Migration's Motor: Postwar Modernization
Jamaicans have been leaving home for a long time-for so long, in fact, and in such great numbers that today more than half of the world's 4.4 million Jamaicans live outside the island. Their...
...In the decade from 1953 to 1962, Britain absorbed 163,000 Jamaicans-more than half of whom made their move in the two and a half years just before controls were to be imposed...
...Total immigration from the Western Hemisphere was subject to a strict annual ceiling of 120,000...
...7. Shirley Smith, "Industrial Growth, Employment Opportunities and Migration Within and From Jamaica, 1943 to 1970," (Ph.D...
...The so-called "surplus labor problem," for instance, had already reached crisis proportions as a result of colonial agricultural policies...
...To attain maximum profits, and thus to expand, capitalists must be able to control the amount and intensity of work and to impose new competitive production techniques...
...Although these changes do not, by themselves, explain specific labor migrations to New York or London or Toronto, they do tend to impel these varied movements in search of work...
...marginal sale of labor-power and the finding of substitutes for that sale...
...LET THEM EAT CAKE Twenty years of almost unbroken economic expansion had not only transformed the island's industrial structure and the corresponding distribution of its labor force, but it also reproduced the very surplus labor problem it was ostensibly aimed at solving...
...See NACLA, vol...
...The scarcity of regular jobs at "reasonable" wages condemned part of the labor force to low-income, own-account (self-employed) activity in street and market vending and handicrafts like dressmaking or skilled trades like carpentry--already partially displaced by the expansion of industry...
...Indeed, it is a measure of the profitable accumulation of capital, particularly so for the transnational corporations that controlled more than half of all Jamaica's economic activity by the late 1960s...
...Through its impact on the countryside, capital propelled 560,000 rural Jamaicans into urban centers between 1943 and 1970...
...Men more readily landed jobs in the new industries like cement and clay production and food and beverage processing, in the small wood and metal workshops, and in construction and dock work...
...Initially, there was considerable doubt in ruling circles that rapid industrialization could resolve the crisis...
...Occasional wagelabor, grabbed when and where available, perhaps on the docks or at construction sites, supplements income from" 'occupations' like carminding, casual messengering and postering, postcard selling, finding parking spaces, opening doors, cleaning cars, shoe shining, street hawking goods in infinitesimal quantities...
...and capital-intensive techniques of production - cheapened company costs and pushed up profits, but limited industrial growth on the island...
...In a 1968 island-wide sample survey, 27 % of those holding jobs in the previous year worked less than eight months and 40% worked less than 10 months.' 0 High rates of urban underemployment, particularly in construction and manufacturing, pushed the working-class poor into substitute activities...
...But this conflicts sharply with the demands of capital accumulation...
...extensive state credits and subsidies were often employed to woo peasants as well to produce for the world market...
...Despite its rate of unemployment that rarely fell below 20%, the KMA drew 300,000...
...The island's experience parallels that of underdeveloped countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as many other parts of the third world...
...United States, the number ofJamaicans migrating to Canada in 1970-74 surpassed total immigration for the entire preceding decade (approximately 22,000...
...4JanlFeb 1981 In the postwar period, third world governments bent on modernization and transnational corporations bent on increased profits spearheaded the rapid spread of capitalist production and marketing into the countryside and the creation of urban industrial centers...
...Its core was the same handful of merchant families that had dominated the distributive trade-all of English, Jewish, Syrian or Chinese descent in a country whose population is 90% black...
...It moved into tourism, into the manufacture of import5NACLA Report substitutes and exports and, above all, into bauxite...
...It soon implemented its own brand of "Bootstrap," the Z Kaiser Aluminum's open-pit bauxite mine hear Discovery Bay...
...In recent years, receiving countries like the United States have turned their attention to the "alarming problem" of their new immigrant labor force...
...And indeed, the implied fascination with travel abroad appears confirmed by Jamaica's language of migration: one doesn't move to this or that country...
...9 But scuffling, like marginal own-account work, is itself a part-time occupation for many ostensibly employed'members of the working class...
