Godfrey St. Bernard

A contemporary analysis of road traffic crashes, fatalities and injuries in Trinidad and Tobago

Road safety, in particular pedestrian safety, is a problem in Trinidad and Tobago. Data were derived from the database of the Traffic and Highway Patrol Unit of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service. Road traffic crashes in Trinidad and Tobago are largely an urban problem. Four urban areas accounted for nearly three-quarters of reported road traffic crashes, fatalities and injuries. Pedestrians, passengers and drivers accounted for 93% of fatalities and 95% of injuries due to road traffic crashes in 2000. Pedestrians alone accounted for 42% of fatalities and 34% of injuries in 2000. Trends over time show that there has been a decline in fatality rates from 17 deaths per 100,000 population in 1960 to 10 deaths per 100,000 population in 2000, despite rapid motorization. Motorization increased four-fold from 63 registered vehicles per 1000 population in 1960 to 250 vehicles per 1000 population in 2000. In conclusion, effort should be intensified to ensure safety for all road users and, in particular, pedestrians, passengers and drivers. Improved data collection and operational research would improve monitoring and evaluation of policy interventions.

Repetitive Visiting as a Pre‐return Transnational Strategy among Youthful Trinidadian Returnees

Abstract Building upon existing Caribbean research by Condon and Duval, we assess how repetitive visiting is, or is not, important to youthful return migrants in their 30s and 40s, who have decided to return more permanently to Trinidad. Is it influential in their social and economic adaptations on return, and does this transnational practice lead to a more permanent return? Our analysis is based on 40 detailed narratives which were collected in 2004–2005. For some returnees, repetitive visiting is influential, for others one visit is enough and for a few, it makes no difference. Yet it is certainly a common practice for ‘keeping in touch’ among our transnational informants.

Caribbean diasporic spaces and mobilities, transnational incorporation overseas and transnational capacity-building on return

Long-held traditions of international mobility, emigration, and temporary circulation, and of family-centered networks, together forge intra-regional and extra-regional systems of social exchanges, transfers and support structures that directly and indirectly influence the development of the Caribbean region. Today’s mobilized diasporas exhibit multi-local “moorings” or locales within the Caribbean region and beyond: in this hemisphere (North America) and trans-Atlantic (in Europe). Family (and “friendship”) networks, wider kin networks, ethnic networks, and inter-network exchanges and transfers, all facilitate people’s mobilities and cross-border exchanges of goods, information, technology, monetary and non-monetary remittances, and social capital. In this article the potential of the Caribbean’s diasporic spaces to be new socio-structural agencies in global development policy is assessed and found to be both promising and achievable. Within such “spaces” there are multi-layered processes of transnational immigrant incorporation overseas, and cross-border transnational mobilities, social experiences, exchanges, and practices. In particular, monetary and social remittances and returning nationals can be critical influences in forging, creating, and consolidating what is re-conceptualized in this article as “transnational capacity-building”. Following the establishment of our theoretical generalizations and conceptualizations of the migration-development nexus of the contemporary Caribbean, the detailed “coming together” of transnationalism, the migration-development nexus, transnational capacity-building and “diaspora spaces” is formulated. Then, an empirical section follows, in which we utilize “narratives” gathered by the authors in several Caribbean locales during the early-to-middle 2000 decade to support our theoretical arguments and behavioral findings. Based upon the conceptual arguments and their empirical substantiation drawn from the quotes of returning nationals, we conclude that both economic and social “change for the better” appear to be possible in the most promising developmental contexts that the Caribbean offers, due to Caribbean people’s enduring propensity for transnational mobility options as a “strategic flexibility that still works”.