After half a life of caring for everyone but herself, an exhausted wife may well contemplate running away from home. A mid-life businessman—mortgage paid, kids finished school, some money saved—might think of relocating to a future rich with guiltless possibilities. But for hundreds of young St. Lucians studying abroad, where to live is a question of an entirely different colour.
If there’s a family business, a plot of debt-free land, or some promised post still waiting, a few will eagerly return. But many young undergrads—in Canada, England, America, Cuba or Trinidad—foresee at best, a doubtful future and feel a dwindling sense of national obligation.
After three or more years in a world of higher incomes and stronger growth, they view their new degree as a tradable asset offering immediate returns. In a vibrant, if foreign labour market, it is the first step to even higher earnings. Retreating now would feel like the end of learning, unplugged from the mainstream of professional advancement.
By comparison, home is a stagnant backwater. Even for the wealthy and well-connected, it is a tangle of pot-luck politics and vengeful personalities. For students from modest circumstances, prospects are even more daunting. Return implies building a future from scratch in an economy with no discernible direction. Better to stay abroad: learn, work, save, grow.
Over there, new paths and old pitfalls are fairly clear: there is a perceptible order to society. If one follows the rules, there will be certain rewards and assurances, whether you are Joe Plumber or Marcella, a gifted software designer with village roots in Mon Repos. Success is the expected norm, not the coveted exception.
Granted, it is tough going with fewer family and friends. But at least daily life is not frustrated by arbitrary ignorance. Out there, the enemy is known, and it is not some ministry official messing with your life just because he can. Whatever happens, you do not labour under the illusion that you deserve a break in your own country.
Meanwhile back home, others also want out. They crave escape, living for the day when they too will be sent for. The family home, with its aging parents and a slew of heirs, offers few possibilities. It is not their capital to mortgage.
Then there is that student loan: larger than a house, slower than a car. It will devour half the average EC salary. So, the best risk-taking years are spent paying off a mountain of old debt. Soon there will be a vehicle loan and the inevitable mortgage. By then, it is too late to transition from bill payer to investor. All that state of the art expertise, lost to kin and country.
So the decision to leave or stay is hardly rocket science – not with economic growth dwindling, investment approaching zero, and employment under siege at home. The future becomes that place where the graduate can reasonably expect to prosper on individual merit, in a system that cares little about who he is, or where he started, or how he voted in the last election.
Of course, there is still love of country: that need to be rooted to a few square miles of planet earth. All very nice, but that won’t pay the bills. Besides, these grads know how elusive higher education can be. They remember what their parents lived through.
Even for retirees, who also need good health care, personal security and a sense of order, back-home is no longer the ideal place to retire. The tug of patrimony has given way to practical considerations about their quality of life. Without a range of wholesome activities to occupy their days, the undertow of emotion which once dragged them back from England and North America is dissipating.
The emotional tug does not work on their offspring either; those second and third generations, full of first-world knowledge and technology. All they feel – if they visit – is acute disappointment that so little has changed since their parents migrated to a better life. To them, basic systems of governance remain inexplicably archaic and obtuse: their metropole has moved along while ours has slipped back.
To foresee the future, one need only ask the average St. Lucian – secondary schooled, thirty something, mother of three – if she has any idea where the country is headed under this or any other administration. Ask her about the tourism product; what it will look like in five years. Ask her about new jobs in e-commerce. Ask her about environmental change or green energies. Ask her where she thinks her school-leaving son will likely find a job. Then ask her if she wants a ticket to Obamaland.
Hell, ask the average minister about renewables, emerging technologies, new economic space, alternative agriculture, global trends in education, digital media, social entrepreneurship… or how to energize a shrinking private sector. It’s not stupidity; it’s just that our systems have not evolved and now require radical re-engineering.
Simply put: our economic base is not adequately prepared for the future. Most Caribbean economies are languishing because the economic fundamentals are sagging and the old ways are painfully obsolete. At this stage cosmetic surgery simply will not do.
What the region needs is more like a triple bypass operation to remove the detritus of decades of complacency. Unless this happens soon, not even our own moribund citizenry will take this country seriously. And that lack of faith—now manifesting as a haemorrhage of brain power—will be the fatal stoke.
Already, there are signs of a muted frenzy bubbling to the surface of everyday existence: that dark energy which turns people on each other at the first scent of blood. It makes a bus full of travellers curse a policeman for sanctioning their reckless driver. It makes a young man stab his best friend over some electronic trinket.
It makes you think you’re not a victim of a crime taking place next door. It makes a politician kill a project offering a hundred jobs, because the idea came from someone on the other side. It makes the ministry official messing with your life, chronically unavailable to answer phone calls. It makes governments impotent, unable to satisfy even the basic aspirations of ordinary citizens.
