In January 2022 a collaborative was formed to develop the BINT project:
Unveiling Caribbean Migration Stories: Building Inclusive Narratives in Transnational Realities (BINT)
Funding did not get through for the project right away. However, a start could be made through the DSI Research Fellowship (2022-2023) funds. I share here the original ‘BINT’ project narrative, as this very well shows how the Oral History collection now being developed can have a much wider use and impact.
Project Narrative BINT:
Caribbean communities are shaped by centuries of migration – both voluntary and forced. Without exception, our societies are a vibrant mix of cultures. Yet our stories and archives are overwhelmingly uniform and homogenous. Much needs to be done to overcome silences in the archives and to work towards inclusive narratives. One of the key challenges here is the transnational dynamic in our communities, requiring local projects to be able to think and act beyond state and cultural borders.
A first pilot project (2022-2023) lays the foundation for a citizen science approach that facilitates a shift towards more inclusive narratives in education and research relative to the Caribbean. For the pilot we study the mass migration from the Dominican Republic that evolved in the late 1950s and 1960s, focussing on the untold stories of thousands of individuals and families that chose Curaçao over the U.S. as destination. A core team based in Curaçao will collect stories of first and second generation migrants. These stories will then be enriched and analysed in their transnational context. Digital humanities provides us with various tools that supports citizen participation and facilitates new ways of visualisation, analysis and presentation, all of great value to community outreach. In parallel to these activities, we will cooperate with existing repositories and platforms to co-create sustainable digital spaces through which this and future output on Caribbean transnationality is made available for education and research.
The Dominican migrant community on Curaçao, organised in ADUC, is involved as participant in the full project: planning the research, execution of oral history interviews and reaching out to the cultural and educational partners. Our transnational key stakeholders are the Dominican research communities in New York and the Dominican Republic, organised through CUNY DSI. They are key in analysing research outputs in its transnational context, and for the co-creation of digital spaces. For the project on the long run we will connect with Caribbean institutes and experts in the fields of Digital Humanities and Oral History. For this, we partner with the University of Florida as advisor.