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Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Principal of UWI, Cave Hill Campus, Sir Hilary Beckles (left), and Director of the IRDC, David Malone, during yesterday’s signing ceremony.

Research on Caribbean migration soon

4/15/2009

The University of the West Indies (UWI) and the International Development Research Centre (IRDC) have teamed up to conduct research on the impact of Caribbean migration.

Director of the Shridath Ramphal Centre at the UWI, Cave Hill Campus, Dr. Keith Nurse, which is conducting the project, said it will look specifically at the areas of migration and remittances and how these affect the Caribbean and it will also examine how regional migration could be converted into a more strategic opportunity. The project is being conducted in collaboration with Carlton University in Canada. Nurse also explained that the Caribbean had moved from being a net importer of labour to a net exporter.

He noted that unlike much of the other research in the area, the project will identify specific strategic opportunities coming out of migration in the region, such as turning brain drain into brain circulation, instead of focusing only on the challenges. He explained that the Caribbean was in the top ten recipient areas of remittances in the world and the area most affected by brain drain in the world. Brain circulation would be “where we look at the possibilities for return migration as well as less physical movement, where we hire the services of people from the Diasporic communities to work within the region and beyond. Therefore, people in the areas of financial services, ICTs, education, and health professions were being targeted for the brain circulation,” he revealed.

Director of the IRDC, David Malone, who was on hand to participate in a signing ceremony for the project, noted that the
region had not benefited as much as it would from migration except through remittances, and said the study would examine what can be done to change this and to help countries to benefit more widely, and how the Diaspora could be encouraged to contribute. He also noted the importance of the knowledge sector and the provision of services through electronic needs.

Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Principal of UWI, Cave Hill Campus, Sir Hilary Beckles, noted the contribution of Caribbean migrants to the establishment of the colonies in the United States and said that the historical perspective must be kept on these issues. Further-more, he looked forward to the Shridath Ramphal Centre becoming a research centre of the highest quality.

Dr. Nurse also said that there were significant opportunities to be explored in the area of tourism by elements of the Diaspora because this market remained untapped. For the area of Diasporic tourism, as a component of the project, four Caribbean territories and four global cities have been targeted – the Dominican Republic/New York, Guyana/
Toronto, Jamaica/London, Suriname/Amsterdam, he said. (NC)

Indices

as of close 9/15/2009


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