Contradictory socio-economic consequences of structural adjustment in Kingston, Jamaica

The Geographical Journal

, Vol.

172

, No. 2, June 2006, pp. 106–129

© 2006 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2006 The Royal Geographical Society 0016-7398/06/0002-0001/$00.20/0

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Contradictory socio-economic consequences of structural adjustment in Kingston, Jamaica

COLIN CLARKE* AND DAVID HOWARD†

*

School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 3TB E-mail: [email protected]

†

Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9XP E-mail: [email protected]

This paper was accepted for publication in January 2006

Since the early 1980s, the introduction of International Monetary Fund-directed structuraladjustment packages to stabilize the Jamaican economy has reduced the scope of thegovernment, cut back its capacity to intervene in the housing market, opened theeconomy to foreign goods (but limited capital), and re-produced the colonial version of anon-dynamic, labour-surplus urban economy in Kingston. This paper traces the impact ofstructural adjustment on unemployment and class formation in Kingston, and the relationshipof these issues to housing problems. Rented, poor-quality housing, underpinned by lowsocio-economic status and historically high rates of unemployment, has created an overtspatial concentration of poverty, located in West and East Kingston. Nevertheless, overallunemployment is currently lower than at independence in 1962, and virtually all housingindicators have recorded improvements over the same time period. These improvementshave been due to a deceleration in the growth of Kingston’s population since the mid-1960s; government commitment, despite structural adjustment, to improve the quality ofcollective consumption; and the determination of Kingston’s citizens to build betterhomes for themselves, often aided by loans from local building societies and remittancesfrom family members resident overseas. However, at least a quarter of Kingston’spopulation remains both unemployed and concentrated into areas of poor qualityhousing. These circumstances in Kingston are compared with those in adjacent LatinAmerican cites under structural adjustment.

KEY WORDS:

Jamaica, structural adjustment, housing, employment, census analysis

Introduction

A

cademic opinion suggests that the ‘LatinAmerican city’ has been doubly underminedduring the last half century: firstly, by

massive population increase following 1950, as thebalance of the population has shifted from beingpredominantly rural to overwhelmingly urban; and,secondly, by structural adjustment, which, sincethe early 1980s has undone or undermined manyof the solutions to urbanization previously achievedby grass-roots endeavour in the face of labour-intensive capitalism – for example, the provision ofshelter through self-help housing and squattersettlements (Gilbert and Ward 1985; Gilbert 1994

1996). In short, whatever benefits late-twentieth-century globalization has brought to Latin Amer-ican societies, there has been significant economicdeprivation among the urban poor (Clarke andHoward 1999). These issues may be analysed bylooking at the changing relationship betweenlabour and housing since 1945.

Broadly speaking, in Latin America, the informal(or non-legally protected) sector of employmentdeclined relative to the formal (legally protected)sector between the 1940s and the 1970s. Oliveiraand Roberts (1994) have suggested that self-employment, an approximate guide to informalsector trends, declined from 29 to 20% over thistime period, as formal sector jobs were created in

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government and the private sector, especially in themanufacturing industry. In contrast, during the 1980sand 1990s, Portes and Schauffer (1993) estimatedinformal employment at 31% in the late 1980s,and some individual city studies now put the rateat over 50% (Murphy and Stepick 1991), as struc-tural adjustment and global competition haveturned protected urban economies inside out andundermined the formal sector.

The informal and formal trajectories of housingand labour markets in Latin America have notablydiverged over the last fifty years. While the large cities– Mexico City, for instance (Ward 1998) – becamemore formal in employment over time, housingrapidly became dependent on informal solutions,such as squatter settlements that included well overhalf the households in the major cities (Gilbert andVarley 1991; Gilbert 1993). Urban infrastructureswere placed under mounting stress, as populationsincreased by natural increase and migration, mostnotably since the 1960s; newcomers simply couldnot afford to get into the owner-occupied sector ofthe housing market, and squatting on vacant (oftengovernment) land was a rational alternative torental. So the informal housing sector grew at theexpense of the formal; but the up-grading of squat-ted property, coupled to the granting (usually basedon government intervention) of land titles, pointedto an essentially optimistic – but not uncontested –solution to the issue (Mangin 1967; Ward 1976).

This has not been the case in the long term,however. The problem was that squatter upgradingalso depended on the existence of an investmentsurplus in the household. The undermining offormal sector employment and the expansion of theinformal sector has, in the last two decades or more,destroyed that surplus. Furthermore, governmentssince structural adjustment have ‘withered away’under the influence of tax reductions and otherneo-liberal reforms. Their capacity to provide infra-structure, such as water, sewerage and electricityfor informal settlements, has dwindled and statesupport for squatting has been replaced by hostilityleading to prohibition in many cases. Under thesecircumstances, house owners (who may once havebeen squatters) have turned into landlords to boosttheir declining and/or precarious incomes, whilstthe poor have eschewed squatting in favour ofserviced tenancy (Gilbert 1993).

This paper modifies many, but not all, of thesegeneralizations in the case of Kingston, the capitalof Jamaica. Jamaica has been independent fromBritain since 1962 – for less than a quarter of theperiod of many neighbouring Latin Americanstates. However, like them, its formerly protectedeconomy has been turned inside out by structuraladjustment. Nevertheless, even at independence,

Jamaica’s economy was small, open and thereforepotentially vulnerable, while Kingston, the capital,was already a classic example of an overcrowdedmetropolis with a weak industrial economy. Theintroduction of structural adjustment in Jamaica hasincreased unemployment or withdrawal from thelabour force, and has impacted on the housingsituation among the lower class, without – in thecase of Jamaica – increasing economic growth(Anderson 2004).

Unlike the situation in urban Latin America inthe 1960s and 1970s, squatting in Kingston hasremained a marginal condition (at approximately5% of households), because peripheral or vacantland is rarely of ambiguous tenure, and is policedclosely. Historically, Jamaicans, both urban andrural, have been accustomed to rent land orhousing, and structural adjustment has not tippedthem either towards or away from squatting.However, in Kingston, once the immediate impactof structural adjustment was over, a static or slowlydeclining urban economy has gone hand in handwith a gradual reduction of the highest levels ofunemployment, despite the fact that more than halfthe labour force is in the informal sector. How thishas come about is explained below.

The current study updates and extends previousresearch on Kingston at the end of the colonialperiod that was based on census enumerationdistrict data for 1960 (Clarke 1966), by analysingspecial area census data for 1970, and enumera-tion district data for 1982 and 1991. The 2001census is available so far only in general tablespublished at the national and parish levels. In thispaper, census data for enumeration districts aremapped; they are also used to create ecologicalcorrelations. Two non-spatial data sets are intro-duced into the analysis. They involve 10% samplesdrawn from the 1960 and 1991 populationcensuses, and contain 38 000 and 81 000 Kingston-ians, respectively. All census data used in thisstudy of Kingston were provided for the authors bythe Statistical Institute of Jamaica.

