Narratives of Exile and Return (Warwick University Caribbean Studies)

This text explores the nature and meanings of migration for Barbadians who migrated to Britain and elsewhere. It is an oral and social history based on life-story interviews across three or more generations of Barbadian families. Locating migration within the contemporary debate of modernity, this text highlights the continuing role of migration in shaping the culture and history of Barbados. It investigates the power of social and individual memory in recalling and recounting experience and in shaping and interpreting culture. It reveals the vitality of family dynamics and values in shaping life courses and the ways in which these are transmitted and transformed across generations. It analyzes how the "Mother Country" was encountered and incorporated, and how the continuing presence of the Caribbean shapes identities of those born or brought up in Britain. In reclaiming these narratives of exile and return, this book challenges and exposes those orthodox views which explain Caribbean migration thorugh the labour demands of international capital or the vagaries of the home economy.