On Haiti's diaspora

It's difficult to underestimate the tragedy of Tuesday's earthquake in Haiti. I first learned of the catastrophe in the comments of this Marginal Revolution post, where Tyler Cowen was talking about how tourism was slowly taking off. With tens of thousands of dead and the country's infrastructure and capital destroyed, it's difficult to see how Haiti can recover.

If it does, the Haitian diaspora will play a critical role in financing a recovery. Haiti, like other Caribbean countries, is an island nation with a history defined by demographics: the destruction of the indigenous populations, the forced settlement of African slaves and the migration of Europeans attracted by prosperity of the sugar economy, followed by economic decline and migration. Haiti's independence came quite early, as African slaves revolted against brutal French rule and held off successive invaders for more than a century to become the second independent state of the Americas and the first modern black republic. Perhaps because of the subsequent depopulation--perhaps a third of the country's population died in the war--and Haiti's self-identification as a homeland for the African diaspora, the nation was briefly a destination for free African-American immigrants. By the early 20th century, Haiti's terrible poverty and political instability changed this altogether, with the beginnings of seasonal migration to the sugar cane fields of Cuba and the Dominican Republic, followed by a shift to North America.

The population growth rate in Haiti's rural areas has been lower than the rate for urban areas, even though fertility rates are higher in rural areas. The main reason for this disparity is outmigration. People in rural areas have moved to cities, or they have emigrated to other countries, mostly the United States and the Dominican Republic. An estimated 1 million people left Haiti between 1957 and 1982.

Many of the emigrants in the 1950s and the 1960s were urban middle-class and upper-class opponents of the government of François Duvalier (1957-71). Throughout the 1970s, however, an increasing number of rural and lower-class urban Haitians emigrated, too. In the 1980s, as many as 500,000 Haitians were living in the United States; there were large communities in New York, Miami, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Thousands of Haitians also illegally emigrated to the United States through nonimmigrant visas, while others entered the United States without any documentation at all.

The first reports of Haitians' arriving in the United States, by boat and without documentation, occurred in 1972. Between 1972 and 1981, the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) reported more than 55,000 Haitian "boat people" arrived in Florida. The INS estimated that because as many as half of the arrivals escaped detection, the actual number of boat people may have exceeded 100,000. An unknown number of Haitians are reported to have died during their attempts to reach the United States by sea.

Though poorer than earlier immigrants, the boat people were often literate and skilled, and all had families who could afford the price of a passage to Florida. About 85 percent of these boat people settled in Miami.

[. . .]

Since the early twentieth century, the Dominican Republic has received both temporary and permanent Haitian migrants. The International Labour Office estimated that between 200,000 and 500,000 Haitians resided in the Dominican Republic in 1983. About 85,000 of them lived on cane plantations. In the early 1980s, about 80 to 90 percent of the cane cutters in the Dominican Republic were reported to be Haitians. Through an accord with the Haitian government, the Dominican Republic imported Haitian workers to cut cane. In 1983 the Dominican Republic hired an estimated 19,000 workers. Evidence presented to the United Nations (UN) Working Group on Slavery revealed that the Dominican Republic paid wages that were miserably low and that working and living conditions failed to meet standards set by the two governments. According to some reports, Haitian cane cutters were unable to leave their workplaces, and they were prevented from learning about the terms of the contracts under which they had been hired.

Emigration helped moderate Haiti's population growth. Furthermore, annual remittances from abroad, estimated to be as high as US$100 million, supported thousands of poor families and provided an important infusion of capital into the Haitian economy. At the same time, emigration resulted in a heavy loss of professional and skilled personnel from urban and rural areas.

The continued immiseration of the Haitian economy after the 1980s has certainly not decrease the economic incentive for leaving the country, even with the ever-present risk of death, most recently evidenced by a 2009 shipwreck of a boat of Haitian migrants in the Turks and Caicos. What former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide called the tenth département plays a critical role in Haiti's economy. Migration helps ameliorate terribly low level of human development with remittances providing funding for children's education, while consumption of goods plays a critical role.

Where do Haitians live? Haitians live in the countries with which they have foreign relations, with the United States, with the Dominican Republic, with its Caribbean neighbours, with Francophone aid partners like Canada/Québec and France. The modern diaspora is concentrated particularly in North America, with major concentration of Haitian migrants in the United States in New York City and Florida's Miami-Dade County, in the latter community, geographically closest to Haiti, most visibly in the Little Haiti neighbourhood. The Haitian diaspora in Canada is concentrated overwhelmingly in Québec. Québec's historically close relations with Haiti, the other large officially Francophone society in the Americas, a traditional destination for Québec's foreign aid and a source of Francophone immigrants. Canada's Governor-General, Michaëlle Jean, was born in Haiti herself. More than 1400 Canadians are missing in Haiti. The islands of the French Caribbean also have large numbers of migrants. In the Dominican Republic, meanwhile, pervasive racism renders the lives of Haitians and of Dominicans of Haitian descent exceptionally difficult. In 1937, in fact, Trujillo's genocidal Paisley Massacre killed tens of thousands of Haitians in the Dominican Republic, as chillingly described by Edwidge Danticat in her 1999 novel The Farming of Bones.

