Jamaica Diaspora Annual Roundup 2022

Annual Review | Published: 31 December 2022 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways: 2022 in Six Lines

• Russia Invades Ukraine on 24 February: European War Returns
• Queen Elizabeth II Dies Aged 96: Caribbean Diaspora Marks the Moment
• UK Passes Through Johnson, Truss, and Sunak in a Single Year
• Caribbean Reparations Campaign Intensifies: Royal Tour Accelerates Debate
• Cost-of-Living Crisis Squeezes Diaspora Households in UK and US
• Jamaica Remittances Hold Above US$3.2 Billion Despite Inflation

The Year in Review

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 — the largest military assault in Europe since 1945 — produced a humanitarian crisis of immediate global consequence. The displacement of over eight million Ukrainians within the country and the flight of over six million as refugees redrew the scale of the European refugee experience and triggered a humanitarian and political response in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada that Caribbean diaspora communities observed through the prism of their own communities’ treatment. The contrast between the reception extended to Ukrainian refugees and the treatment of Jamaican and wider Caribbean community members under the Windrush hostile environment was not lost on British-Caribbean community organisations whose advocacy had been shaped by precisely that comparison. The resulting energy crisis and supply chain disruptions drove the global cost-of-living crisis that dominated the domestic experience of diaspora households across the year.

Queen Elizabeth II’s death on 8 September at Balmoral Castle at the age of ninety-six ended a reign of seventy years and produced a global moment of reflection on the British Empire, the Commonwealth, and the complex relationship between Caribbean communities and the Crown. For diaspora communities whose presence in Britain was itself a product of post-war Commonwealth migration, the Queen’s death was a genuinely complex event: personal grief in some quarters, historical reckoning in others, and everywhere a meditation on the long arc of the relationship between the Caribbean and Britain. The royal tour of William and Catherine to Jamaica in March, which was met by a Jamaican government statement on reparations and widespread community protest, had already made 2022 the year in which the Caribbean reparations debate achieved new global visibility. The UK’s political turbulence — Boris Johnson’s resignation in July, Liz Truss’s forty-five-day premiership ending in October, and Rishi Sunak’s appointment as the UK’s first prime minister of Asian heritage in November — produced a year of governmental chaos that had practical implications for the policy environments shaping diaspora community life. Jamaica’s remittances held above US$3.2 billion despite the inflationary pressures squeezing diaspora household finances.

Jamaica Diaspora Annual Roundup 2022 | Jamaica Homes News. Compiled from four quarterly editions published April, July, October 2022, and January 2023.