Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — October to December 2011

Published: 2 January 2012 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways

• Jamaica’s general election: the PNP’s landslide return: Jamaica’s general election of 29 December 2011 — called by the new JLP Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who had assumed the prime ministership just two months earlier after Bruce Golding’s resignation — produced a decisive PNP victory. The People’s National Party under Portia Simpson Miller won 42 of the 63 parliamentary seats to the JLP’s 21, in a result that confounded polls suggesting a much closer contest and reflected the electorate’s judgment on four years of JLP governance during a period of global economic turmoil and the damaging political fallout from the Dudus extradition crisis. Holness, at 39, had become Jamaica’s youngest-ever Prime Minister on 23 October 2011, only to lose the election he called two months later. Simpson Miller’s return produced the only known instance of a woman winning a national general election from opposition in the Caribbean.
• Occupy’s global spread: diaspora economic anxieties crystallised: The Occupy Wall Street movement — which had begun on 17 September 2011 in Zuccotti Park and spread to hundreds of cities across the US, Canada, and Europe — provided a political language for the economic anxieties that had been building in diaspora communities since the 2008 financial crisis. The movement’s “99 per cent” framing resonated with Caribbean-American community members whose experience of the post-crisis economy had been stagnant wages, constrained remittance capacity, limited credit access, and foreclosure risk in the communities where diaspora homeownership had been concentrated. Occupy encampments in New York, London, and Toronto included Caribbean community members among their participants.
• UK austerity: the squeeze on Caribbean communities: The Cameron-Clegg coalition government’s austerity programme — including the Comprehensive Spending Review’s 2010 cuts that were now being implemented through the public services that Caribbean communities in Britain most relied upon — was producing measurable impacts in health, housing, and social care provision in the urban areas where British-Jamaican populations were concentrated. Community organisations were reporting increased demand for emergency food, debt advice, and housing support services in areas where statutory provision had been reduced. The Eurozone debt crisis’s UK economic impact was adding external pressure to a domestic austerity programme that was already constraining community life.
• The UK riots’ aftermath: five months on: Five months after August 2011’s riots across London, Birmingham, Manchester, and other English cities — which had begun in Tottenham following the police shooting of Mark Duggan, a Black man, on 4 August — the British-Jamaican community was still processing both the riots’ causes and their political aftermath. The government’s analysis, emphasising criminality and moral failure rather than the poverty, police relationship breakdown, and structural inequality that community organisations identified as root causes, had produced a political narrative with which British-Caribbean communities fundamentally disagreed.
• 5th Biennial preparation underway: June 2012 in sight: With the 5th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference scheduled for June 2012 — now six months away — MFAFT’s preparatory consultations with diaspora communities were beginning. The political transition in Jamaica, with Simpson Miller’s PNP returning to office on 5 January 2012, would require the incoming government to confirm its commitment to the Biennial framework. Early signals from the PNP were positive: the conference series’ cross-party legitimacy, built over five biennial cycles, made its continuation a safe political choice for any incoming government.
• Christmas remittances: resilient despite the squeeze: Bank of Jamaica data pointed to 2011 closing with total annual remittances of approximately US$2.0 billion, broadly maintaining the 2010 level despite the continuing economic pressure on diaspora households in both the US and UK. December’s traditional surge closed a year in which the diaspora’s maintained commitment to family support in Jamaica had been as much a statement of identity and belonging as of financial obligation.

Introduction: Jamaica Votes, the World Protests

Q4 2011 closed the year with Jamaica’s most decisive electoral result in decades and a global protest movement that gave diaspora economic anxieties a political language. This update draws on Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, and Caribbean diaspora media through 31 December 2011.

Jamaica’s Election: What the Result Means for the Diaspora

The PNP’s 42–21 majority gave Portia Simpson Miller the largest parliamentary mandate of any Jamaican prime minister since independence and the personal validation of a second prime ministerial term. For the diaspora community, the election result’s most immediate significance was the incoming government’s policy programme’s implications for returnees and investors. Simpson Miller’s track record from her first prime ministerial term — including her active engagement with diaspora community concerns and her personal accessibility to community organisations during Biennial conferences — was well-regarded. The new government’s economic programme — including its negotiation with the IMF for a new programme to replace the existing Stand-By Arrangement — would determine the macro-economic context within which diaspora investment and return migration decisions were made.

Outlook for 2012

2012 opens with Simpson Miller’s inauguration, the 5th Biennial’s June conference, Jamaica’s 50th independence anniversary, the London Olympics, and Bolt’s second treble ambition. For the diaspora, it promises to be a year of extraordinary communal significance. We report next from 2 April 2012.

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 January 2012.

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