Political economy, structural adjustment and its implications

Political economy

For the first ten years after independence in 1961,Jamaica, under a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP)government, followed the model of dependentdevelopment that the former colony had pursuedsince the end of the Second World War. A balancewas achieved between plantation and peasantagriculture, between bauxite mining and themanufacture of goods for local consumption and

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export. Added to this was the tourist industry,which drew on the leisure potential of the northcoast, and attracted significant numbers of NorthAmerican visitors during the winter season. All thiswas comparatively easy to achieve and sustain,provided that the post-war world economy wasexpanding (Jefferson 1972).

In 1972, a change of government took place.The multi-class People’s National Party (PNP)replaced the multi-class JLP, on the ticket ‘bettermus’ come’ (Senior 1972). Led by Michael Manley,the son of Norman Manley, the first party leader,the PNP government committed itself to creatingsocial justice. These good intentions were soon tobe overtaken by economic events. The first shockto the post-independence Jamaican economy, aftera decade of neo-colonial economic growth, wasthe price-hike for crude oil imposed by the OilProducers and Exporters Cartel (OPEC) in 1972.This was repeated in both 1973 and 1974. TheJamaican economy, which had become increas-ingly dependent on oil imports for electricitygeneration after 1970, was one of the first, interna-tionally, to disintegrate (Smith 1989).

In 1975, the government tied the price of bauxiteto crude oil imports, and purchased 51% of KaiserBauxite’s Jamaican holdings (Stephens andStephens 1986). Soon after that, the United Statespublic, arraigned by an anti-Jamaican press, startedto boycott the tourist industry, and Kaiser used itsJamaican pay-off to move the bulk of its enterpriseto Australia. Jamaican and foreign investors removedtheir support, and the tax-incentive industries ofthe 1950s disappeared (Kaufman 1985). Crisiscircumstances persisted throughout the period ofdemocratic socialism from 1976 to 1980, inflamedby objections from the United States to the personalfriendship between Manley and Fidel Castro, andsubsequent hostility both to Cuba’s communismand to Jamaica’s socialism. In 1978, the Jamaicangovernment accepted an International MonetaryFund (IMF) package to provide funds required topay the civil service, but in 1979 the same cabinetvoted to reject the terms of a new loan arrange-ment which it thought would bear heavily andunfairly on the poorest segment of society – itsprincipal supporters (Stephens and Stephens 1986).

A violent ‘Cold War’ general election took placein 1980, with the PNP backed by Cuba, and theJLP supported by the CIA and the US. During thehustings, more than 500 people suffered violentdeaths, particularly in the Kingston constituencies(Payne 1994). The victory of the more conservativeJLP promised foreign investment, though it did notmaterialize, and the indebtedness of the late 1970swas, by the 1980s and 1990s, greatly magnified, assuccessive governments formed by the JLP and

PNP, in turn, struck new insolvency deals with theIMF and the World Bank (Payne 1994; King 2001).

Structural adjustment

A structural adjustment, and standby loan package,was first applied to Jamaica by the IMF in 1977.Between 1977 and 1990, Jamaica negotiated sevenadditional loans, the first six of which, like the first,were suspended because of the government’sfailure to pass various performance tests. The origi-nal (1977) arrangement was re-configured in 1983(Anderson 2004), but did not involve thoroughgo-ing trade and financial liberalization, privatizationand labour market reform until 1989 (Sudhanshuand King 1997). Structural adjustment was intro-duced to meet a cash liquidity (stabilization)problem and to make the Jamaican economy morecompetitive. Whereas post-war Jamaica, like manyof its colonial Caribbean neighbours, hadattempted to diversify and industrialize by encour-aging, through tax incentives, both local andforeign entrepreneurs to produce for the domestic(and foreign) market, the new wisdom was thatImport Substitution Industrialization (ISI) hadreached its limits, internationally, because themiddle class had attained its consumption capac-ity. Henceforth, so the IMF (and the United Statesgovernment) claimed, economic developmentdepended on comparative advantage, and thesupply of goods for a global rather than a localmarket. That Jamaica had been subjected to asimilar regime from 1850 to 1930, with generallypoor results, seemed not to send a warning (Clarkeand Howard 1999).

Structural adjustment from the outset involvedthe slimming down of government employment,cuts in taxation to stimulate investment, and areduction in public services to accommodate thewithering away of the post-colonial state (Le Franc1994). This preparation for the globalization of theeconomy was matched by the North Americaniza-tion of middle-class consumption patterns towardsan even greater emphasis than previously onimported consumer durables. However, structuraladjustment also entailed the privatization of theeconomy, and an immediate reduction in thepurchasing power of local wages. The proportionof Jamaican wage earners whose income failed topurchase more than half the minimum required tokeep a family increased from 10% in 1977 to 48%in 1985 (Anderson and Witter 1994).

The relative earnings of professional and whitecollar workers also underwent a sharp decline by1985, and, while they registered a partial recoveryby 1989, many had to sub-let their homes or to usethem as the basis for self-employment (Holland


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1995). So-called stabilization bore most heavily onthe more vulnerable elements in urban society,namely the Kingston poor. Health programmesaimed at support for women and children havebeen the principal victims of this policy of globali-zation, while nutrition support initiatives have alsosuffered (Le Franc 1994; Boyd 2001; MalcolmMcDonald 2002). Cutbacks in welfare programmeswere made visible through the growing evidence ofhuman distress on the streets of Kingston:

They were seen in the increased numbers of homelessand mentally ill searching routinely through garbagecontainers, they were absorbed among the numbers ofyouth recruited into criminal posses, they wereincluded among the fixed-income pensioners whoseprivate poverty could not be relieved by food stamps,they were numbered among those who stood grimlyin visa lines, and they were to be found among thosewhose incomes were increasingly inadequate for thepurchase of basic food requirements.

Anderson and Witter 1994, 52

The consequence of structural adjustment was thatthe urban economy of Kingston, which since the1950s had been protected from competitiveimports of many manufactured goods, was turnedinside out. In the late 1980s, tariff barriers werereduced, the Jamaica dollar was devalued, tradeunion protection of labour was curtailed, and theJamaican market was flooded with imports. Assum-ing that roughly 10 000 jobs existed in the tax-incentive industries created in the 1950s and1960s, their disappearance in the 1970s and early1980s would not have been catastrophic – and thisseems to have been the case (Clarke 1989).According to the Factory Inspectorate’s documents,manufacturing enterprises in Kingston, which hadexpanded from 681 in 1970 to 773 in 1985, stillemployed 27 777 in 1985, compared with 29 370at the earlier date.

