Emigration
Editorial
In a collection of papers compiled and edited by Dr Prem Misir under the title "Ethnic Cleavage and Closure in the Caribbean Diaspora: Interaction of Race, Ethnicity and Class", two that deal with emigration may be of particular interest to Guyanese. The first is "Occupation and Status Change among Caribbean Immigrants: Implications for Adjustment and Mental Health" by Lear Matthews and the second is "Indo-Guyanese in Venezuela" by Ronald Singh. Lear Matthews, who formerly taught at the University of Guyana and is now a faculty member at Empire State College, State University of New York, notes that while in general English-speaking Caribbean immigrants make crisis-free adjustment to the new society in America, for others who had good or relatively high status jobs in their homelands the transition can be traumatic. Giving five case examples based on interviews with immigrants or their families at the Bedford Stuyvesant Community Health Center in New York City, to wit a senior history and literature teacher, a high ranking government official and former political party candidate, an acting school principal, a couple, both civil servants, and their family of four who stayed with relatives for six months in an overcrowded apartment before moving out, and finally a lieutenant who has not emigrated but most of whose relatives live in the United States and who visits them at least once a year. In each case the real (or anticipated) difficulties of adjustment had been extremely stressful, especially where lower status jobs had been accepted. "Although it is not unusual for new immigrants to accept `any job' to get them started", Mathews writes, " personal worth is sometimes equated with how they earn a living. To deal successfully with status incongruence and other adjustment difficulties, is to struggle with strategies to satisfy basic human needs. The case examples vividly demonstrate the depth of the problem. For some Caribbean immigrants, the fears and trepidation of disconnecting from the familiar and being deprived of the opportunity to engage previously earned personal and professional attributes, tug at the very core of their emotional fabric, cultural traditions and family stability". Yet at least one of the five expressed joy that she had emigrated and Matthews notes that "where the network of family, friends and community-based organisations is strong, the impact of status incongruence on the individual will be less traumatic". Ronald Singh, a Research Associate with the "Research Institute for the study of the Caribbean Diaspora" paints a grim picture of the problems faced by Indo-Guyanese in Ciudad Guayana where he says that according to unofficial estimates 60-65 per cent of the Guyanese immigrants in Venezuela settled. They started to leave in large numbers around l983, he says, mainly from poor rural areas due to a lack of confidence in the political system and economic stagnation. "They were detained and questioned by the port authorities and National Guards. They knew little or no Spanish, hence were represented by their contacts, or as in most cases, owners of contraband boats which ferried them to Venezuela. They were allowed to remain and work on the grounds they were from the county of Essequibo. This posed a lot of problems for subsequent Guyanese immigrants who were from the counties of Demerara and Berbice. Numerous groups were turned back by the authorities, so the way around this problem was to produce false birth certificates, or resort to lies as to their places of birth. This also led to conflicts between the Essequibians and the immigrants from the other countries because many from Essequibo felt they were Venezuelans, and were indeed treated differently, and therefore, considered the others as a threat to this status. However, with the passing of time, the Essequibians were also treated in a hostile manner by the same authorities". Emigration peaked in l984-7. One of the major criticisms levelled at the immigrants was their lack of participation in community activities. This may be due to the fact, Singh suggests, that "the very poor, the least educated, and the non-affiliated, tend not to participate in community life at all. With respect to these immigrants, a research conducted by Farias (l992), shows grade 3 as the average level of education for l76 families (approximately 400 adults). While this may be a shocking discovery, given the fact that education was free in Guyana since l976, it helps to explain the lack of community participation by these immigrants". The writer gives examples of lifestyle problems such as unwillingness to perfect the host country language, keeping children out of school, living in ghettoes. He concludes: "The conflicts that have arisen in the host country, however, stemmed not from purely racial prejudices and the nationalism displayed by the hosts, but also from the immigrants' culture, language, religions, general lifestyles,illegal status, and abstention from participating in mainstream society, along with their unflappable quest to accumulate wealth". Perhaps the most crucial index of our failure as a society has been the ongoing emigration since the fifties. The route to England was closed since l96l but there are large pockets of Guyanese in the United States of America and Canada and more recently Suriname and Venezuela. A literature has not yet arisen on the traumas and achievements of our brothers and sisters who have in their hundreds of thousands voted with their feet and gone into exile. We need to learn much more about them, and to try to encourage them to return to help to develop our country.
 Follow the goings-on in Guyana
|