Barrel Shipping
From Seminar 2: The Peopling of New York City
Contents |
Overview
Barrel shipping is one way of sending remittances by immigrants from New York to the Caribbean. Different from money transfer, barrel shipping sends goods, usually grocery and items that are not common in the Caribbean, instead of money. Remittances are important to the Caribbean economy, and particularly to the lower-income households. Remittance services for barrel shipping was created to satisfy the needs to maintain ties between immigrants from the Caribbean with families at "home."
Shipping Barrels
During our interview with the shopkeeper of Estrella Deli Grocery store, he said that they have been selling barrels for the past two months. An average of three to four barrels are being sold in each week. However, they are not responsible for shipping the barrels. Most customers bring the barrels along with them, when they go home to visit families in the Caribbean, while others send them through companies that provide barrel shipping service. From our observation, we noticed that the barrels they sell come in different sizes and materials. Some are made of plastic, and can hold about 55 gallons of goods. These barrels are about 3 ft or taller.
What's in there?
In general, migrants send household items that are not likely to be bought in the Caribbean, because of problems of the price or shortage. Barrels are usually sent in special occasions, such as birthday, wedding, holiday, and particularly during Christmas. We interviewed a Guyanese student at City College, and she told us that migrants send items according to the needs of the family in the Caribbean. "Say if one of the family members back home is sick, they would buy medicine and send it through barrel shipping along with other goods. In general, people usually send canned goods, because they are less perishable, toys, clothings that children of the migrants grew out of. Oh, and children loves candies, so people send those over too."
Success of Barrel Shipping Service
Along Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights, the West Indian neighborhood in Brooklyn, there are many storefronts companies that provide barrel shipping service. They pick up the barrels at the customers' house, and then send them to countries of the Caribbean, door-to-door, or have recipients pick them up at the company's branch. Shipping cost and the barrel itself are relatively inexpensive, purchasing items to be put in there, however, takes a while. To make barrel shipping even more convenient, some companies have grocery barrels. The benefits of grocery barrels is that customers do not have to shop around or do the packing, but simply order via phone or internet, which makes it very convenient and time-saving. The average time for barrels to reach the destination is about two weeks.
The need to maintain transnational ties with countries of origin, in other words, the country that migrants see as their homeland, gives rise to migrant business, and one of the best examples of which is barrel shipping companies. They facilitate the process of globalization of the economy and transnational connection beyond geographical, and economical borders. A shipping company started by two brothers from St. Vincent is a good example of the success of migrant business. One brother, named Carl Hilaire, started the business of sending goods from New York to St. Vincent. His brother, who settled in St. Vincent delivered the barrels,after he received them. (Schiller, Basch, Blanc, 1995)
Barrel shipping is a distinctive way of sending remittances by the Caribbean. Of course, other immigrant groups also send remittances home in a similar way, such as the Baikbayan boxes used by Filipinos.
Reasons
Immigrants send barrels and grocery home largely because of inflations that constantly cast gloom on the Caribbean economy. According to the website of Heritage Foundation"Heritage Foundation, [[1]], inflation rate in Haiti is an average of 15.2% between the year of 2004 and 2006, and two thirds of the population have informal jobs. Therefore, Haitian families depend on barrel shipping for everyday necessities. Sometimes, it takes immigrants several months to complete filling a barrel. They only purchase a little everytime. Barrels, therefore, are seen as a symbol of hard work. For example, to a single parent, who has to take care of folks back home, sending barrels are extremely important in order to sustain the households.To the Caribbean families back home, they feel special sentiments toward these barrels, and the feeling is often complicated with sadness and nostalgia.
Works Cited
Beshkin, Abigail. "Making it Work; Immigrants Build A Bridge of Barrels." New York Times, October 10, 1999.
Foner, Nancy, ed. 2001. Islands in the City: West Indian Migration to New York. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Glick Schiller, Nina, Linda Basch, and Christina Szanton Blanc. 1995. “From Immigrant to Transmigrant: Theorizing Transitional Migration”. Anthropological Quarterly 68 (1): 48-63
Itzigsohn, Jose. "Migrant Remittances, Labor Markets, and Household Strategies: A Comparative Analysis of Low-Income Household Strategies in the Caribbean Basin." Social Forces, Vol. 74, No. 2 Dec 1995: 633-655.
Orozco, Manuel. "Globalization and Migration: The Impact of Family Remittances in Latin America." Latin American Politics and Society, Vol. 44, No. 2, 2002: 41-66.
"Heritage Foundation." http://www.heritage.org/. 5 May 2008.