Prolegomenon: Glocality at the bus terminal: space and the enactment of transnational citizenships

Abstract

This paper is an initial examination the significance of spatial relations to the constitution of transnational citizenships. Specifically, the paper explores practices of place and space in a Barbadian bus terminal. This terminal is a rich site at which citizens, migrants, state managers and economic elites contest the meanings of both Barbadian citizenship and the Caribbean regional integration movement. It is an integration movement prompted, in part, by the imperatives of globalization – trading blocs are a matter of survival. Yet the movement of people that is facilitated by this regional project is made even more complex by those colonial legacies of international migrations – forced and otherwise – which have shaped race relations in the region.

Keywords:

• globalization
• Barbados
• Caribbean
• space
• citizenship
• regional integration

Notes

1. Citizens of Barbados are known as either Barbadians or Bajans.

2. Bajan nation language pronounces ‘for’ fuh; but sound it out, you'll get Malik's point.

3. I say for/against because many of the policy decisions taken cannot be viewed as emerging from a monolithic state with an unrepentantly negative agenda. Many of the decisions are made in dialogue with the vendors, many of the decisions are taken with a view to improving the livelihood of vendors.

4. Caribbean citizens will often go shopping in metropolitan locations such as Miami and fill suitcases or a barrel to have the products shipped back to the Caribbean to be resold.