ABSTRACT
Migration was one of the few means open to the former West Indian slaves whereby they could demonstrate their newly gained freedom and their abhorrence of a system that had bound them for so long to one place. Most of the early movements took place from one British Caribbean colony to another, especially within southern and eastern Caribbean. Emigration undoubtedly formed an important means of adapting to threats to the freedom of the ex-slaves by providing an alternative to their precarious economic base. Economic variables at the migration source areas have dominated the explanations put forward for Caribbean migration from the mid-twentieth century. Migration was taking place in large numbers not only when economic conditions in the Caribbean were unfavourable, but also during periods of economic growth. The massive and almost continual flow of labour from the Caribbean can only be explained in the context of wider global transfer of human resources from the Third World to the industrialized North.
