Microsoft Teams

El Instituto's MA student, Ruth Edward's, is presenting their thesis presentation and everyone is welcome to join! Title: "A Home in Both Places: Gender, Afro-Caribbean Migration, and Transnational Homemaking in Central Brooklyn, 1924–1980" by Ruth Edwards. Brief Description:The history of Afro-Caribbean migration to New York City is often studied starting in 1965 with the post-racial promises of the Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act as it precedes the direct increase of Afro-Caribbeans moving abroad. This has framed the Caribbeanization of New York City as a later development, and obscured the ways that Afro-Caribbean women, who migrated before this period, cultivated transnational networks of care that have served as the structure for other migrants—family and not—who came before them, after them and persist in the present. Examining the lives of four Afro-Caribbean women through a historical lens, this thesis recognizes the role of gender in processes of transnational homemaking in Central Brooklyn as a way to build a picture of some of the dynamics which shaped Afro-Caribbean migration between the years of 1924 and 1980. I consider archival documents from The Martha Gayle Collection provided by The Center for Brooklyn History in order to illustrate Afro-Caribbean life during this time. Altogether, I argue that these stories depict a different landscape for Afro-Caribbean life, and the Caribbeanization of New York City, before the 1970s in ways that transform the ways in which we conceive of the lives of Afro-Caribbean women as they sustain transnational relationships and networks of migration beyond traditional economies