The long history of population movements in the Caribbean has led to the establishment of globalizes families in which diffuse networks of relationships tie migrants and the relatives they leave behind into coherent social fields. Migration studies have documented that migrants often leave children behind with relatives, and that these children constitute pivotal points in the social fields. Yet there has been little focus on the children who grow up in these global family networks.
Caribbean children are often left behind when their parents travel to distant migration destinations for better social and economic opportunities. These children constitute an important linchpin in the global networks of family relations which tie migrants and relatives at the point of origin together into coherent social fields of relations. The nature of these social fields, their impact on life in the Caribbean and in migrant communities abroad, has been documented from the vantage point of the migrant providers and the adult care givers in the Caribbean. A number of studies have examined the complementary (but potentially conflict-ridden) relations which develop between the migrants, who become primary economic providers for their children, and those who become the primary providers of care for the dependants who are left behind in the Caribbean family home.
"To whom do you owe your allegiance?" (Cliff, Michelle. No Telephone to Heaven. New York: Plume, 1996, p191).
There has been little focus, however, on what sort of `home' environment these social fields provide for the children, and how the children react to growing up in such globalised families. Indeed, children have, generally speaking, not been viewed as social actors in their own right, but rather as potential resources that are moved about as adults construct their webs of relations.
Studies show that the parents' physical absence in and of itself had......
