Memory, Migration and (De)Colonisation in the Caribbean and Beyond

In recent years, academics, policy makers and media outlets have increasingly recognised the importance of Caribbean migrations and migrants to the histories and cultures of countries across the Northern Atlantic. Memory, migration and (de)colonisation furthers our understanding of the lives of many of these migrants, and the contexts through which they lived and continue to live. In particular, it focuses on the relationship between Caribbean migrants and processes of decolonisation. The chapters in this book range across disciplines and time periods to present a vibrant understanding of the ever-changing interactions between Caribbean peoples and colonialism as they migrated within and between colonial contexts. At the heart of this book are the voices of Caribbean migrants themselves, whose critical reflections on their experiences of migration and decolonisation are interwoven with the essays of academics and activists.

Jack Webb is a lecturer in the Division of History, University of Manchester, whose focus is the cultural history of the Caribbean and the British Empire. His forthcoming monograph Haiti in the British Imagination, 1847–1904 (Liverpool University Press, 2019), examines the various ways in which the post-colonial and “black” state was rationalized by those with interests in the British Empire. He has published in the Journal of Caribbean History and Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism.

Roderick Westmaas is an independent researcher and Co-founder and Director of the community organization GUYANA SPEAKS. He is a Windrush era migrant, being born and returning to be schooled in Guyana, and has worked across the United States, Caribbean and the U.K. He and his wife, Dr. Juanita Cox-Westmaas, were recently awarded the Guyana High Commission Award for Service to the Guyanese Community.

Maria del Pilar Kaladeen is an Associate Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. She works on the colonial history of the system of Indian indenture in Guyana (1838-1917). Maria is the co-editor of We Mark Your Memory: Writing from the Descendants of Indenture (SAS Publications, 2018) and a contributor to Mother Country: Real Stories of the Windrush Children (Headline, 2018). Her monograph on indenture in Guyana is forthcoming with University of Liverpool Press.

William Tantam is Postdoctoral Fellow in Caribbean Studies, Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, and directs the Centre for Integrated Caribbean Research. His work focuses on embodiment and agency in relation to class, gender, and power in the Caribbean. His forthcoming publications include An Ethnography of Class and Masculinities in Jamaica: Letting the Football Talk (Bloomsbury, 2019).