Island Demography: A Review of Selected Caribbean Contributions

Abstract

This article traces the demographic contributions of island studies scholarship in four sections. First, demographic transition theory is applied to the population history of the region. The second highlights the impact of this demographic scholarship on related social science fields in the Caribbean. The third and fourth contributions focus on the impact of migration on two related hypotheses: the demographic transition and the mobility transition. In the first case, migration patterns between St. Kitts-Nevis and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the 1960s suggest that the age-sex selectivity of migration tends to accelerate the transition in sending societies and retard its progress in receiving societies. In the second case, empirical support is provided for the so-called ‘migration transition’ whereby former chronic labour exporters become labour importers under sustained growth.

Keywords

• Caribbean
• demographic transition
• fertility
• islands
• migration
• mortality