Haitians in the diaspora, especially those of foreign citizenship, as observed in 2005 by Ericq Pierre, face a difficult situation, with suspected disloyalty coexisting with their homeland's dependence on their prestige and their moneys.

Although the legislation on nationality leaves many issues open, things are even more complex on the emotional level. It appears that when you change your nationality, for any reason, you somehow feel still more Haitian, still more deeply a native son, especially if you keep some roots in the country. Unfortunately, in the eyes of current laws, one is not completely so. It’s unfair; it’s frustrating; but that’s the way it is until the rules of the game are changed.

The naturalized Haitian feels in his heart that he has never stopped being Haitian, so he generally pays little attention to the legal ramifications that his naturalized condition can have for him in Haiti itself. When he is in Haiti, he rarely wears his adopted nationality on his sleeve. He generally reveals it only when forced to do so, and only to get out of a tight situation. Some even hide it like a shameful disease.

There are several reasons for this, of which a few are rightfully linked to the uncertain status of the naturalized person who returns to live in his native country. A naturalized person is assured to stay in his adoptive country, not return to live near-permanently in his native country. That carries clear risks. These “hybrid” countrymen, who are not entirely Haitian nor entirely foreign, are more often than you would think victims of the arbitrary and high-handed behavior so common in Haiti. In addition, Haitian politicians are suspicious of a member of the diaspora who wants to go into politics. They consider him as taking the foreigner’s side.

Don’t they say that there was an unwritten rule under the François Duvalier regime that allowed those exiled Haitians who wanted to go into politics to quickly be regranted their citizenship as soon as they set foot back on Haitian soil? Unfortunately, the idea behind this “generosity” was the power to throw these exiles into prison with no obligation to report to the authorities of their adopted country. Thus, more people than we think have fallen victim to their dual nationality.

In fact, not until the adoption of the legislation governing the privileges granted to native Haitians and their descendants who have acquired another nationality ( Ref: Le Moniteur of August 12, 2002 and Claude Moise Editorial in Le Matin of October 7-10, 2005), it was obvious that Haitians who have adopted a foreign nationality were among the members of the universal diaspora the ones who were the most downtrodden and abused by the laws of their country of origin. But other forms of exclusion are still in force. The Haitian authorities seem to be interested in them only when they bring back awards for excellence or when they send money. Then they rush to invite them to Haiti to appear in public with them and exhibit them proudly as very special specimens of Ayiti Toma.

If Haiti is to recover, it will need foreign help, including help from its diaspora. It certainly will grow larger: Canada has already fast-tracked Haitian immigrants, while pressure towards the same end is growing in the United States. In the end, a Haiti detached from the globalized economy by its poverty can only be aided by being brought back into globalization's networks. These include globalization's migratory networks.

On Russian immigration to China and false common knowledge about demographics

I've earlier blogged about the slim likelihood that Chinese immigrants are going to "colonize' and take over the Russian Far East. In the final installment of a five-part Foreign Policy/Slate series on China's role in Russian border zones, Joshua Kucera suggests that the balance of power between the two countries is such that, rather than Chinese populating Russia, Russians are moving across the Amur to a dynamic China.

In 1989, the opening of the border between Russia and China raised Russian fears of a "yellow peril": millions of Chinese citizens flooding north into relatively unpopulated, but richly endowed, Siberia. Some contrarian publications even went so far as to suggest that Russia should just accept the inevitable and sell the whole territory to China.

Demographically, it makes sense that Chinese people would flock to Russia. Look at it in economic terms, though: China's economy is booming, and its prospects seem limitless. Meanwhile, Russia is highly dependent on uncertain oil and natural gas reserves. Professionals already make more money in China than they do in Russia, and as China's economy grows, blue-collar wages will likely outpace Russian pay. So, rather than Chinese people moving to Russia, isn't it more likely that Russians would move to China?

I asked this question of many Russians in the Far East, and I usually got the same answer: It's already happening. Thus far, the Russian migration to China seems to be only a trickle. But it's not hard to imagine that this is just the start.

