Ethical Considerations

The study obtained ethics clearance from the University of Saskatchewan’s Research Ethics Board. All participants in the study were informed of my ethical obligations, including use of data and the measures taken to preserve confidentiality and anonymity. The online survey included an information page at the beginning to provide respondents with a brief explanation of the aims and objectives of the study and how the participant had been chosen to participate. This was also done before the commencement of the interviews, and informed consent. In addition, participants were required to sign an informed consent form before participating in the

101

interviews. All respondents were given the option of withdrawing from the study at any point up to the final analysis and of having their data deleted. After this, all data collected were included for use in the general database.

4.06 Reflexivity

In order to understand the process of identity negotiation and formation among intra- regional migrants, I focused on the contexts: home and host destinations of migrants and their experiences in these different contexts. During the construction of the research instruments, and during field work, I utilized my personal experiences of being an intra-regional migrant to connect with participants, and to make sure that the pertinent questions were being asked. As anticipated, I shared many common characteristics with all of the participants in this study, being an intra-regional migrant within CARICOM. I worked with a regional institution and was

relocated from the Jamaican office to the Barbadian one, where I spent three and a half years. My migration was under the university graduate category for which I was required to go through the process of applying for, and receiving a CARICOM skilled certificate. This meant that to some extent I was ‘an insider’ to the research and ‘who I am’ was an important tool in the knowledge production process. Actually, my interest in this study was greatly influenced by both my personal and intellectual biographies. On the one hand, my intellectual history as a social researcher made me aware of the importance of understanding my personal migration experiences as well as the wider issues of the CARICOM identity and the struggles of intra- regional migrants to positioning themselves in the wider movement. On the other hand, my personal experiences as an intra-regional migrant within CARICOM alerted me to many of the issues. In this sense, I have spent several years in contact with CARICOM nationals, both at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and as a CARICOM skilled national living in Barbados.

102

In some ways, I was able to empathize with the challenges respondents faced and celebrate the joys of being a part of the community. Interviewing the subjects also reminded me of my own experiences and in many cases pulled me closer to CARICOM as the interviews created an atmosphere of community. This was particularly true in the sense that all respondents wanted further integration. My position as an insider allowed me to understand and analyze certain issues relevant to intra-regional migrants from an insider perspective.

Given, my insider status, I took a reflective approach throughout the study, often asking myself why I asked particular questions, or how I would answer the questions if I were the interviewee. My insider status was very useful in interpreting the results and deepening rapport with respondents. For example, participants often used jargons and colloquial language, to which only an insider would be privy. This is demonstrated when one respondent began to talk about taking a ‘ZR’, which is a term Barbadians use to refer to non-government owned passenger buses. I was only able to relate to these terms because of my experience living in Barbados. Respondents also felt comfortable in the knowledge that I was an intra-regional migrant and would often say “as you know, right”, which affirmed my insider status and made it easier for them to explain certain situations.

I was also an outsider in many respects, because for example, I knew very little about the non-island CARICOM countries such as Belize, Suriname and Haiti. I had to either ask for clarity or research some of the topics that respondents spoke about. Berry (1999) asserts, the mixture of an insider and an outsider view in research allows us to deepen our understanding of important issues in cultural matters. Both positions as insiders and outsiders also have

disadvantages. For example, being an insider presents taking for granted aspects of reality, which might have useful insights. On the other hand, being as an outsider presents the challenge of

103

lacking sufficient shared experience to notice or understand the subtleties and variances that might be at stake. This meant that I had to be conscious of how my research identity may affect the research process and outcomes. I also endeavored to keep an open mind to discover new insights as related to both the familiar and unfamiliar, by questioning my own interpretations and my role in the process. Weber (1978) proposed that we can obtain a sociological understanding of phenomena through reflective interpretations and by understanding the subjective meanings that they attach to their feelings, stories, experiences and life histories. In this sense, I concur that human agents can make sense of the world and their experiences and are capable of negotiating their identities. Accordingly, I place great emphasis on the empirical findings, the feelings of respondents, and relations with social institutions, groups and individuals. I also believe that it is important to be reflexive at all stages of the research in order to understand and document how my own interpretations, and experiences influence the process. In order to simultaneously capture a broad understanding, as well as deep-intimate accounts of the process of identity formation and negotiation among intra-regional migrants in CARICOM, a multi-method data collection design was implemented.

