Doctoral Dissertation Research in Law and Social Science

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This doctoral dissertation project focusses on the intersection of legal discourses and discourses on ethnic and national identity in the British Virgin Islands. It examines the ways ethnic and national identities have been mutually constructed during the islands' twentieth century experience of continued colonial status, an economic boom fostered by tourism, and a concomitant increase in migration from other Caribbean islands. British Virgin Island national identity has been precariously defined against migrants from independent Caribbean nations who come to work there (who currently make up almost half of the islands' population), the islands' relationship to the UK, and the tourists British Virgin Islander businesses hope to attract. Unlike earlier research which took ethnic and national identities as "givens" and attempted to explain their interactions in terms of "adaptation" resulting from competition over scarce "resources," this study follows leads from recent work on India which questions the premises of adaptationist approaches. Using court cases, records, and interviews, the study will contest the definition of "resources" and "competition" as self-evident, and test the proposition that "resources" themselves are historically constructed along with legal and cultural processes of national and ethnic identity formation. This research will add to anthropological theory on nationalism, ethnicity and law.