The energy in Suifenhe, a relative backwater, is so much greater than in Vladivostok-a city three times the size-that taking the four-hour bus trip across the border is like switching from black-and-white to color. The road from Vladivostok becomes progressively worse the closer you get to the border, and the land is almost empty of people. As soon as you cross the border into China, there is a massive shopping mall with red cupolas, an apparent nod to Russian architecture, and an international-standard Holiday Inn.

The mall is part of what was supposed to be a joint Chinese-Russian free-trade zone, where people would be able to come to shop and tour visa-free. But all Russia has built on its side of the border is a church, which Chinese tourists photograph through the chain-link fence.

The day I arrived was one of the biggest celebrations in recent Chinese history: the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Still, at the many construction projects around the city's center, workers were on the job until after dark. I thought back to Vladivostok, where a huge suspension bridge is under construction. It is supposed to be ready by 2012, when the city plays host to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Ostensibly, this is a priority project overseen from Moscow, but when I mentioned to my translator that I hadn't seen anyone working on it, she smiled. "Yes," she said. "We notice that all the time."

Heilongjiang, for all that its economy suffers from a predominance of heavy industry, is attractive indeed.

But in addition to the many Russian tourists, there is a growing population of Russian expatriates living in Suifenhe. One, a journalist named Stanislav Bystritski, is a former reporter for a Vladivostok TV station. He moved here five years ago and produces two Russian-language shows on local Suifenhe TV, one oriented toward Russian tourists and one for Chinese people who want to learn about Russia and the Russian language.

[. . .]

He echoed what I had heard in Blagoveshchensk and Vladivostok-Russians come to China because it is easier to get a good job and easier to do business. "So many Russian businessmen say it's easier to work here, there is so much less corruption and bureaucracy," he said.

and

Viktor, a Russian engineer who moved here at the beginning of 2008, is working on a pollution-control technology that has excited more interest in China than it did in Russia. "The Chinese are more interested in innovative projects, so there are more opportunities here," he said. His wife, Natasha, works as a technician with Suifenhe's pioneering (and, to a civil libertarian, rather ominous) "electronic security" system, in which surveillance cameras all over town are controlled from a spotless control room in a glass-fronted building called the Suifenhe Cyberport. She says she wants her 4-year-old son to be raised "in Chinese traditions," and she is making sure he learns Chinese.

"People are so friendly here, I feel so comfortable," she said. "This is my new home."

None of this is controversial. People regularly move from places with relatively few opportunities to places with more opportunities all the time, even if it means crossing national borders and any number of cultural boundaries. Chinese contract workers may, as I noted earlier, work in the Russian Far East for extended peridos of time, while Russians may move across the border.

I am struck by Kucera's sentence "Demographically, it makes sense that Chinese people would flock to Russia." How does that work? If the income gap was in Russia's favour, if Chinese migrants had unrestricted access to Russian border areas, and if labour mobility in the Russian Far East was such that Russians didn't move in while Chinese stayed, you might have a Sinicized Russian Far East. If Russia itself was an attractive destination for Chinese migrants, things would look different indeed. But it isn't, and I'm left perplexed by Kucera's use of the word "demographically." Nothing in income differences, fertility rates, or migration trends would predict massive Chinese migration north. Heilongjiang's 30 millions outnumber the people of the Russian Far East five-to-one and live in a province with a much higher population density, but population density is irrelevant to migration: does Germany's high population density propel mass migrations to less densely populated France and Poland?

Demographics matter. People who pay attention to demographics, it must be noted yet again, should take care to examine common knowledge to see if it actually reflects what's going on. Chinese immigration to Russia is but a single example of this.

How emigration made Barbados rich

The Caribbean Sea's islands are perfect arenas for the study of the interactions between populations and economies. The Caribbean Sea's integration into the world economy in the 15th and 16th centuries saw complete replacement of the pre-Columbian population by vast numbers of migrants, voluntary and otherwise, from Africa and Europe, these migrants forming slavery-based plantation societies which played critical roles in sustaining Old World economies. The decline of these economies over the 19th and 20th centuries, as slavery's abolition diminished the superexploitation of local labour forces and competitors arose on continental mainlands, triggered new waves of migration, as contract labourers came from parts of the world as distant as India and Indonesia and, later, as relatively and absolutely large numbers of migrants left for colonial and quasi-colonial metropoles: the United States, Canada, Britain, France. Even as large and historically prosperous a country as Cuba has seen massive emigration, of such a volume that like its neighbour Jamaica its population is projected to decline over the next few decades. The generally small and relatively isolated economies of the Caribbean islands, along with continued strong ties to metropoles, is sure to encourage large-scale emigration and sustained underdevelopment.