4.07 Conclusion

The preceding sections demonstrated the usefulness of employing a multi-method design to understand the nuances of identity constructions in CARICOM. In particular, the online survey format was very advantageous for reaching participants across 15 countries, proving to be

convenient, time-efficient and cheap. The inductive qualitative content analysis allowed me to extract emerging themes as well as those inherent in the literature and research questions without the burdens of methodological constraints. The methodology allowed me to draw fruitful

104

chapter goes into detail about the key finding to the research question: “How do intra-regional CARICOM migrants identify themselves and give meanings to their identities”. The analysis is based on both the survey data as well as the interviews. The simultaneous analysis of qualitative and quantitative data allowed for the explanation of themes as they develop, and for connections to be made between both types of data.

105

CHAPTER V –INTRA-REGIONAL MIGRANTS’ IDENTITIES 5.0 Overview

This chapter answers the first research question: how do intra-regional CARICOM migrants negotiate their identities and how do they self-identify? The data sources that inform this chapter are: a) the aggregated results of the online survey, and b) quotes and analyses of interview transcripts with participants from Suriname, Belize, St. Lucia and Jamaica. The analyses of the survey data are presented in univariate and bivariate forms. Chi-square tests are used to test the significance of relationships between nominal variables. Qualitative data from the interviews are used to help explain the findings from the survey analyses.

The chapter is divided into four sections. The first section provides a demographic breakdown of respondents in the study and describes how respondents identify themselves. The second section describes the determinants of attachments to CARICOM, while the third section examines how attachments to CARICOM differ by citizenship. These findings are supplemented with historical, experiential and cultural explanations drawn from the literature. The fourth section focuses on self-identifications of respondents from the outlying states, considering the paradox of their strong attachment to CARICOM and the marginalizations that they experience in member countries. In particular, it discusses the themes of ‘knowledge deficit’ and ‘ineffective communications’, and examines their effects on outlying migrants’ experiences, including how they construct their identities. Finally, the chapter explores how CARICOM nationals

strategically shift their identities to counteract marginalization in member countries. The chapter concludes that benefits and meaningfulness are important drivers of attachment to CARICOM, however knowledge deficits and ineffective communications weaken the regional identity. Nonetheless, even for individuals with weak attachments to CARICOM, the regional identity can serve strategic functions, and thus can be beneficial.

106 5.01.a Representativeness of the Survey Data.

Figure 5.01 shows that 177 (60 per cent) of respondents lived in only one CARICOM member country, excluding their country of birth. Conversely, 106 respondents (40 per cent) lived in multiple CARICOM countries: 69 respondents (20 per cent) lived in 2 other CARICOM countries for more than 2 months, 19 respondents (10 per cent) lived in three countries and the remaining 18 respondents (10 per cent) lived in at least four other CARICOM countries, excluding their birth country.

Figure 5.01. The Number of CARICOM Countries Respondents lived in for at least two months. N= 283.

In terms of reasons for intra-regional migration, Table 5.01 shows that almost a third of respondents were motivated to migrate by employment opportunities (75 respondents or 30.3 per cent), while 51 respondents (or 27.1 per cent) migrated for educational purposes. The joint third most popular reasons for intra-regional migration were leisure/tourism and the possession of citizenship in the other country (22 respondents each or 11.7 per cent each). Interestingly, only

177 69 19 18 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200

One Two Three Four or more

N UM BE R O F R ES PO N DE N TS