The pathless harbourless spade

Abstract

Migration studies have generally painted the African Jamaican as the group that migrates, this being supposedly a post-emancipation act undertaken to better one’s self economically. This article maintains that Jamaicans of all ethnicities and races have been involved in migration: it is a part of the culture and from the earliest post Columbian times. The article posits that the true distinction in migration between races and ethnicities inheres in the geographic end product of migration: others travel to reconnect with ancestral lands but the African Jamaican has no such options as yet and travels to spaces perceived as the ancestral preserves of their former enslavers. In their travels they meet other Africans of the diaspora, like them raised on the margins of the society as has been the nature of enslavement in the New World. The article asks the question: what is the outcome of such meetings carrying as they all do the historical experience of marginality in the societies in which they have been enslaved? The article offers no answer but shares the journey to arriving at one.