Migrant, Tourist, Cuban: Identification and Belonging in Return Visits to Cuba

This chapter looks at return visits of Cuban migrants to Cuba, and the tensions that these experiences generate in terms of identification and sense of belonging. The attention paid to disjunctures between the aspirations and positionings of returnees on the one hand, and the way in which they are perceived and treated by their fellow nationals in Cuba on the other hand, enables to show how identifications and belongings are played out, negotiated, and reframed. Coming back to Cuba, migrants have to cope and negotiate with specific values, moralities, and expectations on what it means to be a Cuban and to return to Cuba when living abroad. The experience and assessment of relations with family, friends, and the country more generally, leads them to rethink and rearticulate the parameters of their “being Cuban” and their place in Cuba. Uncovered in the chapter are the realms of (mis)recognition and (mis)identification that these men and women come to inhabit, as they struggle to carve out a valuable place for themselves on such visits “back home”. Particular salience is given to those instances of disappointment and breakdown that lead people to question and retreat from previous spheres of allegiance, and to reveal and deconstruct their implications. As these visits unfold and are narrated, competing visions of Cuba and of what it means to be "Cuban", "migrant", and "tourist" are reclaimed, proposed, and acted out. In their wake, normative visions of intimacy, of family relations, and of economic behaviour are also renegotiated and reshaped. Inductively drawing on the Cuban case, the chapter considers the power and value associated with dominant understandings of “tourism”, “migration”, and “return”. It thus contributes to a broader reflection on when and how these categorizations matter, the way they constrain and/or enable certain modes of being and becoming, and the possibility of escaping and overcoming them. Empirically, the chapter draws on the stories of return visits the author collected among Cuban migrants in Spain and while they were visiting Cuba, as well as the direct observation and engagement in moments of interaction between Cuban migrants and their families, friends, and acquaintances back on the island.

Simoni, V. 'Migrant, Tourist, Cuban: Identification and Belonging in Return Visits to Cuba.' in Bloch, Natalia, and Kathleen M. Adams, editors. Intersections of Tourism, Migration, and Exile. Routledge, 2022.