So if young graduates don’t turn for home, don’t be surprised. They too feel the need to jump free of the failing system. Unable to point to a single thing that works convincingly well, they make the only rational choice available.
The same logic drives away investors, foreign and domestic. As economic circumstances level out across the global marketplace, the factory floor is moving even further from its virtual boardroom. To be effective, first-world executives need little more than a smart phone and a bank card.
Consequently, quality of life issues – not geography – will increasingly decide where progressive businesses locate. They too need security, education, health care, infrastructure, quality services and good governance. Where St. Lucia ranks in that scheme of things will also determine whether or not our own army of tech-savvy, knowledge-laden new-age entrepreneurs ever return to our shores.
The bottom lines are not much different: what works for our people also works for likeminded others. In the meantime, the islands are great to visit, but fewer and fewer people actually need to live here.
Changing that outlook means a shift of focus, in public policy and actual follow-through. A more progressive approach to financing higher education is critical. Removing disincentives to domestic investment will certainly help. But the huge challenge is creating viable opportunity: new economic space rather than low-wage employment for its own obvious sake.
Both the country and its people need to become magnets for home-grown talent as well as foreign capital. To do that, St. Lucia needs something that no amount of foreign aid can ever buy: more open and enlightened government. That is the one thing the people must manufacture for themselves.
As the recent US elections demonstrate, many rank and file voters are prepared to forego immediate benefits to secure a more viable future. Any party which is bankrupt of ideas, energy and new ways of resolving economic challenges, will be summarily dismissed, even if the alternative is not much better.
If local elections prove anything, it is that citizens will no longer tolerate inefficient, corrupt and self-serving government. The rationing of economic benefits by secret ballot needs to end. The alternative, which serves even myopic politicians, is a functional, well regulated market system built on competitiveness and merit.
It is also an excellent platform for re-election; one that would excite an unimpressed electorate and draw deserved attention from that new generation of global citizens we so desperately need in our midst. Hopefully younger and wiser, they just might have the energy to drag this place, kicking and screaming, from the fringes of anarchy into the civility of a new century.
If our current crop of leaders have any sense at all, they would chart that course, rev up the economic engine, and get the hell out of the way.
Editor’s Note: Adrian Augier is a development economist and St Lucia’s 2010 Entrepreneur of the Year. He is an award winning poet and producer and a Caribbean Laureate of Arts and Letters. In October 2012, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies in recognition of his contribution to regional development and culture.
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There is no such thing as an enlightened Government, the very process of power and leadership ensures that all Governments and politicians are soon corrupted by the drunken mind syndrome of power. Now why is this so? Simply it cannot be any other way since to be a politician requires a very big ego, low self esteem and psychopathic tendencies.
Forget the fact that we like everything “ready-made” no sweat, all we want is to just move in. You brought up several factors that would motivate our nationals to graze in greener pastures. However, wealthy Chinese nationals are looking for ways to get out of China, the very country that provided the conditions and helped them amass all their wealth. So the desire to migrate to another country could it be just human nature?
I would have liked you to propose a few solutions, that is, educate and guide us from where we are to where we need to be from an economist perspective…. We cannot take it for granted that our government have all the answers and solutions to solve our issues. We…
We need to propose solutions and likewise they need to be open to ideas and suggestions from the citizens. Routine and strategic Town hall meetings, surveys, program evaluation and assessments is a good way to get a sense of how things are going.
Additionally, our government is made up of too many lawyers who possess the same mental models and approach to handling matters. We need to encourage and foster a more diverse governing body. More needs to be done to recruit, entice and encourage our engineers, medical professionals, educators and business owners and administrators to assist in the economic development, advancement and growth of our country.
Well said, but how many of us are listen, analysing or even prepared to act rationally and demand from our politicians and ourselves regardless of colour?
It requires courage and some full hardiness to sacrifice the scrumps of today for a promised loaf in the future this is how we in St Lucia thinks and decides on government hence we get what we deserve.
Hopefully one day we will wake up!
This article is perfect. Mr. Augier could not have said it any better. I am one of those graduates wondering why I ever came back and who is convinced that a Ministry official is messing with my life because he/she can…..
Mr. Augier offers a negative view of st. Lucia that is all too correct but he fails to undersatnd the fundamental problems affecting ALL of Western civilization. St. Lucia’s problems are now America’s and the UK’s problems.
Obama and liberalism under the banner of freeeness have raped the resourses of a once vibrant USA. The chickens are soon coming home to roost. 46 million on food stamps, only 8% of Detroits 8 year old (predominantly black) are able to read, 60% of black pregnancies in NYC end in abortion. $1 trillion borrowed each year. Mr. Augier is of the same stripe so we have no answers as long as we listen to those like him. We have to hit bottom first.
No…Bush and the Republicans/Conservatives screwed America and the world.
