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“Borderisation” Versus “Creolisation”: A Caribbean Game of Identities and Borders

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Border Transgression and Reconfiguration of Caribbean Spaces

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Abstract

Borders between states have been defied by transnational flows bound to bypass such discontinuities. Territories are on the verge of death but ironically enough, borderisation is spreading—a political response to fear and calls for enhanced national security. The contemporary Caribbean offers an ideal observatory with regard to modern global issues. Resulting from massive migration waves, the Caribbean region is home to a Creole culture born out of the brutality of slave plantations. Creolisation strips root-identities from their sacred aura, just like transnationalisation challenges border-territories through political strategy. How do these globalising processes relate, considering the way culture and politics interact in their midst? What are some of the contributions and limitations of the Creole discourse and how do they account for borderisation in diasporic networks?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Bertrand Badie, La fin des territoires, Fayard, 1995.

  2. 2.

    Le Monde, February 5, 2018, pp. 14–15.

  3. 3.

    Paolo Cuttitta, La « frontiérisation » de Lampedusa, comment se construit une frontière, L’Espace Politique [Online], 25 | 2015-1, uploaded on April 8, 2015, read on January 12, 2018.

  4. 4.

    Amin Maalouf, Les identités meurtrières, Editions Grasset et Fasquelle, 1998, 189p.

  5. 5.

    Patrick Chamoiseau, Frères migrants, Seuil, 2017.

  6. 6.

    Edouard Glissant, Traité du Tout Monde, Gallimard, 1997.

  7. 7.

    Encarnacion Gutierrez Rodriguez, Shirley Anne Tate, Creolizing Europe, Liverpool University Press, 2015.

  8. 8.

    Translator’s note: colloquial term used to designate people of North African descent, who were born in Europe.

  9. 9.

    Frédéric Joignot (interview by), According to Author Edouard Glissant, the World’s Creolisation Is “Irreversible”, Le Monde, February 4, 2011.

  10. 10.

    Aimé Césaire, Return to My Native Land, bilingual edition, Présence Africaine, 1971, p. 119.

  11. 11.

    Kamau Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770–1820, Clarendon Press, 1971; Edouard Glissant, Identité comme racine, identité comme relation, in Comité culture, éducation, environnement: Identité, Culture et Développement, Paris, Edit. caribéennes, 1992, p. 199.

  12. 12.

    R. Nettleford, Cultural Action and Social Change: The Case of Jamaica; An Essay in Caribbean Cultural Identity, Ottawa, ON, IDRC, 1979. p. 7.

  13. 13.

    J. Bernabé, P. Chamoiseau, and R. Confiant, Eloge de la créolité, bilingual French-English edition, Gallimard, p. 13.

  14. 14.

    Roger Waldinger and Lauren Duquette-Rury, Emigrants Politics, Immigrant Engagement: Homeland Ties and Immigrant Political Identity in the United States, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 2, N°3 (June 2016), pp. 42–59.

  15. 15.

    Mary Chamberlain, Caribbean Kinship in a Global Setting, Caribbean Studies, Vol. 32, N°1 (January–June 2004), pp. 73–98.

  16. 16.

    Rosa Titouche Haddadi, Impacts économiques et sociaux sur les pays en développement des envois de fonds des émigrés sur leur région d’origine, Insaniyat, Vol. 62 (2013), pp. 121–146.

  17. 17.

    https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/haitian-immigrants-united-states?

  18. 18.

    Cédric Audebert, La diaspora haïtienne: vers l’émergence d’un territoire de la dispersion?, in Carlo Célius (ed.), Le défi haïtien: économie, dynamique sociopolitique et migration, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2011.

  19. 19.

    José Itzigsohn, Incorporation and Transnationalism Among Dominican Immigrants, Caribbean Studies, Vol. 32, N°1 (January–June 2004), pp. 43–72.

  20. 20.

    Bill Nelson, Floride Senator, The New York Times, 59,000 Haitians Must Leave U.S. As White House Ends Protections, November 21, 2017.

  21. 21.

    https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/haitian-immigrants-united-states.

  22. 22.

    Eliud George Ramocan Remittances to Jamaica, Findings from a National Survey of Remittance Recipients, Bank of Jamaica, Survey, 2010, p. 2.

  23. 23.

    Steven Vertovec, Transnationalism and Modes of Transformation, The International Migration Review, Vol. 38, N°3 (Fall 2004), p. 971.

  24. 24.

    Roger Waltinger and David Fitzgerald, Transnationalism in Questions, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 109, N°5 (March 2004), p. 1178.

  25. 25.

    B. Badie, Nous ne sommes plus seuls au monde, La découverte, 2016, p. 13.

  26. 26.

    Badie, la fin des territoires, op. cit.

  27. 27.

    Percy C. Hintzen, Race and Creole Ethnicity in the Caribbean, in Vera Sheperd and Glen L. Richards (eds.), Questioning Creole, Creolisation Discourses in Caribbean Culture, Ian Randlers, James Currey Publishers, 2002, p. 93.

