People migrate to survive. Not only for betterment. This is evident in the comparatively small numbers of Venezuelan nationals in Trinidad and Tobago since 2018. Venezuelan migrants have fled to T&T for a chance at a better life; working to provide money for family members at home and trying to survive in both countries. At present, Response for Venezuelans estimates that there are approximately 31,000 “protected refugees and migrants” from Venezuela in Trinidad and Tobago and more than four million in Latin America and the Caribbean, with almost two million people in Colombia alone.
There has been a great deal of public attention — positive as well as negative, and in terms of the latter, both soft xenophobia and overt vitriol — surrounding this recent Venezuelan presence in T&T. We worry that the basic motivation for survival — to stay alive and to meet basic needs for food, shelter and safety — among migrants, refugees and asylum seekers is being overlooked in these public debates.
Ernesto’s (name changed to protect his identity) family is one such example. He and his brother live in a rented two-bedroom apartment in urban Trinidad. Focusing on his struggles to survive, rather than how he got to Trinidad, Ernesto, his brother, his brother’s wife and their two children braved the ocean in inflatable dinghies, risking the short yet choppy journey across the ocean from Venezuela.
Shortly after settling in the neighbourhood in Trinidad, Ernesto confronted hostile verbal responses from locals, ordering him to “go back” from where he came, while he did routine activities such as going to the neighbourhood shop and walking around trying to find odd jobs. Even though his landlord was “amable” (nice) and his apartment sufficient, these encounters were disquieting and threatening, Ernesto explained.
Currently, migrants from Venezuela are the main scapegoats in Trinidad. They are blamed for ills like introducing COVID-19 to the country, rising unemployment and decreasing wages. Stereotypes around the drug trade are tied into narratives of their involvement in crime. And they are blamed for the break-up of marriages, with migrant women constructed as loose and amoral, “stealing” supposedly upstanding local men from Trinbagonian women.
Macroeconomic conditions matter too in contextualising this cultural framing. T&T’s well-developed oil and natural gas industry is subject to international commodity price fluctuations. In addition to economic depression and recession in the past five years, COVID-19 has contributed to decline. While government data is limited, unemployment and underemployment are visible and acute problems. These conditions make it easy to criminalise certain groups of migrants, such as those who arrive by boat from Venezuela.
Arguably, Venezuelans have replaced migrants from Guyana and the Eastern Caribbean who were drawn to the prospects for work in oil and its derivatives from the early 20th century, and likewise previously labelled as bad foreigners and categorised as illegals. But it is the migrants who are trying to survive who confront the brunt of such micro-prejudices and state policies on detention and deportation — not those who are better positioned to mitigate the risks of migration and resettlement, while the government also offers migrant registration schemes to benefit from their labour.
It wasn’t until Ernesto’s labour benefited the community (working odd jobs around people’s home for little money or in construction) that the harsh words receded. Before the pandemic, Ernesto celebrated: “these days I work at construction. The boss friend building a new house.” It is unclear the kind of work Ernesto did when he lived in Venezuela, but since living in Trinidad, he’s shown skilled hands for construction, masonry, and painting. But the quality of his work isn’t reflected in the thickness of his pockets. “Two hundred, señor” he says, is the most he’s made in a day, explaining that he may work three days a week on average.
After Ernesto and his brother (who does the same kind of work) combine their income to pay the rent, the monthly sum is less than what is reasonably required to support a small family. Ernesto is satisfied, though, because his earnings can sometimes surpass minimum wage earnings in Trinidad – TT$17.50/hour. He also supports an ailing mother in Venezuela. But the perennial dark cloud over his hopeful sky is that work sometimes doesn’t come at all.
When Trinidad and Tobago’s government ordered all construction to be halted due to the pandemic, Ernesto’s weekly earnings evaporated. As neither he nor any member of his family is a national, there was no way to access government social programmes for financial assistance. Wearing a face mask and carrying a bottle of water, Ernesto would walk from door-to-door seeking small jobs to help feed his family. In July 2020, he decided to tell his landlord to cut the electricity. He would no longer be able to pay for the luxury of light or cool air. He preferred his family to sweat in the still, dark night – sheltered – than brave the street.
But amid his strife, some strangers in his neighbourhood reached out to help. He developed a sense of indebtedness to them for helping to pay his rent, bills and giving him food. Outside of Ernesto’s neighbourhood also, community groups have come together and organised food collection and delivery to Venezuelan families across Trinidad. The community bonds formed in Ernesto’s neighbourhood that complemented the capitalist demands for waged labour also starkly contrast to the popular attitude of a local-foreign dichotomy.
As Ernesto explained, “I have food now, señor. And my daughter is happy,” proudly showing photos of the toys she received for Christmas. For now, Ernesto can provide for his family. But at any moment that can change. If his landlord finds himself a member of the anti-migrant mob, if his boss is unable to find him work, if state authorities decide to exercise callousness and disregard for international humanitarian law, or if the state implements the policies of “managed mobility” that are characteristic of hostile states, Ernesto and his family will likely find themselves in the same position they were in two years ago.
This article originally appeared as: Elahie, E. and Gomes, S. (2021, February 8). Everyday Survival in the Southern Caribbean [Online]. The Sociological Review. https://doi.org/10.51428/tsr.gaem3482
Copyright © 2021 Elron Elahie and Shelene Gomes. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
