Narratives of success among Irish and African Caribbean migrants

This paper compares the narratives of two men in midlife who migrated to the UK from Ireland and from the Caribbean as children, in the middle of the last century. We examine how success is narrated over the life course to show how migrants’ positioning of themselves differs from the ways in which they are positioned by outsiders, including in policy and public discourse. We conclude that while outsider narratives often polarise success and failure, insider understandings of success are dynamic and culturally and historically situated.     

‘Wasting mbeng’: Adventure and Trust Amongst sub-Saharan Migrants in Morocco

This article examines how irregular migrants from Central and Western Africa stranded in Morocco forged tenuous but essential relationships in the face of hostile and violent border politics constraining their mobility and resulting in systematic infringement of their rights. I examine the basis of trust amongst migrants in Morocco, who called themselves ‘adventurers’ on a quest for the ‘objective’ (e.g. ‘finding their lives’, usually through getting into Europe). Although most of them had embarked on individual journeys, they regularly needed to cooperate in order to face arduous living conditions and attempt crossing the border into Spain. The article demonstrates how trust was entangled not only with hostile migration politics but with regular moral conundrums as migrants needed to manage a balance between collaborating with other migrants and reaching their own ‘objective’.     

Family resemblance for anthropometric and blood pressure measurements in Black Caribs and Creoles from St. Vincent Island

This paper examines family resemblance for five anthropometric measurements (height, weight, triceps skinfold, upper arm circumference relaxed [UACR] and flexed [UACF] and for systolic and diastolic blood pressure in a group of adult Caribbean islanders of primarily African ancestry. Six hypotheses about family resemblance are tested by using path analysis and likelihood ratios. Significant intergenerational transmission is found only for height and UACR. For weight, UACF, and diastolic blood pressure, non-transmissible sibling resemblance is the primary component of family resemblance, although significant marital resemblance exists for diastolic blood pressure. Triceps skinfold and systolic blood pressure show no evidence of any family resemblance. Although results for highly heritable traits such as height are comparable to reports from other populations, measurements with a large contribution from common family environment or residual environmental effects, such as triceps skinfold or blood pressure, have much lower family resemblance in this population than in other populations. We hypothesize that this difference is due to the fact that adult children and their parents do not share a common household in this culture and to the presence of major nonfamilial environmental factors contributing to obesity and hypertension in this population.     

Dynamics of antibacterial activity in three species of Caribbean marine algae as a function of habitat and life history

Antibacterial activity of lipid extracts from three species of Caribbean marine algae, Spyridia filamentosa, S. hypnoides and Wrangelia bicuspidata was evaluated monthly for one year. Activities were tested for whole plant extracts and TLC-separable zones. Whole plant extracts demonstrated monthly variability in activity with respect to both habitat and life history phase in addition to periods of similarity. No consistency was seen regarding activity against different microorganisms. TLC analyses of the extracts led to the identification of twenty-seven chromatographically distinct regions (TLC zones) each from both S. filamentosa and S. hypnoides and twenty-five from W. bicuspidata, which demonstrated antimicrobial activity. Between these species, twenty-one active TLC zones appeared to be shared based on their similar chromatographic characteristics. Individual TLC zones also demonstrated variable activity throughout the sampling period with respect to habitat and life history phase as well as periods of similarity. Algal antibiosis in these species is recognized as being highly complex, involving numerous chemical compounds, each of which is highly variable in terms of its presence and/or probable concentration.     

Growth in Afro-Caribbean slave populations

Height data for African slave populations in Trinidad, Guyana and other British Caribbean colonies in the early nineteenth century are analyzed and compared with Cuban and United States slave populations. Slaves born in Trinidad and Cuba achieved final heights greater than their African-born parents, but those born in Guyana were shorter. Afro-Caribbean slaves living in sugar-producing colonies showed inferior growth compared to those living in colonies based on less arduous forms of economic activity, such as the Bahamas and Bermuda. The latter groups achieved heights similar to those of the United States slaves. Menarche occurred in the United States about 2 years earlier than in Trinidad. These differences in growth cannot be explained adequately by genetic variations in growth potential or by heterosis, but were a result of differences in nutrition, infection and work regime. Superior growth was associated with high rates of natural increase, whereas apparent stature reduction occurred in slave populations subject to the heaviest mortality. Modern Afro-Caribbean adult populations are about 10 cm taller than their genitor slave populations.     

Environmental measurement in schools: electronics in field studies

Increasing interest in environmental science as a school subject has led to the appearance of ‘environmental meters’ designed to measure conductivity, light level, oxygen concentration, pH, sound level, and temperature. Their uses and abuses are discussed and an insight given into the principles of measurement involved. Criteria for choosing suitable equipment are suggested and where possible cheaper alternatives are mentioned.     

Diversity of mud-dauber wasps (Hymenoptera: Crabronidae: Trypoxylon Latreille) in a secondary forest of Trinidad,West Indies

Over a two-year period we operated two intercept traps for flying insects near and within a well-developed secondary forest in the Arima Valley of Trinidad. These yielded 368 Trypoxylon, representing 30 species. The sample’s Shannon–Wiener diversity of H′ = 2.61 is higher than that from a comparable study of Trypoxylon on the smaller island of Tobago (15 species, H′ = 2.09) and the even smaller Little Tobago (six species, H′ = 1.41). Analysis of the samples by the Chao1 method suggests that the species numbers recorded on the two smaller islands are complete, while there is at least one additional species at the Trinidad locality. The four most abundant species in our samples show no evident bias in numbers of females between the wet and dry seasons, consistent with the hypothesis that at least these species nest throughout the year.