ABSTRACT
International migration is one of the Caribbean’s most fundamental demographic processes, contributing substantially to the population diversity that characterises the small insular societies of this oceanic region. The Caribbean was settled by immigrants, and the subsequent migrations of its people, in part, grow out of these early mobility patterns. The Caribbean was also incorporated into the world economy by the sixteenth century and, to this day, external influences and connections feature strongly in island lives and livelihoods. Mobility strategies came to be strategic responses of many Caribbean islanders to the realities of island existence, the environment’s limits, their small territorial size, and their vulnerabilities. In addition to international movement ‘off the island’ both within the region and beyond, rural-to-urban migration has also played its part as a survival strategy for Caribbean people, and today’s rapidly growing cities (see Chapter 5) are in large part a consequence of this city-ward transfer.