Barbados, however, is an exception. A high-income economy that has helped Barbados become a prosperous regional centre for banking and tourism, Barbados is a relatively small island state that has managed to beat the odds. How? Over at his excellent blog, Noel Maurer has written a four-part examination (1, 2, 3, 4) of the question of how Barbados, a century ago a neglected British colonial basket case on the verge of state failure, managed to escape this. It turns out that the mass recruitment of Barbadian workers to work on the Panama Canal may have been key.

By 1913, the Isthmian Canal Commission had brought in 19,900 Barbadians, not including the many women who followed their husbands and a continuing (if less well-recorded) migration as construction work continued after the Panama Canal’s offical opening in 1914. In fact, the Canal would not be fully open to commercial traffic until 1920.

The ultimate migration turned out to be much bigger than 19,900. In 1901, Barbados had a population of 195,558. In 1921, it had a population of only 156,744. Extrapolating from existing birth and death rates, the population of the island should have been 220,412 in 1921, implying a net outmigration of 64,000 people.

The departure of so many workers had the effect of boosting wages in for the workers remaining in Barbados, while the remittances sent back by the helped transform the country.

First, it bolstered the growth of smallholders. In 1897, an estimated 8,500 small proprietors held a bit less than 10,000 acres. By 1912, 13,152 smallholders owned plots. Assuming that the average size of holding remained constant, this represented an increase in smallholder ownership of 5500 acres, or over 22 square kilometers, five percent of the land area of Barbados. By 1929, the number of smallholding households had further increased to 17,731. Land ownership on the island remained astoundingly concentrated, but the percentage of Barbadians who owned property rose from 18% in 1897 to 40% by 1929.

Second, it supercharged the Barbadian banking system. Barbadians opened 16,094 new accounts in government savings banks between 1906 and 1913, and deposits increased 88%. In 1920, deposits per person surpassed $11. That was a level of financial penetration about half of contemporary Spain and two-thirds of Italy; very high for a country as poor as Barbados. It prefigured the island’s emergence as a regional banking center a half-century later.

Third, it prompted the emergence of a Barbadian social insurance state. The “friendly society” served as a form of insurance pool. For a weekly fee of 10 to 12 pence, the societies provided their members with sickness insurance, unemployment insurance, death benefits, free scholarships to household members, and an annual “bonus.” In 1901, there were 101 societies; between 1907 and 1910 a further 110 were founded, peaking at 260 in 1920. Their membership grew from 13,933 in 1904 to 46,207 in 1920. The 1921 census found that 156,312 people lived in households belonging to a friendly society. That was 94 percent of the population. Alongside the friendlies were the “landships,” which provided similar services along with ceremonial drills and uniforms modeled on the Royal Navy. Infant mortality continued to lag the rest of the Caribbean until the 1950s, but the societies aided a huge increase in literacy, to 93 percent by 1946.

With a more egalitarian distribution of property and wealth, and increasing economic and social capital generally, Barbados was able to prosper in a way that its once-peer Jamaica could not. After Barbados became independent, sound macroeconomic policies helped the country continue to develop, and incidentally develop the demographic profile of a developed society.

In the past, emigration played a large role in stabilizing Barbados' population. From the end of World War II until the 1970s, Barbados exported its unemployed, as did the Windward Islands. Between 1946 and 1980, its rate of population growth was diminished by one-third because of emigration to Britain. The United States replaced Britain as the primary destination of emigrants in the 1960s because of Britain's restriction on West Indian immigration.

In spite of continued emigration, Barbados began to experience a net inflow of workers in 1970, most coming from other Eastern Caribbean islands. By 1980 demographic figures began to stabilize because migration to Barbados had lessened, probably for economic reasons, and a relatively small natural population growth rate had been achieved. By the mid-1980s, expected real growth rates, adjusted for migration, remained below 1 percent.

Barbados' example is a fascinating one, inasmuch as it demonstrate the potential of migration to transform its sending society. A century ago, Barbados was a poor island overpopulated relative to its economic capacity; now, the legacies of a mass migration have helped the country become a rich, desirable destination, transcending the insular status that would have hampered its growth. I think it's accurate to say that in an ideal world, one marked by the unhindered mobility of labour between sending and receiving countries, Barbados' example could be replicated around the world. By definition, after all, migrant-sending countries and regions are sources of immigrants because they lack opportunities for their workers, and certainly the prospects of labour shortages in those countries well advanced in the demographic transition could create gaps. Again judging by Barbados' example, it's probably those relatively small countries and regions with relatively close and positive ties to migrant-receiving countries that will prosper the most. Perhaps Moldova and Albania will manage to rocket into the First World quickly after all.