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This book focuses on the post-emancipation period in the Caribbean and how local societies dealt with the new socio-economic conditions. Scholars from Jamaica, the Virgin Islands, England, Denmark and The Netherlands link this era with the contemporary Caribbean

Introduction -- pt. 1. A Jamaican family. Learning to mix in society. Seeking improvement beyond Jamaica -- pt. 2. A Dominican family. The village origins. In pursuit of a proper livelihood. -- pt. 3. A Nevisian family. A family home. To better our condition -- pt. 4. The family legacies. The first generation: migrating for improvement of self and the family. Generational perspectives: negotiating identities and origins. Relating regional, family, and individual histories of migration.

AbstractTaking its point of departure in two historically separate legal cases involving the right to care for kin this article compares the perception and treatment of two groups subjected to forced migration—enslaved Africans and their descendants in the former Danish West Indian colonial society and African refugees in present-day Danish welfare society. Drawing on Balibar's notion of 'internal borders' it demonstrates the key role of 'the Other' in the management of displaced people in contexts of structural inequality and their contradictory position of being legally embedded but socially detached in the society in which they are placed. This comparative historical lens illuminates how, across time and place, family and kin ties can figure as sites of contention between universal, ideal, morally accepted human rights and the actual rights bestowed by local authorities, whether in colonial plantation societies based on enslavement or in modern welfare states.

Research on female migrant caregivers has tended to focus upon the emotional and social problems they encounter working abroad, given women's traditional role as caregivers for their own families. This article analyses how Caribbean women who have returned after a period abroad as domestic workers inscribe their migration experiences within the gendered narrative of the good relative who migrates to help the family left behind and therefore deserves social recognition in the community of origin. It argues that this narrative allows the women to both affirm and reinterpret local family and gender roles within the context of migration. This analysis points to the close connection between narrative structures, accounts of migration experiences, and self‐presentations and suggests that narratives about family and gender roles not only reflect people's lives, but are also a malleable resource that can be (re)shaped to validate a variety of life‐courses.