Blurred borders: Transnational migration between the Hispanic Caribbean and the United States. By Jorge Duany.

Abstract

Jorge Duany is one of the most thoughtful, incisive, and prolific social scientists writing about the Caribbean and Blurred Borders: Transnational Migration between the Hispanic Caribbean and the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2011) is an excellent example of why. The book describes the unique and evolving relationship between the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and the USA, the unique relationships between Cuba, The Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, the grounding of populations and diasporas in the continental USA, and the enduring and sustained nature of ties and contacts between sending and receiving countries and communities. Duany makes two inter-related points. The first is that advances in transportation, telecommunications, and the increasing movement of goods, capital, ideas, markets, people, cultural forms of expression and related aspects of globalization have transformed the migration experience from more traditional unidirectional movements into an interconnected set of multi-directional transnational flows. Duany defines transnationalism as ‘the creation and maintenance of multiple social ties across borders and boundaries’ (p. 3) and later on as ‘the construction of dense social fields through the circulation of people, ideas, practices, money, goods, and information across nations’ (p. 20). These transnational migrations are different in form, and in kind, from more traditionally constructed unidirectional movements (Russian Jews) and are more consistent with other types of more complex and multi-directional migratory flows (Irish or Italians in the USA).