It's a Small World
Unwelcomed Exodus: Clash of Cultural Experiences Among Cubans in Miami
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jorge Morejon Benitez
The Cuban experience in Miami has always been characterized by periods of unspoken distancing between exoduses of Cubans from Cuba and Cuban-Americans. Cubans began to massively migrate to the U.S. in the early sixties. The first big clash between Cuban exoduses took place in 1980, twenty years after Fidel Castro took power in the island nation. Twenty years of separation from the homeland allowed Cubans in Miami to assimilate to the American culture and become Americanized while Cubans in the island had been exposed to a Marxist-Leninist system, Castro’s style. This last exodus, still taking place, has created a new cultural, political and moral clash among Cubans in Miami. The newly arrived men and women are hardly recognizable to Cubans and Cuban-Americans who came over more than twenty, thirty, forty, fifty and sixty years ago. The way newly arrived Cubans think, act and perform cubanness differs from the always held ideal of what a Cuban is and should be, based on father Varela’s early writings on Cuban identity, Jose de la Luz y Caballero's ideas on education and Cuban apostle Jose Marti’s articulations on Cuban patriots. The ideal of a classic Cuban has led the first waves of exiles to adhere to their own sense of cubanidad despite their forced separation from the homeland. By using interviews, social media and published articles, this study delves into the dynamics of such differences, the consequences they have in the short run and how they could be reconciled in the future.
Diasporas and Global Economic Infrastructure View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Vandana Pednekar Magal
Discourse on migration and mobility suggests that transnational mobility is a manifold process linking together countries of origin, destination, and onward migration, and as a nexus of networks for sustained and continuous cross border transactions. Moving populations: exiles, guest workers holding temporary work visa, international students and more recently, swathes of populations that move owing to conflict, connect countries via economic, and familial relationships. Diasporic populations and economic processes of labor deployment across borders further deepen this connectivity. These populations are engaged in continuous cross-border transactions that constitute a communication infrastructure for economic engagement and plays a constructive role in economic development across the Global South and emerging economies. Building on interdisciplinary literature the paper explores key processes, that constitute a mature cross-border economic infrastructure that offers sustained benefits for heritage countries through its diasporas. The paper argues that processes such as money transfers or remittances and philanthropy from the diaspora may benefit communities in poorer countries but only in the short term. Well-developed processes that constitute a communication and economic infrastructure, such as knowledge and soft-skills transfers from a country’s diaspora to the local entrepreneurs, transfer of cultural knowledge, partnerships with businesses that lead to joint ventures, international trade of cultural products, cultural and educational engagements are processes that have benefitted many nations but prove to be elusive in poorer countries. The paper further explores, with examples, how state policies in the ancestral countries engaging diaspora are critical to developing a sustained cross-border economic infrastructure.
Lifestyle Migrants and Touristification in Colonial Cities in Central America, the Case of Granada, Nicaragua and Antigua, Guatemala: Gentrification and Neocolonialism in Central America View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Valeria Holguin Arcia
This paper demonstrates how today’s globalization has made Granada (Nicaragua) and Antigua (Guatemala) two cities in the Americas that were founded by the Spanish Inquisition in the early 1540s, undergo a wave of neo-colonialism. These cities, which are currently experiencing touristification and a surge of lifestyle migrants from the Global North, might be entering a new wave of economic dependency and Western cultural assimilation to develop and survive economically. While migrants in the global north are escaping the developed world due to the high cost of living and inflation, they are temporarily or permanently relocating to places in the Global South where they can experience better lifestyle conditions. On the other hand, locals in the Global South continue with the same low wages, which don’t provide them access to the new costs of this lifestyle realm resulting in them being second-class citizens in their own country and isolating the indigenous population 51% (Guatemala) and 10% (Nicaragua) further away from their roots. Through a comparative case study of the transformation of both cities, I demonstrate the impact and dependency gentrification might have on the long term in the socioeconomic and cultural aspects. And how these two cities might be an example of this new wave of neocolonialism in Latin America, viewed from a center-periphery model and other push and pull factors of immigration that are now influencing developed nations migrants.