...independence would follow in 1962...
...The package of reduced tax liability on capital investment and duty-free entry of critical imported inputs reappeared in subsequent legislation concerned with mining (the 1950 Bauxite and Alumina Industries Law) and manufacturing (the Pioneer Industries Law of 1949, and the Industrial Incentives Law and Export Industries Law of 1956...
...Unattended by the fanfare that greeted these new industries, agribusiness, too, got off to a running postwar start as sugar production climbed to all-time heights...
...In the first eight years after the 100-person quota was dropped, more than 110,000 Jamaicans took up legal residence in the United States, an increase of 715...
...4 Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, foreign capital flocked to the island...
...We turn now to investigate the process by which agribusiness expansion gave rise to these internal and external wanderings of Jamaica's rural gypsies...
...For many others, however, widespread unemployment in the capital was an important element in their decision to go abroad...
...5. On the role of bauxite inJamaica's economic and political life, see "Caribbean Conflict: Jamaica and the U.S.," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...When canal construction ended in 1914 and crop disease forced production cutbacks on the plantations, migrants streamed into Cuban canefields and the northern industrial centers of the United States...
...One estimate placed the number of contract laborers going "AWOL" at approximately 100 per month...
...References MIGRATION'S MOTOR 1. Ken Post, Arise Ye Starvelings...
...Owen Jefferson, Postwar Economic Development, p. 34...
...The persistence of this peasantry, whose livelihood capital continued to undermine, severely restricted the internal market-for large-scale production of domestic food crops and its requisite industrial inputs, and for consumer goods industries and their suppliers...
...It also swelled the ranks of the "scuffler," a figure long familiar to the streets of Kingston--and to the urban ghettos of the United States...
...The explosive growth of government employment in the postwar and particularly post-independence period, was a significant aspect of the shift into services...
...But the still-chronic plague of unemployment and underemployment forced many of the immigrants to earn a marginal living partially or completely outside the channels of regular wage employment...
...Equally important in the "failure" of modernization was the contradictory process of capital penetration in the countryside...
...At the helm of expansion was Britain's Tate & Lyle, whose extensive investment in canefield and sugar factory operations signalled similar efforts on locally-owned estates (field and factory combines) and large farms...
...2 By 1974, an estimated 300,000 Jamaicans were living in the United States as "overstays...
...2 (March- April 1981...
...3. On the Puerto Rican experience, see the forthcoming NACLA Report on the A mericas, Vol...
...Agriculture, that "traditional" stronghold, was the site of extensive direct investment in production for the world market by transnational and domestic companies, and of state-sponsored reforms to facilitate that process...
...Andrew are all "sufferers...
...129-32...
...3 (May-June 1978...
...A GYPSY PEOPLE...
...7, Nov-Dec 1977...
...Working men and women left agriculture, forestry and fishing, moving into jobs in secondary industry (mining,* manufacturing, construction and utilities) and, to a much greater extent, into commercial and service * Because of its highly capital-intensive technique of production, bauxite operations created only 6,000 new jobs between 1950 and 1970...
...As a result, between 1943 and 1970, the non-agricultural component of the labor force increased by 66%, while agriculture's share only increased by 2...
...In their own definition, the slum dwellers of Kingston and St...
...Investment by six North American aluminum companies mining the Jamaican ore--Alcoa, Alcan (based in Montreal), Reynolds, Kaiser, Anaconda and Revere--accounted for nearly three-quarters of the one billion dollars in direct U.S...
...The resulting struggles, manifested differently in each country, but integral to capitalist development in all, fundamentally change the class structure and conditions of livelihood of what had been the traditional labor force...
...as well as burglaring, prostitution and ganja (marijuana) trafficking...
...This hit hardest at the unskilled (with the notable exception, in the case of Jamaica, of private household workers...
...By 1972, the KMA housed 38% of the labor force (and 30% of Jamaica's entire population), a 15% increase since the start of postwar overhaul...
