery

Jamaica’s domestic economy maintained its strong post-pandemic recovery trajectory through Q3 2022. Tourism continued to be the standout performer: stopover visitor arrivals in the January–August 2022 period were approaching 2019 pre-pandemic levels, with hotel occupancy rates and average daily rates both strong. The tourism sector’s recovery was driving ancillary economic activity across transport, food and beverage, crafts, and entertainment, generating employment and income across the parishes with significant tourism infrastructure.

Construction activity remained buoyant through the quarter, supported by hotel and resort pipeline projects, residential development in Greater Kingston and Montego Bay, and government infrastructure programmes. The services sector — encompassing financial services, business process outsourcing, and telecommunications — was resilient. Mining and agriculture faced more mixed conditions: alumina prices tracked the global commodity cycle, and agriculture managed the variable rainfall conditions and input cost pressures from the global fertiliser price spike.

National Diaspora Policy: Final Stretch

As Q3 2022 closed, the National Diaspora Policy was in its final consultation and drafting phases, with adoption anticipated before the end of 2022. The policy had been in development for multiple years, driven by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade with input from diaspora community organisations, academic researchers, and multilateral development partners. Its six strategic pillars covered the full range of Jamaica’s diaspora engagement agenda, and its commitment to clear accountability and monitoring frameworks was designed to address the implementation failure that had characterised earlier initiatives.

Community organisations and diaspora leaders who had participated in the consultative process were broadly supportive of the policy’s direction and ambition, while maintaining a watchful realism about the implementation challenge. The pattern in Caribbean diaspora policy — of ambitious policy documents followed by under-resourced and poorly coordinated implementation — was well-documented, and the test of Jamaica’s National Diaspora Policy would ultimately be whether it escaped this historical pattern.

Returnees: Continued UK Flow and the Housing Market

Voluntary return migration from the United Kingdom continued through Q3 2022, with the summer period traditionally seeing higher arrival volumes as returnees time their moves around school terms and family schedules. The cohort included retired Windrush generation members, early retirees, and a growing segment of working-age returnees who were choosing Jamaica over an increasingly expensive and cost-pressured United Kingdom.

The property market in returnee-preferred parishes continued to appreciate through Q3, with demand from both diaspora buyers and domestic consumers sustaining price momentum. The combination of increased diaspora interest in Jamaican property — partly driven by increased disposable income during the pandemic — and constrained formal sector housing supply was pushing prices in communities like Mandeville, Christiana, Portland, and the Blue Mountain communities above levels that some returnees could comfortably access. Estate agents reported continued high interest from UK-based buyers and returnees, with virtual property tours and digital transaction support becoming standard features of the diaspora buyer experience.

Consular Services and the Passport Queue

Jamaica’s overseas missions continued to face high demand for passport renewal, emergency travel document processing, and consular certification services through Q3 2022. The post-pandemic return to international travel had generated a wave of passport renewal demand among diaspora members whose documents had expired during the COVID-19 years, and the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency’s overseas service capacity was under sustained pressure. Community groups in the United States and United Kingdom continued to flag appointment availability and processing delays as concerns, with some diaspora members reporting waits of several months for appointments at the Washington and New York consulates.

Outlook for Q4 2022

The fourth quarter of 2022 carries the prospect of two major milestones: the anticipated adoption of the National Diaspora Policy, which would be a historic moment in Jamaica’s diaspora engagement, and the full-year remittance data that will confirm the 2022 performance and its comparison to the 2021 peak. The Christmas season’s traditional remittance uplift will be tested against the UK cost-of-living crisis’s suppression of British-Jamaican senders’ capacity, and the Atlantic hurricane season’s final months will pass through October and November before the annual cycle closes.

For returnees, Q4 is typically a peak movement quarter, with many UK-based returnees timing their final move to coincide with the festive season. The housing market in Jamaica will be closely watched through the quarter, with particular interest in whether the diaspora demand that has driven price appreciation in preferred returnee parishes moderates or sustains into the new year.

This Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora and Returnee Update is researched and published by Jamaica Homes News. Sources consulted include the Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Nationwide News Network, RJR News, Caribbean National Weekly, Bank of Jamaica, Planning Institute of Jamaica, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, and PICA. All figures and developments are accurate as of the publication date, 2 October 2022.