Capital Changes: Haitian Migrants in Contemporary Dominican Republic

Abstract

IntroductionComplexity and diversity stand as one of the hallmarks of the Caribbean (Trouillot 1992), and the island of Hispaniola is certainly no exception to the rule. In this paper, I will show how changes in the Dominican economy along the lines of imperatives of global capitalism transformed the migration population in the Dominican Republic, specifically related to labour market insertion. The shift from sugar production (under state auspices) to tourism along with the construction boom (financed by private capital) fostered ruptures and reconfigurations, as seen in new migration patterns, migrants' connections to capital flows, changes in anti-Haitian sentiment, and growth of agencies supporting migrant populations.This article is based upon anthropological research conducted in summer 2006 and from October 2007 to December 2009 in Greater Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Information about the lower classes came primarily from Haitians who live and/or work in Benito1, secondarily from people at their work sites throughout the Districto Nacional, and tertiarily at people's homes in the province of Santo Domingo.The relationship of the Dominican Republic to insular, regional, and international flows of commodities and the specific ways that changes in markets have impacted the country, requires brief discussion of capital and capitalism, both in its nature (as it relates to plurality) and its logic (as it relates to neoliberalism and flexibility), as it plays out in the lived experiences of people in the country.The role of capital cannot be undervalued throughout the course of this work. Capital is money involved in process of commodity exchange that yields greater amount of value after the exchange than existed before (M -> C ~^M'), where each represents stage in capital accumulation. A commodity may take the form of tangible item, like coconuts, chacabanas, or currency, but it may also take the form of something less than tangible, like labour-power, as in construction, or sex work or university studies. Capitalism, therefore, refers to the economic system founded upon never-ending drive to generate profit (and accumulation of capital) based upon creation and investment of surplus value from commodity exchanges. Numerous scholars have dealt with the dynamics of capitalism (e.g., Heilbroner, Marx, Polanyi), so I leave extensive discussions of the topic aside. In this article, I respond to David Harvey's challenge to examine processes of capital accumulation . . . [and how it] ... not only thrives upon but actively produces social difference and heterogeneity (2001:122). I am particularly interested in, as he writes, a more generalized debate about human potentialities and the sources of their frustration (2001:126), and the production of spaces where novel political and social organizations might emerge. These spaces, created by what Ong (2007) calls neoliberalism, understood as the reorganization of the relationship between the state and the market according to the logic of capitalism, represent opportunities for advocacy on behalf of those politically excluded. Therefore, observing political economic changes over time should correspond with analogous changes for migrants in labour market (which in this case means migrants to the Dominican Republic), their reception in the host country, and advocacy on their behalf. Additionally, examining parts of commodity chains in which people participate should disclose connections to capital flows and political economic structures. Before noting these changes, though, it stands to describe prior meanings of Haitian and to depict earlier Dominican-Haitian relations. Therefore, I argue that neoliberalism has restructured the Dominican political economy, labour market insertion, and the nature of anti-Haitianism, while creating spaces for advocacy on behalf of the new migrants. This fundamentally questions the dominant understanding, which posits that Haitians form single, homogenous block. …

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