  28. 28.

    Laguerre, State, Diaspora, and Transnational Politics: Haïti Reconceptualised, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 28, N°3 (1999), pp. 633–651.

  29. 29.

    Luis Eduardo, Alejandro Portes, and William Haller, Assimilation and Transnationalism: Determinants of Transnational Political Action Among Contemporary Migrants, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 108, N°6 (May 2003), p. 1235.

  30. 30.

    Cedric Audebert, op. cit., p. 26.

  31. 31.

    Anar K. Ahmadov and Gwendolin Sasse, Empowering to Engage with the Homeland: Do Immigration Experience and Environment Foster Political Remittances?, Comparative Migration Studies, Vol. 4, N°12 (2016), pp. 1–25.

  32. 32.

    José Itzigsohn, Immigration and the Boundaries of Citizenship: The Institutions of Immigrants’ Political Transnationalism, International Migration Review, Vol. 34, N°4 (Winter 2000), pp. 1126–1154.

  33. 33.

    http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/Haitian_legislator_reiterates_appeal_to_US_President_to_extend_TPS_for_Haitians.

  34. 34.

    Walter Clark Wilson and William Curtis Ellis, Surrogates Beyond Borders: Black Members of the United States Congress and the Representation of African Interests on the Congressional Foreign-Policy Agenda, Polity, Vol. 46, N°2, Constructing Boundaries (April 2014), p. 256.

  35. 35.

    http://www.haitilibre.com/breve-1024-haiti-elections-tous-les-candidats-de-la-diasporas-exclus.html.

  36. 36.

    http://www.haitilibre.com/article-825-haiti-elections-la-diasporas-exclue-des-elections-2010.html.

  37. 37.

    Ibid.

  38. 38.

    Ronald Mason, Attorney-at-law and Supreme Court Mediator, The Gleaner, April 24, 2016.

  39. 39.

    Roger Waldinger and David Fitzgerald, Transnationalism in Question, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 109, N°5 (March 2004), p. 1177.

  40. 40.

    Frédéric Joignot, op. cit.

  41. 41.

    Fred Réno and Bernard Phipps, The Dichotomy of Universalism and Particularism in French Guiana, in Rosemarijn Hoefte, Matthew L. Bishop and Peter Clegg (eds.), Post-colonial Trajectories in the Caribbean: The Three Guianas, Routledge, 2017, pp. 46–58.

  42. 42.

    Michel Giraud, Racisme colonial, ethnicité et citoyenneté. Leçons des expériences migratoires antillaises et guyanaises, Caribbean Studies, Vol. 32, N°1 (January–June), p. 164.

  43. 43.

    Nonna Mayer: « Marine Le Pen fait encore peur », http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2017/04/11/nonna-mayer-marine-le-pen-fait%20peur_5109156_3232.html#YUf4GJi7DA0ygCii.99.

  44. 44.

    Laurent Marot, Les Guyanais dénoncent les défaillances de l’Etat sur l’insécurité, Le Monde, March 30, 2017.

  45. 45.

    See Le Monde, La Guyane en proie à des blocages, March 22, 2017.

  46. 46.

    Michel Giraud, op. cit., p. 176.

  47. 47.

    Y. Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe, Chicago University Press, 1994.

  48. 48.

    Fred Reno, les élus ont le peuple qu’ils méritent, in Yvan Combeau (ed.), Le vote de l’outre-mer, présidentielle et législatives de 2007, Les quatre chemins, 2007.

  49. 49.

    https://www.frontnational.com/pdf/PROGRAMME_OUTRE_MER_2016.pdf, p. 8.

  50. 50.

    Ibid., p. 9.

  51. 51.

    Edgar Morin, Penser l’Europe, Gallimard, Paris, 1990.

  52. 52.

    Patrick Chamoiseau and Silyane Larcher, les identités dans la totalité-monde, Cités, Vol. 1, N°29 (2007), pp. 121–134.

  53. 53.

    Veren A. Shepherd and Glen L. Richards (eds.), Questioning Creole: Creolisation Discourses in Caribbean Culture, Ian Randler Publishers, 2002, p. xiii.

  54. 54.

    Nigel Bolland, Creolisation and Creole Societies: A Cultural Nationalist View of Caribbean Social History, in Verene Sheperd and Glen Richards, op. cit., pp. 29–30.

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  1. Laboratoire Caribéen de Sciences Sociales (LC2S / CNRS), Université des Antilles, Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe

    Fred Réno

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  1. Laboratoire Caribéen de Sciences Sociales (LC2S / CNRS), Université des Antilles, Schoelcher, Martinique

    Myriam Moïse

  2. Laboratoire Caribéen de Sciences Sociales (LC2S / CNRS), Université des Antilles, Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe

    Fred Réno

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Réno, F. (2020). “Borderisation” Versus “Creolisation”: A Caribbean Game of Identities and Borders. In: Moïse, M., Réno, F. (eds) Border Transgression and Reconfiguration of Caribbean Spaces. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45939-0_2

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