Compensatory exports were expected from theemerging Kingston export economy that came intobeing after 1980, notably based on the garmentfactories in the freeport-manufacturing zone locatedin Newport West. By 1986, there were 8000employed in the Kingston and Montego Bay FreeZones – roughly the same number of employeesthat had been engaged in the various tax-exemptindustrialization schemes of the period 1950–70(Clarke 1989). However, most of the freeport facto-ries in Kingston, which were established after 1980and operated under sweat-shop conditions, closedin the 1990s (Klak 1997; Ricketts 2002). By 2000,the level of employment fell below 1000, andfreeport space was re-designated for nationalwarehousing purposes (Planning Institute of Jamaica

2001). The short sharp shock of structural adjust-ment created no compensatory spurt of economicdevelopment.

Implications for labour and housing

An attempt to understand what structural adjust-ment has meant for the urban labour force ofKingston has been made by Anderson (1987 2004).Her research showed that, for men, formal employ-ment contracted between 1977 and 1989 from 60to 53%, and, for women, from 52 to 44%. Morespecifically, government and service employmentdropped from 24 to 14% for men and from 28 to18% for women, during the same time period.Compensating job changes were recorded in theinformal sector (which involved domestic work forwomen, small-scale manufacturing for men, streetselling for men and women, small-scale servicesfor women, and agriculture for men), employmentrising from 35 to 37% for women. However, theproportion of men in these activities actuallydropped very slightly from 22 to 21%.

The gap between the formal and informal sectorsat the two dates was filled by unprotected jobs,which rose from 17 to 26% of employment formen, largely in construction, and from 12 to 18%for women, principally in foreign-owned manufac-turing, producing clothing for export to the USunder sweat-shop conditions (Anderson 1987).Furthermore, in the late 1980s, both men andwomen withdrew from the labour force, as jobsbecame increasingly difficult to find – a trend forwomen that was the reverse of the Latin Americanurban pattern (Clarke and Howard 1999). Andersonand Witter (1994) also reported that increases inblue-collar work led to a substantial reduction inunemployment in the late 1980s. More recentevaluations have suggested that small-scale infor-mal activities (self-employment) in Kingston (andelsewhere in the urban Caribbean), though increas-ingly important in terms of labour absorption, havelacked the capacity to lead national autonomouseconomic growth (Portes

et al

. 1997). During the1990s, formal labour force participation rates havecontinued to decline, with the most evidentdecreases apparent for the youngest and oldest agegroups and among women (Anderson 2004).

Structural adjustment has also impacted onhousing. It has been difficult for the Jamaicangovernment to allocate National Housing Trustfunds, built up from the payroll contributions offormal-sector employers and employees since the1970s, to those who are not deemed ‘credit-worthy’. Male public employees were initially theprimary beneficiaries of mortgage allocations,together with others with secure incomes – a pattern

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that goes back to colonial and immediate post-colonial times. However, this pattern has changedin recent decades so that female public employeesare now the principal beneficiaries of housing loans– women have better loan repayment records; theirdomestic and labour responsibilities make theirhousing needs great, but the ‘bias in favour ofwomen within the National Housing Trustsystem . . . does not overcome the effects of biasagainst them in the workforce’ (Klak and Hey1992, 214). Moreover, the Housing Finance Corpo-ration, which receives funds from the United StatesAgency for International Development (USAID), andis supposed to finance those with less than medianincomes, has identified scarcely any workers whohave the capacity to service a mortgage. Informalsector employees – that is half of Kingston’s malelabour force and over half the female workers –have been concentrated in the private rentedsector, or have sought their own housing solutionthrough self-built accommodation. Public housingon the scale provided as political-party patronage forthe Kingston poor during the 1960s and 1970s hasbeen completely off the agenda (Klak 1992 1997).

By the beginning of the twenty-first century,almost half the Jamaican annual budget was beingspent on servicing the national debt – the figure 20years earlier was 30%, leaving inadequate amountsavailable to maintain and develop the priority areasof education, health, transport and public works,with almost nothing going into housing (PlanningInstitute of Jamaica 2003). Most of the rural, tradi-tional export industries were in crisis, leaving adreadful pall of stagnation and decay over theisland. In Kingston, the private sector of theeconomy has continued to develop aroundproperty and the financial sector, while a slimmed-down civil service continues to administer thestate. But the bottom half of the lower class hasendured declining economic circumstances,manifest in the downtown sections of the city.

Processes and patterns of urbanization

Most of what has been written so far has beendevoted to Jamaica, with brief reference toKingston. Attention is now concentrated on thecapital city, which at independence constituted20% of the Jamaican population, and now housesover 30% of the country’s citizens.

Population growth

The population of Kingston increased from 379 980in 1960 to 868 653 in 2001, if the Kingston Metro-politan Region (KMR), rather than the KingstonMetropolitan Area (KMA) – with 577 286 in 2001 –

is taken as the comparator at the later date. Theincrease in population between 1960 and 2001, ofalmost 490 000, was, in fact, only just over halfwhat had been estimated in 1962 as likely by theend of the millennium. The reduction in anticipatedgrowth was largely due to heavy out-migration toNorth America, as the United States and Canadarevised their immigration policies in the late1960s to select those with high educationalcredentials (CICRED 1974). Since the UK govern-ment restricted immigration in 1967, the majormigratory movement of Jamaicans has been toNorth America. Approximately 20 000 Jamaicansemigrate to the US each year, with a similarnumber recorded as visitors annually. As a result,Kingston’s population increased by a mere 1% perannum in the 1990s – a low figure by Third Worldurban standards, and significantly below the figure ofalmost 4% per annum achieved in the late 1950s.

Nevertheless, the increase in Kingstonians afterindependence in 1962 could be housed only bythe suburbanization of the Liguanea Plain to thenorth of the Washington Boulevard (Figure 1), thesubsequent overspill of townspeople from Kingstonto the new dormitory suburbs at Portmore and thesuburbs, and squatter settlements formed aroundthe former colonial capital, Spanish Town. By1991, Kingston and these contiguous settlements,collectively termed the Kingston MetropolitanRegion, had become a single urban zone of779 016 inhabitants, with the burgeoning urbaninfrastructure of Portmore to the west, rather thanthe surrounding hills north of Constant Spring,providing the more favoured axis of development(Figure 1).

