Nationalism and immigrant labor in a tropical enclave: the West Indians of Colón City, 1850–1936

Abstract

Focusing on Colón City, Panama, this article illustrates how early twentieth-century narratives about Central American enclaves as backward and isolated places contributed to the exclusion of West Indian immigrants from imaginings of the national citizenry. In showing how enclave narratives distanced tropical workers and places from the global economies and modern technologies they helped create, the article contributes to our understanding of the history of modern disconnections between the global realities of immigrant labor and the nationalist ideologies that exclude them.