Caribbean Migration to New York – Building New Worlds
Podcast: History of the Caribbeans | Exploring Resilience and CulturePublished On: Thu Feb 19 2026
Description: In the shadows of the nineteen fifties, a quiet revolution began on the cold, grey streets of New York. Caribbean Migration to New York – Building New Worlds is a gritty, long-form documentary that tracks the transformation of a diaspora from temporary labor to the architects of a new urban empire. This isn't a story of easy assimilation. It is a chronicle of survival in the face of "benign neglect," where families traded the open horizons of the islands for the cramped, coal-dusted tenements of Harlem and Brooklyn. Through the lens of the "barrel economy" and the rise of the transnational family, we witness how a community maintained its soul through the senses—smuggling the scent of home into basement parties and neighborhood bodegas. From the first shock of winter at Idlewild Airport to the defiant reclamation of the city during the fiscal crises of the seventies, this episode explores the cost of the "New York Dream." It is a narrative of reinvention, where the children of the diaspora stopped asking for permission and started building a world where the Caribbean flag flies as high as the skyscrapers.
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