As mentioned before many times, women played a key role in the Caribbean society in both New York and the Caribbean islands. Going back to the migration of Caribbean individuals around the time of the construction of the Panama Canal, women played a vital role in influencing migration of families, and taking care of them in group homes in “developing regions” such as Harlem. During this time, women predominantly worked domestic jobs along with mediocre factory jobs in order to earn money, which they could send back home to pay for the migration of the rest of her family. When we learned this, we overlooked the greater idea of transnationalism. However, these early days of the diaspora was the foundation for these strong transnationalistic ties that still exist today, along with the idea of trust networks.
In the article, ” Transnationalism as a Gendered Process” by Ho, the importance of women was again emphasized, but in a different scheme. Women most of the times led the household, either domestically or financially. As Ho mentioned, due to the lack of jobs along with other economical hardships, the role of men was lacking because they could not provide for their families sufficiently. Women, however, worked mediocre jobs and simultaneously took care of all the domestic jobs, which really proves their significance during this time. In addition, transnationalistic ties involving women was really crucial during this time, especially around the central idea of child bearing. As we learned much earlier, women were a huge factor in promoting migration, and they continued to be. As more individuals migrated to America, some felt as if though their children will not truly learn in the cultural setting they desired. Thus, this led to another revolutionary transnationalistic practice of sending children back home to keep their cultural roots intact. This was another way of keeping in touch with their home country, other than through the trust networks involving the movement of money and items. In addition, this practice of sending children back home especially during their youthful years in still continued today. On a personal note, when I was younger and had recently migrated to America, my mother would mention sending me back to Afghanistan because I was forgetting the culture gradually, and making mistakes in syntax and semantics when speaking Farsi.
In addition the complex idea of identity was also mentioned in the two other articles by Rogers and Waters. As we had learned before, individuals that were actually foreigners were ironically treated better. During this time, having an accent was actually embraced, because you were treated better. But, what being foreign set you apart from was being identified as black. Taking note of this historical time period, racism and discrimination was extremely prominent, and it played a pivotal role in people identifying themselves in a certain group. Many individuals actually who were middle class identified themselves using their country of origin (ethnically), to avoid being grouped in with the other degenerate African Americans. In contrast, individuals that were treated very poorly actually identified themselves racially as African American because they shared the struggle with other blacks facing racism and discrimination, and sought to improve their status by fighting together with the other African Americans. Another interesting aspect was that as the generations of immigrants progressed, the individuals actually started to identify themselves differently. The first generation migrants, as expected, identified themselves according to their home country, especially taking note of their nationalistic pride, and strong transnationalistic ties. But, as generations progressed, individuals started to identify themselves according to their economical, financial, social, and gender status. This really goes to prove the extreme struggles these individuals had when trying to identify themselves, especially with the stressing factors of racism, discrimination, and social class.
