A look at Cuban emigration in the light of the new tendencies. (Picture: centrocubalex.com)
It is rather an approach to a theme, which has taken me many years of investigation, It brings forward, moreover, the continuity of the study, which because of the promptness, reached down to the nineties, insofar as bibliographic revision is concerned.
It does not either have the intention to be conclusive, although I wanted to make an analysis of the tendencies of that migration, which somehow, had influenced upon the recent reestablishment of relations between Cuba and the United States. We should have in mind that although it is not the majority, as happens in other countries, the Cuban migration and its relations with the government of the Island, have affected the evolution of the migratory policy of our country.
The event of migration is as old as history as such. There is not country, city, or region, where it is not expressed in one way or another. In all epochs and social regimes, in all conceivable ways, emigration has taken place.
The last fifteen years have witnessed an unusual increase of this happening at international scale, not seen before, of its importance; not only at world level, but also at regions and countries.
The tendencies of world migration, the way to explain factors involving its cause and effect, as well as the links of the processes of its present globalization, are issues with ever-wider space in the economic, social, cultural and political debates of our time.
Investigations render an account of some of the distinctive traits of the present migratory flows, influenced by the process of globalization and its peculiarities of problems with employment, poverty and social vulnerability¹.
Likewise, there exist studies related to the classification of economic, temporary, definite emigrants; qualified workers, without papers; war refugees, displaced persons, political exiled people, and even environmental emigrants. There should also prevail, as another feature, the migration feminization.
Our extensive literature, in which the item of study occupies a position of interests, is shared by different disciplines and approaches within them. So many theoretical formulations as disciplinary approaches on international migration exist. We even find some of them contaminated with strange elements to indicators of scientific value².
No matter the forces which determine said migratory flows, the aftermath of migration are complex and diverse, as they become a phenomenon with a disproportionate consequence, both in the country of origin, and that of acceptance, and also in the communities and persons directly involved with him, the emigrant and his family.
Bibliographic references:
1– According to Antonio Aja, in his work: Issues regarding a debate about international migrations, published in the Center of Studies of International Migrations of Havana University, in July 2004, international migration, conceived in its dimensions, actors and visions. It is carried out in a scenery where the financial and trade flows are liberalized, just as the persons mobility who are facing powerful restrictive barriers. Far from the existence of a migration globalization, the receivers and senders managed the issue, according to political, economic, national, regional, and even circumstantial interests, at the side of human rights and real necessities of the persons involved in these processes. At the present time, this kind of immobility of the population is at an international scale and presupposes a complex system of swap networks of interchange and circulation of persons, possessions, money and information, which is analyzed under the concept of transnationality.
2- The patterns and current tendencies about the migratory phenomenon at an international level, given its many-sided nature, demand a sophisticated theory that incorporates several perspectives, levels and assumptions. No one can solve the problem with tools of a single discipline, or focusing on a level of analysis. The task should lead to the integration of contemporary theories of a higher efficiency to explain the phenomenon, to examine the models that describe the international flows and explain the reasons why those international movements persist through time and space; to compare and contrast different conceptual frames in the search of the alleged codes and basic hypothesis.
Translator: Reinaldo Fernández
