UWI project to document story of Jamaican migration

Susan Mains at the Independence Reception held recently at the Jamaican High Commission with Laurie Philpotts of the West Indian Ex-Servicemen Association

Tuesday, September 9, 2003

LONDON, England: The stories and experiences of Jamaicans who migrated to the United States and Britain will soon be recorded for posterity.

The Jamaica Information Service reported recently that a project to record the lives of Jamaicans overseas is currently under way, funded by the University of the West Indies under its initiative grant programme.

The project is reportedly the brainchild of Ms. Susan Mains, a lecturer in Human Geography at the UWI. Ms. Mains, told JIS that the aim of the project was to reflect the personal stories of the migration experience. 

"For a number of years I have been doing research on migration, being a Scottish migrant myself, I was interested in different migration patterns, and being based in Jamaica, one of the things that struck me was the interesting individual stories from people who lived in the United States or in Britain and had returned to Jamaica to reside," said the UWI lecturer. "Not much of that had been documented and while we have some research, which focussed on the general patterns of migration in the Caribbean, sometimes we lose the personal stories." 

She said she hopes the research gathered would be made into a documentary film and a book, which would serve as additional research in the field and as an educational tool.

"I applied for a grant to do a study looking at the links between Kingston, New York and London in relation to Jamaican migration. Part of the programme will be a documentary film the other part will involve putting together some articles for a book," she explained. 

The UWI Lecturer who has been in the United Kingdom since late July has conducted and filmed more than 35 interviews with individuals, leaders of community organisations and Jamaican agencies.

"The goal was to explore what are the choices that people make when they move, what are the things that made them leave, why do they think it was important to move and what are the pull factors of places like New York and London," she said, adding that the project would also examine media coverage of migration from the Caribbean from the 50's to present, and how this was linked to policy changes about immigration. 

Ms. Mains says she hopes to complete the project and have the documentary film ready by mid-2004.

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