Distribution and density of population

Within the framework of the Liguanea Plain, thepopulation increased from 379 980 in 1960 to563 000 in 1991 and 577 623 in 2001 – a modestgrowth by Third World urban standards (33% overthe first 30 years of independence, reducing tonear stasis in the 1990s). Not surprisingly, thedistribution and density of population over theperiod 1943–91 remained substantially unchanged(Figure 2). Between 1960 and 1967, half the city’stotal population growth took place in the WestKingston neighbourhoods adjoining the SpanishTown Road (Clarke 1975a). However, during thesame decade, densities also increased in thesuburbs, through new middle-income housinglocated at Harbour View and north of theWashington Boulevard.

Much of the subsequent population increase hastaken place beyond the Liguanea Plain at Portmoreand Spanish Town, as we have seen, though there

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Figure 1 Kingston Metropolitan Region 1991: Kingston, Portmore and Spanish Town

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ingston, Jamaica

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uthors. Journal compilation ©

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eographical Society0016-7398/06/0002-0001/$00.20/0 Figure 2 Kingston Metropolitan Area and Region 1991: population density (persons per hectare)


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were important outward movements from WestKingston of people displaced by political violencein the 1970s, and of suburban dwellers emigratingfrom Jamaica to the United States to escape thesocial chaos. Portmore recorded population densi-ties of more than 70 persons per hectare (atWaterford and Garveymeade, more than 200persons per hectare) in 1991, and reproduced thehigh-density lower-middle-income housing typicalof Harbour View and the suburbs north of theWashington Boulevard.

Portmore consisted of multiple housing schemes,designed for different income groups, andconstructed at different periods, with a shiftingbalance over time on some of the less expensiveestates from white- to blue-collar workers. Thisvolatility reflected the gains of some blue-collarworkers under structural adjustment, and themovement of young people to Portmore to estab-lish a toe-hold in the housing market, beforemoving back to Kingston. Spanish Town, by 1991,had a densely populated, historic core, and asparsely occupied periphery divided into contrast-ing wedges occupied by modern estates, such asAvon Park and Gold Acres, or squatter settlements.

The highest population densities in 1991 (over200–300 persons per hectare) were recorded inWest Kingston (Figure 2). The long-run tendencywas for population to have increased in the innertenements in West and East Kingston by 1943;these characteristics then spread westwards downto, and across, the Hagley Park Road in the 1950sand 1960s; and then east into East Kingston andwest across the Sandy Gully to the new housingestates and the shantytowns on the gully banks inthe 1970s and 1980s. Most of the high-density beltin 1990, stretching for about 12 km from EastKingston to beyond the Washington Boulevard, ranparallel to the coast, but was set back 1–2 kmbecause of port, commercial and industrialpremises, and was 2–3 km in width. The horse-shoe shape of the high-density zone wascompleted by an eastward prong which crossed theConstant Spring Road and stretched for 6 miles inan arc from the Washington Boulevard to GrantsPen. It may be identified, in embryo, on the 1960map of population density (Figure 2).

Densities of fewer than 15 persons per hectare in1991 occurred to the east of the Halfway Tree andConstant Spring Roads, at Portmore, and in theoutskirts of Spanish Town. However, whereverthere were key routeways, they tended to becharacterized by densities of 15–35 persons perhectare, rising to 70 persons per hectare whereolder houses on spacious plots had been torndown and replaced by town houses or apartments– typically along the Constant Spring and Hope

Roads in Kingston. The city centre has been depop-ulated over the last 50 years by the development ofthe central business district, the waterfront re-development, and the destruction of China Townby arson in the 1970s. Between 1960 and 1970,population declined in the coastal strip (includingthe central business district and inner tenements),but increased on the suburban fringe to the northof the Washington Boulevard, stretching eastwardsto Papine. Uptown–downtown differences inpopulation density are, of course, underpinned byclass and race.

Class, social areas and unemployment

Class

An overview of Kingston’s social stratification isprovided by adopting a Weberian approach toclass, namely that it is based substantially onoccupation and capacity to consume (Parkin 1982).Social status in Jamaican society relates intrinsi-cally to racial, gender and economic attributes,which under colonialism produced a formal hierar-chy of access and opportunity. The legacy of

dejure

racial separation under slavery and subsequent

de facto

discrimination created what has beentermed a colour–class stratification (Henriques1953), in which class or social status is inherentlylinked to ethnic or racialized identities. For thepurpose of this analysis, restricted to censuscategories, occupation is taken as an indicator ofclass, representing individual social status andreflecting likely access to education and housingopportunities.

According to the 1991 census sample, the elite(legislators, senior officials and professionals)accounted for 10% of the labour force; the middleclass (of technicians and associate professionals,clerks and service workers) made up 34%, and thelower class (the remainder) accounted for 56%. In1960, as in 1991 using the classified labour forceas the basis, the percentages would have beenroughly 5% elite, 25% middle class, and 70%lower class (Clarke 1966, Table 2, 169). Thisshows the expansion of the middle class and theelite at the expense of the lower class since theend of the colonial period, in spite of structuraladjustment, as educational opportunity and the in-migration of those with higher qualifications actedin concert with the long-term growth of thebureaucracy and sophisticated service provision tocreate new higher-class positions.

Gordon, in his study of Jamaican social mobility,noted ‘the paradox of large scale social mobilitygenerated by the opening up of new positionscoexisting side by side with gross, and perhaps,

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even widening inequalities of opportunity betweenthe minority at the top and the majority at thebottom of the social order’ (Gordon 1987, 2).However, like Brown (1994), he also underlinedthe possibility, under neo-liberalism, for better-paidmembers of the working class (artisans, blue-collarworkers and international higglers) ‘to purchasehomes in lower-middle-class areas, to obtainconsumption goods and an education for theirchildren formerly reserved for the bourgeoisie,landowners and the small middle stratum of mainlywhite and coloured origin’ (Gordon 1987, 51).These, then, were the principal beneficiaries ofstructural adjustment, though the elite and tradi-tional middle class largely managed to maintaintheir positions in urban society, despite thecontraction of the economy (Brown 1994).

Socio-economic status areas

Income levels directly relate to housing access andare clearly defined within the urban landscape ofKingston (Austin 1983). Valuable urban property isacquired by the richest, and the remainder isallocated, on the basis of capacity to pay andconsume, largely reflecting occupational status(Parkin 1982; Mills 1987). Using occupational datain the 1991 census, a socio-economic status indexwas calculated for each enumeration district ofKingston by multiplying the proportion in profes-sional and supervisory posts by one, the proportionin white-collar occupations by two, and theremainder by three. The result for each enumera-tion district was summed to give a score ofbetween 100 and 300. The higher the index, thelower the status, and vice versa (Figure 3).