...Among them were skilled and unskilled wage laborers, self-employed artisans and tradesmen, and small and medium landholders...
...NO SUFFERERS AMONG THE CAPITALISTS Limited industrialization and wage employment, a now-familiar outcome of third world postwar modernization, is not an index of the failure of capitalist development, at least in its own terms...
...6 Albeit small and dependent on outside investment decisions, an industrial bougeoisie emerged...
...MOVING FACES, CHANGING PLACES Jamaica's rapidly changing economic profile- courtesy of the transnationals-was mirrored in the new look of the island's labor force...
...The presumed insufficiency of local capital and "know-how" prompted passage of incentive legislation to lure foreign capital to the tropics...
...6. Philip Wheaton andJeb Mays, eds.,Jamaica: Caribbean Challenge (Washington: EPICA Task Force, 1979), p. 49...
...In a typical portrayal, the predominant traditional economic sectors, like agriculture, allegedly isolated from modern capitalist development, are unable to support the country's too rapidly increasing population...
...Although the flow remained considerably smaller than that to the * Between 1963 and 1976, 148,028 Jamaicans were recruited, under Section H-2 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, for temporary farmwork in the U.S...
...In 1965, just as the Crown closed its doors to all but family dependents, the U.S...
...Among the migrants, it is therefore argued, are those from the modern sector attracted by the higher wages of developed countries, as well as the urban unemployed and those condemned to underemployment and poverty in traditional occupations...
...9. W.F...
...43-4...
...Permitted unrestricted entry to their "mother country," colonial West Indians rushed to fill the manifold jobs created by postwar recovery...
...by the early 40s a quarter of all workers were unemployed and nearly half were underemployed...
...But Jamaica's massive population movements are not unique...
...XII, no...
...In fact, it is not the lack of capitalist development, but its vast expansion in underdeveloped countries, that has prepared the ground for the movement of labor to the developed countries...
...The courting technique could already be gleaned from the Hotel Aid Law of 1944 (aimed at an industry whose earliest expression was United Fruit banana boats doubling as cruise ships around the end of the century...
...multinational sourcing of output (milling of sugar cane from Jamaica, Guyana and Barbados...
...Their exodus began almost as soon as their slavery ended in 1838...
...2. Franklin Abrams, as cited in Ransford W. Palmer, Caribbean Dependence on the U.S...
...XV, no...
...Still, access to the "streets of gold" was far more restricted than it had earlier been to Britain...
...Plants had to be built, new roads cut, railways laid and housing constructed for the bauxite employees...
...Many young women arriving from the countryside took up domestic work...
...Agricultural development strategy, however, not only called for direct productive investment by capital...
...This remarkable fluidity between independent small producers, lumpen proletariat and working-class poor who, moreover, share the same neighborhoods, has tended to blur the distinctions...
...Economy (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1979), p. 89...
...Like most large individual growers and agricultural firms, Tate & Lyle diversified into livestock production...
...Nevertheless, the new government took its cue from the local merchants and capitalist farmers who stood to gain from state support of private industry...
...Throughout the late 40s, 50s and 60s, young adults--and especially young women abandoning their unpaid work on family farms-left the rural parishes and crowded into the Kingston Metropolitan Area (KMA...
...Cement and clay manufacturing boomed...
...In other words, at the root of the massive labor emigrations from "poor" countries is the problem of too little capitalism, i.e., the failure of those countries to sufficiently integrate their economies into the dynamic and expanding international capitalist economy...
...In Jamaica, workers poured out of every parish (the equivalent of states) into boats and planes bound for Britain...
...have some control over their means of production (lands, workshops and tools...
...The aluminum companies, too, put their huge land reserves to use in a variety of capital-intensive agricultural projects...
...Some moved on to other service and clerical jobs, but only a handful found work in manufacturing...
...Yet even the largest of these early migrations pale in comparison to the massive movement 4 a - If 3 Y z A IANACLA Report During those years, the movement to Britain overshadowed all others...
...diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1975), p. 119...
