The regional politics of scale: revisiting the functional aspects of the labour market dualism

Abstract

This article seeks to revisit Arthur Lewis’s theory of labour market dualism, while focusing on human resource development in the form of labour productivity, to explain its usefulness in the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) contemporary policy discourses around non-economic integration in an era that is now classified as the Caribbean Educational Policy Space. The focus is on how key assumptions around labour productivity, and the lessons that can be deduced from analysing historical and contemporary policy initiatives, present plausible applicability to an expanding Caribbean single market and the proposed creation of the Caribbean single economy. In focusing on the discursive elements of labour productivity, it is contextualized that the free movement of skilled labour within CARICOM illustrates labour market dualism.

Keywords:

• CARICOM
• small island
• labour dualism
• labour productivity
• Lewis module Caribbean Educational Policy Space

Notes

1. This is also referred to as the ‘informal sector’, ‘traditional sector’, ‘agricultural sector’, ‘rural sector’ (see Fields, 2004) or ‘productive workers’ (Smith, 1776) and is defined as ‘that part of the economy which uses reproducible capital, and pays capitalists for the use thereof’ (Lewis, 1954, p. 146).

2. This is also referred as ‘formal sector’, ‘modern sector’, ‘industrial sector’, or ‘urban sector’ (see Fields, 2004) and ‘is that part of the economy that is not using reproducible capital’ (Lewis, 1954, p. 146).

3. Field (2004) sees the dual economy as being separate sectors.

4. Based on the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, CARICOM is built upon four pillars—functional cooperation, economic integration, foreign policy coordination and security (added in 2007). However, functional cooperation is recognized as the non-economic mechanism of integration because it focused on deepening relations in functional areas such as education, heath and transportation.

5. For Smith (1965), the plural societies of the Caribbean revolved around the coexistence of ethnic groups with their own set of social institutions—family systems, productive economies, languages and religion—while the political system is controlled by a different group. For Smith, Caribbean pluralism owed its existence to external factors and lack of a common social will.

6. The UNASUR Constitutive Treaty of 2008 combining two existing customs unions, the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) and the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) with the aim of competing with ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America), which was developed as an alternative to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and viewed as the political project of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

7. Members of CELAC: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.

8. Haiti, Suriname and St Lucia were admitted to ALBA in 2012.

9. Dominica joined in 2008, and Antigua and Barbuda and St Vincent and the Grenadines joined in 2009.

10. CARICOM members include: Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.

11. The Puerto Rican strategy called ‘Operation Bootstrap’ was based on drawing US entrepreneurs to the island in order to provide private investment, social capital and infrastructure bankrolled through the sale of US bonds. Additionally, US firms were persuaded to locate industrial sites there through elaborate incentives programmes that gave tax concessions, grants, subsidized rentals and utility rates and low wage rates.

12. The political differences between member states stemmed from their differing economic and political beliefs. This pluralism led to the socialist experiments in: Guyana, guided by Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham, prime minister from 1966 to 1980 and president from 1980 to 1985; Jamaica, aided by Prime Minister Michael Norman Manley from 1972 to 1980; and Grenada, under Prime Minister Maurice Rupert Bishop from 1979 to 1983.