The higher ranking neighbourhoods according tothis index, by 1991, included most of the northernsuburbs identified in the 1960 data, using anidentical technique (Clarke 1975b, Figure 54),together with new residential areas built to thenorth of the Sandy Gully towards Constant Spring.Outliers of high status in the downtown area werepicked out by the residential compound foremployees at the Kingston Public Hospital and inthe apartments constructed as part of the waterfrontredevelopment. They also occurred at Bridgeportand East Ascot at Portmore, and in a number of thesuburbs of Spanish Town, such as Thompson Pen,St John’s Heights, and the area lying to the east ofthe Bogwalk Road.

Low status areas were located in CentralKingston and parts of East Kingston, throughoutWest Kingston as far as the Sandy Gully, and inpockets following the Sandy and Constant SpringGullies. These pockets were set in a sea of highstatus. Low status areas were virtually missing from

Portmore (the exception being the western fringes),but were repeated in the inner city tenements atSpanish Town and in the squatter settlementsbordering the bypass.

Medium status areas were located, as in 1960, inEast Kingston and south and west of Half Way Tree(Clarke 1975b). New medium-status areas wereheavily concentrated on either side of the Wash-ington Boulevard, at Portmore (Waterford), and inthe suburban housing estates in Spanish Town,where they occupied wedges adjacent to high-ranking residential districts. On the Liguanea Plain,the contrast between uptown and downtownbecame ever more emphatically expressed, socio-economically, after 1970, when the lower-incomeneighbourhoods started to be designated as the‘ghetto’ – an area which became spatially andeconomically marginalized by political violence(Eyre 1986).

It has been noted that low-class status (Figure 3)frames the incidence of high densities of popula-tion (Figure 2); and it will now be shown that italso circumscribes areas of high unemployment,rental and squatting, and confines these circum-stances to the downtown area. An additional pointof importance is that the expansion of poor-qualityhousing into the Barbican area implies that uptownis nothing like so securely distant from downtownas nomenclature implies.

Unemployment

An attempt to trace the influence of the nationaleconomic disintegration of the mid-to-late 1970son unemployment in Kingston has been made byGordon and Dixon (1992). Unemployment, whichhad stood at 16% in 1946 and 18% in 1960(Clarke 1975b), increased to 17% for men and30% for women in 1977, rising to 21% for menand 35% for women in 1983, as de-industrialization,capital flight and business demoralization accom-panied the years of democratic socialism (1976–80)and their immediate aftermath (Gordon and Dixon1992).

Modest recovery under structural adjustment sawunemployment drop to 11% for men and 22% forwomen by 1989, rates which have persisted withlittle fluctuation since then. However, labour-forceparticipation also declined (from 84 to 78% for menand from 71 to 64% for women between 1983 and1989), implying that work had become so difficult toget, or was so poorly rewarded, that increasingnumbers of men and women were no longer in-terested in applying for it (Gordon and Dixon 1992).

In the 1991 census, 10% of Kingstonians agedover 14 years old were looking for work andanother 4% were of an indeterminate category and


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Figure 3 Kingston Metropolitan Region 1991: socio-economic status

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certainly underemployed. Labour force statistics for2000 indicate that the rate of unemployment formales and females taken together was 14% (Statis-tical Institute of Jamaica 2001), with women stillrecording a jobless rate about twice the maleaverage. Of course, it is not implied that theunemployed were completely idle at this or anyother date. Given the lack of unemploymentbenefit in Jamaica, it almost certainly means thatthe unemployed in Kingston were engaged inspasmodic, low paid, unregulated and occasionallyillegal activities that they did not regard as formalemployment.

Unfortunately, the published labour force statis-tics do not give the participation rate for Kingston.However, national data suggest that stasis inunemployment has continued to be underpinnedby the withdrawal of potential employees from thelabour market. Bailey and Ricketts (2003) report alabour force participation rate of 73 and 57% forJamaican men and women, respectively, in 1999 –figures well below the Kingston statistics recordeda decade earlier, and below contemporary levels inBarbados. If withdrawal from the labour force inKingston followed the national trend, it would haveamounted to a 1% per annum reduction in femaleunemployment between 1983 and 1999; for menthe equivalent reduction would have been half of1% per annum. Without these changes, unemploy-ment would have been nearer 20% for men and30% for women around 2000 – roughly the figuresrecorded in 1983.

Kingston has suffered from high percentage ratesof secular unemployment, in the mid to high teens,

going back into the 1940s, at the very least. In1982, between 15 and 20% of the labour forcewanted work and were available to do it in manyof the lower-class sections of down-town Kingstonand in pockets of poverty near the gullies in thenorthern suburbs and in Portmore (Figure 4). By1991, those who worked only six to nine monthsper year (8% of the labour force) were concen-trated at a similar rate of incidence (15–20%) inthe ghetto, parts of Portmore, and the tenementsand shanty towns of Spanish Town. The spatialdistribution of low-income households is thusclearly illustrated by restricted or temporary accessto formal employment.

Correlations for 1991 (Table 1) show that thoseseeking work were associated with women over 14years old living with a common-law partner (0.30),and with low educational and occupational levels;moreover, they were dissociated from high educa-tional attainment, marriage (

−

0.24) and the (upperclass) white population (

−

0.24).Those seeking their first job in 1982 and 1991

(4% of the labour force) followed a similar spatialpattern and incidence to the unemployed (Figure 5),with Portmore recording a low rate similar to thesuburbs around Half Way Tree and Spanish Town(1–6%). Leaving Portmore and Spanish Town out ofthe analysis, both with regard to unemploymentand seeking one’s first job (because they have onlyrecently been part of the Kingston labour market),it may be seen that the very same areas of Kingstonthat were affected in 1982 and 1991 had recordedthe worst conditions in 1960 (Clarke 1966, Figures3 and 4; Panton 1993). In 1991, those looking for

Table 1 Unemployment in the Kingston Metropolitan Region in 1991, and the enumeration district variables with which the unemployed record the five highest and lowest Spearman rank correlation coefficients

Unemployed: seeking work Seeking first job

Females over 14 with common-law partner 0.30 No exams passed 0.44Females over 14 no longer with husband 0.27 Females over 14 never married 0.38Education attainment: primary schoolWood/charcoal as main fuel for cookingCraft and related tradesHighest exam passed: degree and professional qualification

0.250.240.20

−0.23

Highest class attended: 9–12 primary or all-age secondary

0.37

Wood/charcoal as main fuel for cooking 0.36Own business without paid employees 0.36Women over 14 married −0.38

Highest class attended: form 6 secondary high −0.23 Attended or attending university −0.40Females over 14 marriedWhite populationEducational attainment: university

−0.24 Legislators and senior officials −0.40−0.24−0.26

Highest exams passed degree and professional qualifications

−0.40

Other tertiary education institution −0.41

Source: Statistical Institute of Jamaica (1993)


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Figure 4 Kingston Metropolitan Area and Region 1991: unemployment

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Figure 5 Kingston Metropolitan Area and Region 1991: seeking first job


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their first job were remarkable for their low educa-tional levels (no exam passes 0.44), and theirassociation with businesses without employees(0.36) – the informal sector (Table 1). Like thoseolder than them who were more habitually seekingwork, they were negatively correlated withmarriage and positively linked to households usingwood and charcoal for cooking – indicative of thepoorest sectors of the urban population.