...Jamaicans not infrequently comment to the curious outsider that they "are a gypsy people," explaining their postwar flights by a seemingly natural penchant for movement...
...investment over the period 1950-72.5 The flood of foreign investment provoked the entry of local capital into certain auxiliary activities...
...In lieu of any serious inquiry into the causes of migration, a convenient explanation is simply borrowed from stale conceptions of underdevelopment...
...In short, they must control the means and process of production...
...CAPITALIST OVERHAUL IN JAMAICA At the start of decolonization in 1944- Britain's response to Jamaican rebellion in the 1930s -Crown Colony rule gave way to internal representative self-government...
...1 In the 40 years NACLA ReportJanlFeb 1981 between 1881 and 1921, emigration had carried off 156,000 Jamaicans, 35% of the period's total population increase...
...Along with Westminster parliamentary democracy, the Crown bequeathed to the local ruling class other, less celebrated, colonial legacies...
...In 1967, Canada also eased controls, revamping legislation that had limited entry to domestics and farmworkers...
...TheJamaican Labour Rebellion of 1938 and its Aftermath (The Hague: Mar- tinus Nijhoff, 1978), pp...
...It thereby restricted the expansion of industry and employment for the KMA's newcomers...
...The modern industrial and service sectors, their apologists explain, remain too stunted by small internal markets to absorb the surplus laborers, in the main affording only tenuous employment and low wages to their own small labor force...
...Moreover, to exclude "unnecessary" workers, labor certification was "required of all immigrants entering the labor market, except for parents, children under 21, or spouses of citizens or permanent resident aliens...
...In the pre-capitalist class relations of the traditional economy, the producers (peasants, artisans, etc...
...rather, one "goes foreign...
...Scuffling actually combines two methods of eking out an existence--"the intermittent and 6JanlFeb 1981 Roadside vending-even the children pitch in...
...Systematic labor emigration to the advanced capitalist countries has been an integral aspect of their postwar history...
...jobs...
...Maunder, Employment in an Underdeveloped Area: A Sample Survey ofKingston,Jamaica (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960) 10...
...the preponderance of inputs imported from parent companies or overseas suppliers...
...4. For a full discussion of the incentive legislation, see Owen Jefferson, The Postwar Economic Development of Jamaica (Kingston: Institute for Social and Economic Re- search, 1972), pp...
...Congress lifted its nearly complete 1952 ban on West Indian immigration...
...Elements of this pattern--vertical integration across the ocean (bauxite mining in Jamaica and aluminum smelting in Arkansas...
...The land and labor requirements of accelerated investment in export agriculture impelled capital to partially dispossess the peasantry, thrusting thousands of rural Jamaicans into the island's industrial center...
...White animosity in England toward the burgeoning black population had forced passage of the restrictive Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which went into effect in July 1962...
...As first unskilled workers and, later even those with special qualifications were refused work vouchers, West Indian labor migration to Britain plummeted...
...A few set sail for distant ports in the 1850s and 60s and, starting in the 1880s, thousands more crossed the Caribbean Sea to Central America where they cultivated bananas on United Fruit's plantations, built Costa Rica's railways and dug the Panama Canal...
...The government also guaranteed infrastructural support for industrial expansion and, perhaps most seductive of all, permitted the unlimited remittance of profits to corporate headquarters in Europe and North America...
...But many thousands of small farmers remained, a result in part, of the very same process of capitalist investment (as we will see in the next article...
...Only worldwide depression put a halt to their movement...
...While maximizing corporate profits, the pattern of their investments undercut the establishment of industrial linkages and the spread of employment within Jamaica...
...The relative decrease of agricultural producers, who comprised nearly half of the total work force on the eve of modernization and slightly more than one-third 25 years later, occurred largely through massive internal migration to Jamaica's economic hub...
...much-touted development program underway in Puerto Rico.3 The kingpin of Jamaica's strategy for capitalist development, like that of its Latin neighbor, was the transnational corporation...
...XI, no...
...8. Ken Post, Arise Ye Starvelings, p. 160...
Vol. 15 • January 1981 • No. 1
