Transnational families in Cuba and Germany: on the intersection between isolation, restrictions, and agency

Abstract

This article will analyze the formation of transnational family networks between Cuba and Germany in the context of late socialist Cuba. Drawing on multi-sited field research with a biographical theoretical approach, I will discuss whether Cuban migration is an exceptional case and demonstrate how it challenges key assumptions of transnationalism theory; that is, growing simultaneity through the development of communication technologies and a supposed blurring of nation-state boundaries and migrants’ agency. Furthermore, the two case studies discussed in this article demonstrate the fundamental impact of the migration of one family member on the relatives back in Cuba and the Cuban society as a whole. In the face of economic crisis, growing social inequalities resulting from the dual economy and increasing economic liberalization, transnational households emerge as new sustainability projects for the families and the system in Cuba. At the same time, they pose a potential challenge to the status quo. Thus, emigrants’ transnational involvement provides economic and development aid for Cuba and fills the gaps of the reduced Cuban social welfare system. Yet, migrants’ remittances also produce a social division in the neighborhood between those who have access to hard currency and those who are excluded from this possibility. Socialism is thus sustained and undermined by these transnational family networks.