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Last Updated: Feb 6, 2017 - 2:32:04 PM |
School of English Studies, Associate Professor, Dr. Ian Strachan presented on Mules or Men: Haitian Migrants, Identity, Citizenship and Security in 21st Century Bahamas.
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Nassau, BAHAMAS - “Bahamians have very established ideas about statelessness, immigrants and who is a Bahamian,” expressed Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett, Associate Professor in the School of English Studies and organiser of 21st Century Slavery in The Bahamas: A Discussion on Statelessness. The panel discussion organized in conjunction with the School of Social Sciences focused on pressing national issues including immigration, statelessness and trafficking, and their implications on The Bahamas.
Trafficking in The Bahamas
“We tend to look at women who are trafficked into The Bahamas as jezebels because they are in prostitution, but why are they being prostituted? How are they prostituted? Are they there of their own free will?” questioned Dr. Bethell-Bennett during his presentation entitled Slave or Jezebel: 21st Century Trafficking in The Bahamas. “Bahamians categorically say, they are bad and need to be deported. A few weeks ago, there was a raid on a club on West Bay Street. How many of us asked whether these women were being trafficked or were they there under their own volition? Nobody. These women were whisked away in a heartbeat and we were not even able to interview them. If we do not talk to these people, how do we know what is really going on? Is it that we don’t care what is going on or we just wish to brush it under the carpet?”
“Often times, there is a misconception about trafficking and smuggling,” said Bahamas Crisis Centre, Deputy Director Mrs. Donna Nichols during her presentation on Responding To Victims of Trafficking.
Trafficking of persons is a crime in which traffickers profit from the exploitation of an individual by luring the victims to a place where he or she can be controlled. Often it begins as a false promise of an opportunity, the person is promised a good job, and then is forced into dangerous or illegal activity. Trafficking is a crime against the person; the trafficker may have legal or illegal documents. Whereas, smuggling is a crime against the state, the smuggler always has illegal documents that are false or stolen.
“We as a country and as a people have not really given trafficking any attention until recently. It’s has been happening in The Bahamas for a long time…you have a child that is sent from the Family Island to come and stay with a relative here in Nassau and the guardian decides that this is what that child will have to do; the child doesn’t have any rights,” explained Mrs. Nichols. She explained further, “A person may choose to come to another country to make quick money by choosing to be a prostitute. However, upon arrival, the person’s passport may be taken away and they are then at the bidding of the people they work for”.
PhD. candidate at the University of Connecticut, Ms. Kristy Belton presented on Statelessness and Stranded in The Bahamas
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The National Task Force on Trafficking in Persons currently has representatives from several government entities, non-governmental organisations, community and faith-based groups including the Bahamas Crisis Centre. The taskforce has the responsibility to take necessary action in dealing with trafficking matters from the time a trafficking victim is identified to the trafficker’s prosecution.
“When responding to victims of trafficking, we have to deal with the rights of the person. As a committee, we are currently being trained to deal with victims as well as the protocols to ensure that the victim comes into contact with the police, social services, counseling etc. and that these entities are trained to assist the victims while making sure to secure their confidentially,” explained Mrs. Nichols.
Statelessness in The Bahamas
According to PhD. candidate at the University of Connecticut, Ms. Kristy Belton, a stateless person recognized by international law is one who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law. During her presentation on Statelessness and Stranded in The Bahamas, she further explained what statelessness means in a global perspective while placing it in the Bahamian context. “Most of the time we are actually confusing undocumented people with stateless people and they are not necessarily the same. There are two different kinds or groups of stateless persons that exist that are recognized in international law or international fora: stateless de jure (in law) and stateless de facto (in practice).The distinction between de jure and de facto statelessness is that de jure stateless people are not considered as nationals under the laws of any country, while de facto statelessness occurs when a person formally possesses a nationality, but the nationality is ineffective. There are two conventions that exist that deal with statelessness, neither of which The Bahamas has signed or ratified,” she explained.
“We are looking at not just what said in a constitution or nationality law but under the operation of a state’s law. Not what is said in theory or on paper but in practice…there is an estimated 12 million stateless people globally and these are the de jure stateless, those who they think are not recognized as nationals by any state nationally under the operation of its law.”
Haitian Immigration Situation
A sculpture by John Beadle depicting a man wearing a mule’s mask, with a mask in his hand while standing on a boat inspired School of English Studies, Associate Professor, Dr. Ian Strachan to present on Haitian and Bahamian relations under the topic Mules or Men: Haitian Migrants, Identity, Citizenship and Security in 21st Century Bahamas. “I like this piece; this man is on a journey. I spoke to the artist and he said he was reflecting on migration from the perspective of a son of a Jamaican immigrant to The Bahamas. For me, it’s hard for me not to see Haitian migration; for me it is the face of the immigrant and the role they play and the masks they wear.”
Another piece Dr. Strachan noted entitled, Working in Another Man’s Yard depicts more than 250 machetes dangling from the ceiling. Dr. Strachan perceives that the sculpture expresses anxieties about the Haitian immigrant community. “It speaks to the stereotypes and anxieties that we have associated with the Haitian immigrant. Some are not of our own creation but we dive into them wholeheartedly; one is that they come from a violent society and this will be unleashed on us…or perhaps our view of the Haitian migrant who largely comes to do agricultural labour and landscaping. But I look at it in a more foreboding way - this descent of cutlasses symbolizes real anxiety of violence or backlash,” say Dr. Strachan.
He continued his discussion by reading an excerpt on Bahamian citizenship written by School of Social Sciences, Associate Professor, Dr. Nicolette Bethel that describes our citizenship laws as a complex web of conditions. “There is nothing simple about belonging to our nation…you are a Bahamian if you are born of a Bahamian father, if you are born in The Bahamas, if you are born before 1973, if your Bahamian mother did not marry a non-Bahamian father. If we were dealing with a genetic theory here, the Bahamian gene would be classified as curiously recessive,” he reads. “There is a confidence lacking from our identity, a confidence that is found in the Haitian or the American definition of citizenship. In those countries there is a sense of pride, not paranoia about deciding who belongs where…why then, when deciding who is a Bahamian citizen, do we have all those conditions?”
Dr. Strachan continued his discussion about the fears Bahamians have regarding a takeover by the growing population of Haitian nationals despite the fact that Haitians have been migrating to these shores for more than a century. He added that Bahamians perceive the manual labour jobs Haitians perform on a daily basis as being beneath them as they [Bahamians] move up in social standing.
A lively, informed and engaging question and answer period followed the presentations.
The College’s impending transition to The University of The Bahamas requires continuous robust research agenda with opportunities for exchanges through symposia and fora. It is hoped that further discussions on statelessness, immigration and trafficking will be expounded in 2013.
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