Housing quality and tenure

Polarized class stratification in Kingston (thoughwith some contraction in the proportion of thelower class over time), together with high levels ofunemployment and other forms of joblessnessamong the most economically depressed urbansectors, has produced a substantial population forwhom adequate formal housing is likely to beunattainable. Inevitably, therefore, the areasoccupied by the lower class in 1991 (which alsoincorporated lower class housing as of 1960)provides a spatial framework for understandingdeprivation in housing and services among theKingston poor. Conversely, the upper and middleclasses have been more than adequately providedfor from the point of view of housing, water andsewerage, plus the supply of electricity and gas.

Housing fabric

High-quality fabric, in the shape of reinforcedconcrete, stone and brick walls, was recorded by63% of households in Kingston in 1960 (accordingto the 10% sample). These conditions were ubiqui-tous in the central business district, in EastKingston, and in the high and medium-qualityhousing in the suburbs around Halfway Tree andon the northern fringe of the city (Clarke 1975b,Figure 41). The centre of gravity of this belt hadpulled away to the northern perimeter of the cityby 1982, when Portmore was also starting to sharethese characteristics. Approximately 75% of house-holds in Kingston, Portmore and Spanish Town hadconcrete walls in 1991, but this figure undoubtedlyreflected repairs to hurricane damage (Figure 6).

Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 destroyed 20% ofJamaica’s housing and damaged another 50%(Clarke 1989). The massive rebuilding programme,funded largely by international donors, amongwhom the USA was the principal source of aid,was a major factor in the reduction in householdswith wooden walls from 33 to 14% between 1960and 1991 (10% sample survey). Some major improve-ments in fabric may also be detected on the mapsfor 1982 and 1991, indicating that the downtownzones of high population density benefited through

hurricane rebuilding and the government housingprogrammes of the 1960s and 1970s. Concreteroofing, in 1991, accounted for 24% of the house-holds in Kingston, and picked out the trianglebetween the Hope, Old Hope and Halfway TreeRoads, the northern suburban fringe, the waterfrontdevelopment and government housing projects indowntown Kingston, most of the residential devel-opments at Portmore, and the northern suburbs ofSpanish Town (Figure 6).

Shacks, built of re-cycled materials, comprised8% of Kingston’s housing in 1991, and remainedapproximately where they had been in 1960 and1982 – on the West Kingston waterfront, on the urban–rural fringe, in pockets along the gully courses, andon vacant (and therefore shifting) spots in central,west and east Kingston (Figure 7). The expansion ofmetropolitan Kingston also witnessed the develop-ment of new shanty towns – comprising settlementsof shacks – by 1991, following the alignment of thebypass and other major roads in the outskirts ofSpanish Town, and at Portmore, notably on thefishing beach at Port Henderson.

House tenure

Kingston was essentially a rented city in 1960, withjust under 70% of households being tenants, 2.5%squatters – the police estimate in 1960 was 5% –and 26% owner occupiers (taken from a 10%sample survey). However, by 1991, owner occupa-tion had increased to be the largest tenure categorywith 46% of households, private tenancy haddropped to 40% and rental from the government to2%. Squatters on open land accounted for a mere4% of households (10% sample survey).

In 1960, at least 25% of households in EastKingston, in the neighbourhoods south of Half WayTree, and, throughout the rest of the suburbs,owned their own homes, rising to more than 50%in the elite section close to King’s House and onthe northern urban fringe (Clarke 1975b, Figure50). By 1982, the areas with more than 50%ownership were concentrated in the north of thecity and at Portmore (Figure 8). Housing aroundHalf Way Tree was vacated in the late 1970s byresidents who were either fleeing political violencein neighbouring downtown areas and/or thegovernment’s socialist policies in preference for anew life in North America.

High ownership levels were recorded on thenorthern periphery of the Kingston MetropolitanRegion by 1991, as suburbs extended into newareas of residential development such as the RedHills, Portmore, and the outer suburbs of SpanishTown (Figure 8). The mirror image of this spatialpattern was provided by the areas given over to

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Figure 6 Kingston Metropolitan Area and Region 1991: concrete used in the construction of housing for 1982 and 1991


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oyal Geographical Society Figure 7 Kingston Metropolitan Area and Region 1991: shack or other materials and improvised housing units for 1982 and 1991

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Figure 8 Kingston Metropolitan Area and Region 1991: owned property occupied by household


123


rental accommodation – private houses and tene-ments, government housing and rent yards. Rentalcoincided with the most densely populated sectionsof downtown Kingston and with the oldest andmost dilapidated districts of central Spanish Town –the very same areas that recorded the highest ratesof unemployment.

Information on rental housing in 1991 isproblematic. The governmental sector is possiblytoo low, and may indicate that some beneficiarieshad stopped paying rent. The map of propertyrented from the government in 1982 (Figure 9)showed a concentration in West Kingston, in smallpockets at Portmore and at other localities in thewestern and eastern suburbs, where governmentsponsorship of housing had taken place in the1950s (Clarke 1975b, Figure 38). The zone ofgovernment rented property stretching from TivoliGardens northwards via Trench Town towardsGem Road-Greenwich Road was the core area ofpolitical violence in the 1970s, and has remainedso into the late 1990s and early 2000s (Figure 9).

Squatting remained a small-scale phenomenon,rising from 2.5% of households in 1960 to 4% in 1991,when it involved 900 households (10% sample),

most of them desperately poor. In 1960, squatting(at very low population densities and accountingfor about 10% of the enumeration district popula-tion) was located in certain parts of West Kingston,with notable concentrations at Back O’ Wall andTrench Town, as well as on the northern fringe ofthe city and on the edge of Long Mountain (Clarke1975b, Figure 52). During the 1970s, 19 squattersites were upgraded by the PNP government incollaboration with the United States and Nether-lands governments, and in 1980, the World Bankcompleted 5500 core units under its site-and-servicesprogramme, all before the structural adjustmentregime was fully installed (Clarke 1989).

