ports of entry: language in caribbean migrations
The Caribbean is one of the world’s most mobile regions, and its cultures, societies, and political trajectories have been deeply shaped by intra-regional migratory flows. It is also considerably multilingual, with over 245 languages spoken and signed in the region, including varieties of colonial European languages as well as many unique Creole languages and contact varieties that are not spoken anywhere else in the world. Caribbean immigrants and refugees therefore encounter a dizzying array of languages–and language policies–as they move through the region. However, academic treatments of Caribbean migration often overlook the depth and complexity that linguistic issues add to the experience, despite the fact that building a new life in a new country is a major challenge in which language plays a pivotal role.
Dominican Republic
Ports of Entry: Language in Caribbean Migrations (forthcoming, University Press of Mississippi) is an anthology which situates language as one of the central forces shaping experiences of immigration and diaspora in the Caribbean. Through seven detailed case studies, the contributors demonstrate how different Caribbean societies are grappling with issues of language change, unequal linguistic policies, heritage language reclamation, and belonging in the face of rapidly shifting demographics. These essays take the reader to present-day Puerto Rico, Guyana, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Belize, and New Orleans to see how individuals and families are negotiating shifting language practices and the emergence of new cultural and social identities.
Though the Caribbean is often approached and examined in linguistic blocks (i.e. Anglophone, Francophone, etc.), authors in the volume highlight how language consistently transgresses, crosses and defies these inherited colonial boundaries. The extensive cultural and linguistic overlap that migration has produced (and continues to produce) in modern Caribbean societies problematizes the long-held perception of the region as being made up of independent and isolated linguistic zones.
