Ambivalent attachments to place in London: twelve Barbadian families

There are good reasons for assuming that places symbolic for and valued by black people exist in Britain. One such locale is London's Notting Hill, which was, with Brixton, one of the two earliest zones of Afro-Caribbean settlement in the metropolis from the mid-1950s onwards. Interviewees, now materially successful, no longer inhabited the neighborhood, nor did their London-raised adult children. For the 34 interviewees, Notting Hill was a place that might once have been important for black people, but was no longer greatly valued for any such symbolisms; its looming gentrification by whites, for example, was not viewed with regret. This weak attachment to the place Notting Hill has multiple sources in the particularity of this set of respondents: middle-class, respectable, generally conservative homeowners, many of whom exhibit marked Barbadian island chauvinism. Some of the households still, after over 30 yr in London, view themselves only as sojourners in Britain, who will before long return home to Barbados. -from Author