It is a myth to believe that graduating from University or College is a ticket to the good life and well paying jobs. Those days are over, so drop your entitled expectations of rewards for being so good at studying, nobody owes you anything. On the other hand smart and creative people always find ways of making a good buck, I did not say book brains I said smart people.
Adrian Augier….It is not as simplic as that.
If for example all those guys who left returned and contributed then it would be a more ‘livable’ place.
politicians are not the cure alls we semm to think that they are.
As well, the economic problems the region faces has a long history not of our own making.It is time we worked together instead of jumping ship
HEY FELLERS…. whatever happened to blogger TOUSSAINT? Haven’t seen his lengthy comments for a while
Someone finally shut his flipping-flappers up lol…
Today man sees all his hopes and aspirations crumbling before him. He is perplexed and knows not whither he is drifting. But he must realise that the Bible is his refuge, and the rallying point for all humanity. In it man will find the solution of his present difficulties and guidance for his future action, and unless he accepts with clear conscience the Bible and its great Message, he cannot hope for salvation. For my part I glory in the Bible.
Haile Selassie! restaman suppose to know better than any other person that you never totally belive any thing that is produce by humans especialy the bible,hey there are so many different bibles are you sure yours have 100%true account of whats in it,if yours did’nt come from your total wisdom an knowledge of EARTH,WIND,WATERandFIRE then you been brainwashed by middle eastern stories of people who’s lives depend on war,deceit and conquering
The only thing of real value in the bible is the practical wisdom and knowledge it has complied. Those are guiding principles we should all follow however, the addition of the idea of god has forced a cloud of confusion and distraction from those principles and there in resides the problem.
There’s a difference between a Rasta and a Rascal.
I am one of the many who would like to return.
St. Lucia’s problems which if fixed though far from simple are the resolution stem from.
1. 77% of GDP overall debt is bloodly ridiculous..we are number 8 in the world. Think of it this way. You owe $77 but only make $100 a year.
2. Our economy is based entirely on tourism…we do grow some bananas and other products and trade with other caribbean island. Diversify people…hedge your bets..tourism is in the tank and you have nothing to stand on.
3. Please start producing the stuff you consume. We import everything and export nothing.
4. 20% – 40% or more unemployment….no one has a job…and the genius imposed a VAT tax. So now you…
This article is all fluff, no substance. No solution in sight.
Blaming government for all ailments is the lazy man’s excuse.
This is probably one of the most important articles ever written in the star! I find myself in this current situation where I am contemplating leaving and never coming back! ever!…arbitrary ignorance!You touched on so many points here…not least of which is our retarded systems of governance….It all has to do with the SHIRTJACK era. Many of the people who run this country beleive that a shirt jack is a cool thing to wear…with a vest and chest hairs showing at the collar. The shirt Jack is therefore a representation of all that u speak of in your above critique. As long as the grown men who find wearing shirt jack appealing still exist within the decision making class of our country…
After spending a few years in Europe I returned home and within a day I was struck by how nothing had changed…the same pettiness, same social inertia, same politics. What’s most disconcerting is that so many seem content to just remain in the stagnant water.
Nice article, clearly expresses the way things exist. I have no problem with students coming back to contribute but they have to be aware of the challenges facing them. They need to be aware that there are “people in places of power” who will relish the opportunity to remind the returning students that despite their many degrees, they are still at the mercy of those “people in places of power” for a job. To those who decide to return, all the best.
What’s all this coming back to contribute crap? So damn presumptuous. Come back to your home if you like. Come and do what nobody else has been able to do if you wish: make StLucia suddenly rich and prosperous from producing what every other island produces but have no markets for. Great but stop calling it your contribution, as if life were some kind of charity. Then again many countries have contributed money and skills to the StLucian cause, whatever that is, still we yearn for more contributions. What would be so special about yours Mirage (hey appropriate false name, so inventive!)? Not that I disagree with anything else in your post lol
The word “contribution” is how the beggar pretends to come with something of value. Anyone who says they are here to help you is a liar, simply because they are here to help themselves. I am happy that Rick was able to point that out. Do something because you want to, don’t come in the name of sacrifice in order to move humanity forward. In this life you have the choice of being a bum or being wealthy, it is up to you, no Government or church is responsible for you, just be responsible for yourself in everything, even in sex.
Well Mr Wayne, I guess contribute can seem like charity but that was not what I was aiming for. We have many isssues in St. Lucia that every St. Lucian can lend a hand in solving and if that sounds like charity, then, charity begins at home right? And since “many countries have contributed money and skills to the St. Lucian cause” wouldn’t it be refreshing for St. Lucians to contribute to their own cause so we don’t always have to rely on these “many countries”?
I also think Mirage is an appropriate and also very fitting name, lol.
My contribution would be in the education sector and there isn’t enough time right now to tell you why it would be so special
Educational contribution? You should call yourself sheldon from the TV show “Big Bang Theory”.