SAINT-LOUIS, LORETTA JANE PRICHARD; PHD

                         BOSTON UNIVERSITY, 1988

                         ANTHROPOLOGY, CULTURAL (0326)
 

                         This study examines the evolution of the kin-based organization of Haitian migration to the U.S. and
                         Canada during the Duvalier era. Using a model applicable to all migration, the study looks at two ways in
                         which a hierarchy of interactive macrosystems shaped Haitian migration by generating constraints on
                         choice. First, over a period of 290 years, the emerging world system, the European and U.S. empires,
                         the Haitian national political-economy, and local political-economies have shaped Haiti's domestic
                         systems. In doing this, they shaped the behavior patterns and ideology of kin units which make life
                         decisions, thereby affecting migration choices. Second, at particular times, certain macrosystems,
                         especially at the empire level, have strongly structured particular migration patterns, determining not only
                         their direction but also, largely, their social organization. Structural conditions shaping migration to the
                         U.S. and Canada between 1957 and 1986 encouraged kin-based organization. The specific Haitian
                         forms of family and network processes, discovered through fifteen years of network observation and two
                         years of intensive field work, stem from the traditions of the lakou, the extended family residential
                         compound, which developed during the nineteenth century and disappeared during the mid-twentieth,
                         due to land pressures from partible inheritance, ecological degradation, and U.S. penetration of the
                         Haitian economy. Lakou traditions of joint action and solidarity among consanguineally-linked
                         households inform current patterns of intense cooperation in migration among the nuclear family, the
                         household, and a subset of the extended family, including adult siblings, their parents, and children.
                         Migration structured through this form of social organization has numerous feedback effects on local and
                         national political-economic and social systems in Haiti, the U.S., and Canada. The study concludes that
                         migration evolves over time from the interaction of a hierarchy of political-economic macrosystems with
                         domestic systems. The social and cultural processes as well as the political-economic processes
                         generate and shape migration patterns.

Social Systems Simulation Group P.O. Box 6904 San Diego, CA  92166-0904 Roland Werner, Principal Phone/FAX  (619) 660-1603