ABSTRACT
There has scarcely been a Barbadian family who has not been touched, and shaped, by migration and its absences, at a literal, metaphysical, cultural and historical level. As the generation of British-born black Barbadians have children themselves, and as they experience their parents final return to Barbados, the family models are extending and, paradoxically, the links with Barbados are becoming closer. They move out of the role of cultural broker, which characterised their childhood, and into that of cultural transmitter, finding their 'consolation of freedom' within the traditions of the family and its values. The literature of Caribbean migration to Britain disregarded the culture of migration which had always precluded assimilationist trends in favour of eventual return. As the generations mature, the continuities in traditional family structure among the generation of Barbadians born or raised in Britain, suggest that the family itself may have become a statement of cultural and ethnic identity.
