Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain

TLDR

The book examines how institutional forces such as employers, police, psychiatrists, and welfare services channel Caribbean diasporic communities into residential and occupational ghettos while also documenting their resilience and identity formation. It compiles essays by black women scholars and other contributors that analyze sexism, racism, employment patterns, cultural resilience, and the experiences of Indo-Caribbeans, psychiatry, and economic outcomes.

Abstract

This collection aims to reflect the varied experience of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain. The contributors set out to show how employers and police, psychiatrists and welfare services help to channel black people into residential and occupational ghettoes. They also show how within and against such oppressive conditions, black people in Britain have forged a new identity. The book includes several essays by black women, including work from Amina Mama and Claudette Williams on attempts to combat sexism and racism, and Gail Lewis on characteristic patterns of employment and unemployment with particular reference to black women. Cecil Gutzmore illuminates the Notting Hill Carnival, both as evidence of the resilience of the black community and as a focus for state and media racist formations. Other contributions include Steven Vertovec on the particular experience of Indo-Caribbeans within the black community, Errol Francis on the shocking experience of psychiatry on black people in Britain and Clive Harris, Bob Carter and Shirley Joshi on the economic destiny of Afro-Caribbeans in Britain.