ABSTRACT
Between 1948 and 1973 approximately 550,000 people of Caribbean birth migrated to Britain, the majority arriving before the 1962 Immigration Act effectively cut off further immigration. The first immigrants came from Jamaica, and they remain by far the largest group of Caribbean nationals in Britain. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents a research based on a quota sample of eighty five life-story interviews across two and three generations of migrant families which originated in Barbados. It is an attempt to draw out and explore some of the migration narratives and reinstate them alongside those other dominant narratives of migration and modernity. In addition to the collectivity of memory, the chemistry and the politics of the interview contains within it the interplay, and autonomy, of gender, race, class, education, culture, and subjectivity.
