From Migrant to Settler and the Making of a Black Community: An Autoethnographic Account

Using autoethnography as the research tool, this paper explores the formation and evolution of a Black community identity in the austerity phase of Britain in the 1970s. Focusing on one life, it examines this period of intense social upheaval when Caribbean people in Britain were moving from migrants to settlers. Central to that Diasporic shift were Black women who were beginning to set and direct a Black agenda for collective survival to meet basic common needs and defend the emerging settler communities in areas such as policing, immigration and education. This autoethnography is supported by artefacts evoking the collective voices of the period, and critical contextual descriptions to articulate a community becoming. The paper examines the critiques of the vagaries of memory, the privileging of the subjective, and argues for the use of the kinds of research practices and tools that can increase dialogic engagement to generate social action.