Structured Adaptation of Black Migrants from the Caribbean: An Examination of an Indigenous Banking System in Brooklyn

HE ISLANDS IN THE WEST INDIES can be considered as migrationoriented societies since migration always has been an important feature of the economic, social and political history of these countries. In the early part of this century, West Indians migrated in large numbers to Panama to help build the Panama Canal as well as to other parts of Latin America, especially Cuba. Then, after the Second World War, another wave of migration began with the migrants going mainly to the United Kingdom. This reached its peak in the 1950s. Most of these migrants, who were mainly Jamaicans, freely migrated to Britain, regardless of their skills, because they were British citizens. Although in 1962 Britain enacted an immigration law which virtually choked off the flow of West Indians to that country, another escape valve opened for them in 1965 when amendments to the United States Immigration and Nationality Act eliminated the national origins quota system and granted Western Hemisphere countries, including the West Indies, non quota status. Thus, West Indian migration to the United States increased from 4,000 in 1962 to over 20,000 in 1971.1 Most of these immigrants chose to settle in New York City and it is in the borough of Brooklyn that they established their ethnic villages.2 This paper focuses on a specific institution, rotating credit associations, found in the countries of origin and transplanted to Brooklyn. It also attempts to answer the following question: What are the relations of these associations to the larger credit and banking system in Brooklyn? Are they used independently or in conjunction with credit institutions of a similar nature? Rotating credit associations are here defined as Associations formed by a core of participants who agree to make regular contributions to a fund which is given in whole, or in part, to each contributor in rotation.3 Rotation and regularity are therefore the two essential criteria used to differentiate these associations from similar ones like lodges, mutual benefit clubs, etc.