By 1982, squatting was still a small-scalephenomenon, but it occurred in more widelydistributed locations and at reduced concentra-tions: where there were empty lots in the tenementareas; at Portmore and at Riverton City, a settle-ment reminiscent of Smith Village of the 1930s,because it was there that the city’s dump or dunglewas located (Eyre 1997); close to the gully courses;on the northern urban fringe; on the flanks of LongMountain; in some of the elite housing areas wherethe residents had gone abroad – the triangle of Half

Figure 9 Kingston Metropolitan Area: government rental property by household

124



Way Tree Road, Hope Road and Old Hope Road;and on the Palisadoes (Figure 10).

A similar pattern (also barely rising above 3% ofresidents) obtained in 1991, by which time the citycentre, the foreshore at Portmore, the outskirts ofSpanish Town, and the central suburbs were moreclearly included, and squatted shanty towns pickedout the alignment of the gully courses (Figure 10).In 1991, as in 1960, some shanty towns and squat-ter settlements coincided; but many shanty townswere located on rented land (rent yards), and somesquatter settlements were not shanty towns, butmore substantially built (Tindigarukayo 2002).

Correlations between house-tenure categoriesand the five highest positive and negative coefficientswith other variables in the 1991 enumerationdistrict data have been tabulated (Table 2). Theyshow high positive scores between owned dwellingand a series of related circumstances includingfemales living with their husbands (0.54), morethan three rooms in the household (0.47), profes-sionals (0.32), and legislators and senior officials(0.32). Conversely, owned dwellings were nega-tively correlated with opposed circumstances, suchas shared toilet facilities (

−

0.65), and a publicwater supply piped into the yard (

−

0.44).Data on rented dwellings dovetailed with the

evidence for house ownership, and supplied amirror image. Census material on squatting isparticularly instructive. Squatting was associatedwith wood or charcoal for cooking (0.37), kerosenefor lighting (0.35), reliance on public standpipes(0.34), and females in the common-law union(0.31). However, it was undoubtedly directlyrelated to low educational (secondary high schooleducation

−

0.31) and low occupational levels(plant and machine operators 0.30; technical andassociate professionals

−

0.31).The census data thus provide detailed spatial

accounts of the material infrastructure of Kingsto-nian households and, by default, indicate a spatialdistribution according to socioeconomic status. Theimpact of remittances on household income,however, is not readily attainable from this censusanalysis. Up to 10% of the Jamaican gross domes-tic product (GDP) is derived from remittancereceipts, which now amounts to over US$900million per annum, with the proportion of suchincome increasing steadily. In 1990, it wasestimated that 24% of Jamaican householdsreceived remittances, but by the end of the decadethis proportion has increased to one-third (Wallsten2004). Data not yet available from the 2001 censuswill shed some light on the number of householdsreceiving income from abroad, and as a transna-tional society, the impact of remittances is thefocus of increasing research. Subsequent analysis

Tabl

e 2

Hou

se te

nure

cat

egor

ies

in th

e K

ings

ton

Met

ropo

litan

Reg

ion

in 1

991,

and

the

enum

erat

ion

dist

rict

var

iabl

es w

ith w

hich

they

reco

rd th

e fiv

e hi

ghes

t and

low

est

Spea

rman

ran

k co

rrel

atio

n co

effic

ient

s

Ow

ned

dwel

ling

Ren

ted

dwel

ling

Squa

tter

Toile

t fa

cilit

ies

not

shar

ed0.

65Sh

ared

toi

let

faci

litie

s0.

53W

ood/

char

coal

for

coo

king

0.37

Wom

en o

ver

14 l

ivin

g w

ith h

usba

nd0.

54W

omen

ove

r 14

nev

er m

arri

ed0.

33K

eros

ene

for

light

ing

0.35

Ove

r th

ree

room

s in

dw

ellin

g0.

47Pu

blic

wat

er p

iped

int

o ya

rd0.

32Pu

blic

sta

ndpi

pe a

s m

ain

sour

ce o

f w

ater

0.34

Prof

essi

onal

s0.

33K

eros

ene

for

cook

ing

0.32

Wom

en o

ver

14 w

ith c

omm

on-l

aw p

artn

er0.

31Le

gisl

ator

s an

d se

nior

offi

cial

s0.

32Le

ss t

han

thre

e ro

oms

in d

wel

ling

0.31

Plan

t an

d m

achi

ne o

pera

tors

and

ass

embl

ers

0.30

Publ

ic w

ater

sup

ply

pipe

d in

to y

ard

−

0.44

Publ

ic w

ater

sup

ply

pipe

d i

nto

dwel

ling

−

0.19

Tech

nica

l an

d as

soci

ate

prof

essi

onal

s

−

0.31

Ker

osen

e fo

r co

okin

g

−

0.45

Empl

oyed

in

agri

cultu

re

−

0.23

Seco

ndar

y hi

gh s

choo

l ed

ucat

ion

−

0.31

Less

tha

n th

ree

room

s in

dw

ellin

g

−

0.46

Ove

r th

ree

room

s in

dw

ellin

g

−

0.31

Elec

tric

ity f

or l

ight

ing

−

0.34

Wom

en o

ver

14 n

ever

mar

ried

−

0.48

Wom

en o

ver

13 w

ith h

usba

nd

−

0.38

Publ

ic w

ater

sup

ply

pipe

d in

to d

wel

ling

−

0.35

Shar

ed t

oile

t fa

cilit

ies

−

0.65

Toile

t fa

cilit

ies

not

shar

ed

−

0.53

Gas

for

coo

king

−

0.36

Sour

ce

: St

atis

tical

Ins

titut

e of

Jam

aica

(19

93)


ingston, Jamaica

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Figure 10 Kingston Metropolitan Area and Region 1991: squatted land occupied by household

126



of the most recent census should therefore providea clearer and more comprehensive account of thespatial impact of remittance monies on urbanKingston.

Conclusion

Late colonial Kingston was the focal point for ruralto urban migration, but modest demographicincrease, moderated by emigration, was the normafter 1962. Kingston’s population increased afterindependence at an annual rate of 1% per annum(compared with almost 4% per annum in the late1950s), and has been slow enough to permit manyimprovements in social provision. In 1989, Clarkewrote: ‘anyone flying into Kingston airport andlooking inland across the harbour cannot fail to beimpressed by the housing schemes which cluster tonorth and south of the Spanish Town Road, whereBack O’ Wall and Trench Town were once squat-ted. It is clear that political rivalry and competitivepatronage networks have motivated urban renewal’(Clarke 1989, 45), although the beneficiaries werenot the squatters themselves.

