Journal Article

Homeland and Belonging Among Cubans in Spain

Published 1 January 2009 / By COMPAS Communications

Back to Publications

This article is a contribution to recent debates within diaspora studies of the relationship between processes of exclusion, experiences of displacement, and memories of homeland in the production of diasporic subjectivities. It concerns the Cuban diaspora in Spain, consisting of approximately 50,000 people who represent contesting practices and discourses of home and away, belonging and not-belonging. In the article I argue that to understand diasporic Cubans’ contrastive modes of inhabiting Diaspora, the notion of “diasporic generations” is helpful. Diasporic generations are based on trajectories of migration, thus foregrounding the temporal aspects of Diaspora formation over spatial aspects. I argue that among the two most recent generations of this Diaspora, practices and discourses of exclusion in both homeland and diasporic location as well as among the first generation of the diaspora have led to the production of deterritorialized subjectivities.

Berg, M.L. (2009) 'Homeland and Belonging Among Cubans in Spain', The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 14(2): 265-290