In the same publication, Clarke commented,‘statistics are borne out by field observation:housing conditions in Kingston have improved,especially since 1970’ (Clarke 1989). Changes tohousing quality have been significant. Partlyfunded by local building societies (with somegovernment help in abating the interest rate), inter-national aid after Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 andinvestment in home loans by the National HousingCorporation and the National Housing Trust,housing improvements have also reflected theexpansion of Kingston’s elite and middle classsince independence, and their consumption of theproduced space of the city’s suburbs. The relocationof the central business district, from downtownnorthward to Knutsford Boulevard, heralded a shiftin the location of the city’s formal economy. Asmiddle and upper class residences were developedas ‘safe places’ away from downtown troubles, sotoo the urban economy of uptown was redevel-oped to suit the work and leisure requirements ofthis population. Uptown became synonymous notonly with the wealth of the former elite, but, sincethe 1980s, has been seen to represent the ‘devel-oped’, modern and optimistically safe face of‘New Kingston’.

Squatting remains below 5% of households; homeswith wooden walls are down from 33% in 1960 to14% in 1991; 70% of households were renters in1960, but only 40% in 1991. Despite a doubling ofthe population, the sewered area served a greaterproportion of households in 1991 (76%) than in1960 (60%), while water piped into homes has

characterized around 60% of households at bothdates.

Put more negatively, however, there were roughly40 000 Kingstonians without secure residentialtenure in 1991 (less than 5% of the 1991 popula-tion); 40% of Kingstonians were renters in 1991;24% had no sewer connections; and 40% of thepopulation lived in homes without a public watersupply piped into them, a proportion that hadpersisted since 1960. In short, the city and the statehad failed to provide collective consumption itemsas of right, and housing deprivation continued.Corruption, most notably in terms of practicalgovernance and the provision of constructioncontracts, has become an intrinsic part of urbandevelopment since political patronage was directlylinked to housing schemes during the 1970s. Poorhousing conditions of the kind outlined above weremaintained by low incomes, combined with highand persistent levels of unemployment. Together,they gave rise to a massive zone of deprivationcovering virtually the whole of the downtown area,and to pockets of poverty associated with the gullycourses in the uptown suburbs.

Surprisingly, unemployment levels have largelyremained below 20% since 1960, the sole exceptionbeing the early 1980s, when the impact of struc-tural adjustment (following on from the economicdecline experienced in the late 1970s) was firstfelt. Informal activity, coupled to the withdrawal ofpotential workers from the labour force (especiallywomen, whose activity rate has gone down by 1%a year since 1983) has kept the current rate ofunemployment (14%) below the level of the early1960s (18%) or late 1980s (15%) (Clarke 2002;Henry-Lee 2002). One can conclude thatKingston’s urban economy has stabilized to acertain extent; but while structural adjustment hasdone less long-term damage than might have beenfeared, it has certainly not created what was alleg-edly intended, namely, dynamic economic growthcoupled to labour absorption in the formal sector.Either as the unemployed, or as non-members ofthe labour force, about 25% of Kingston’s potentiallabour force are engaged in unregulated small-scale, often intermittent, activities, thus inflatingthe informal sector of the urban economy.

In 1999, the Jamaica Survey of Living Conditionsfound that 11% of Kingston’s population wereliving in poverty and were unable to meet basicneeds, as defined by minimum standards of foodand non-food items including education, clothingand transport (Planning Institute of Jamaica 2001).This proportion of the urban population coincidedroughly with the 14% who were unemployed(Henry-Lee 2002). An explanation for the negativerelationship between the stagnation of the GDP in


127


the late 1990s, coupled with improvements in theextent of poverty, has been attributed to theNational Poverty Eradication Programme, in smallmeasure, and, above all, to remittances to Jamaicafrom emigrants overseas, which rose from US$130million in 1990 to US$586 million in 1999 – or 10%of GDP (Salmon 2002). The bulk of these fundsseems to have been spent on home improvements,and the purchase of household appliances andvehicles (Le Franc and Downes 2001), althoughexpenditure on income relief has also beeninvolved. Moreover, these remittances must go along way to explain the avoidance by men, and moreespecially women, of the least rewarding, if notmost exploitative, jobs in the Kingston labourmarket.

How does the Kingston case relate to thebroader situation in Latin America? Kingston hasresponded to structural adjustment like many LatinAmerican cities, by the expansion of the informalsector at the expense of the formal (Clarke andHoward 1999). Women have not been drawn intothe Kingston labour market to supplement house-hold incomes, as evidenced in Latin America; theopposite has happened, and both men and women– but especially women – have withdrawn fromlabour-force participation, largely because of thepoor quality of the jobs available and the compen-sating supply of remittances from the UK andNorth America (Clarke and Howard 1999; Ander-son 2004). As in Latin America, all classes havebeen put under intense occupational pressure, asformal employment has contracted (Smith andKorzeniewicz 1997), but in Kingston, the invest-ment in social capital (for example, in educationand housing), undertaken by the middle and upperclasses, has enabled them to sustain the dislocationintroduced by structural adjustment (Holland 1995).

Expansion of the informal sector has neitherincreased reliance on informal housing, nor inter-rupted a recent history of squatter upgrading – asin Latin America (Gilbert and Varley 1991). Squat-ting has remained a marginal condition inKingston, and the lower class has maintained itslong association, stretching back into the colonialperiod, with renting. Owner occupation hasexpanded through mortgage availability, remit-tances from overseas emigrants, and the expansionof the middle class in Kingston, very much againstthe run of Latin American experience on each ofthese counts (Clarke and Howard 1999). Finally,Kingston’s population has grown at a modest rate,because of emigration, and this has underpinned amore managed response to urbanization – despitethe lack of national economic growth – than thatachieved by most Latin American cities undergoingstructural adjustment (Gilbert 1994 1996).

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Leverhulme Trust,which made a grant to the University of Oxford in1998 to fund the project ‘Decolonising the Colo-nial City: Kingston, Jamaica 1940–1991’ (GrantRef. F/773/B). This paper is based on part of thatproject, which was directed by Professor ColinClarke, with Dr David Howard as the principalresearch assistant. They also wish to express theirthanks to Dr Lucy Stephens, who helped to set upthe database, Mr Daniel Boyce, who was responsi-ble for much of the statistical analysis and theautomated cartography, and Ms Ailsa Allen of theSchool of Geography and the Environment, whore-designed the maps. Additional grants to supportthe research were provided by Oxford University,Jesus College, Oxford and the Oppenheimer Fund,Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University, all ofwhich are gratefully acknowledged.

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Documents

Contradictory socio-economic consequences of structural adjustment in Kingston, Jamaica