The End of the Myth of the Cuban Exile? Current Trends in Cuban Emigration

Katarzyna Dembicz

doi:10.18778/1641-4233.25.05

Authors

Katarzyna Dembicz University of Warsaw, American Studies Center https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8023-088X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1641-4233.25.05

Keywords:

Cuba, exile, Cuban diaspora, myth, Roland Barthes

Abstract

Cuban migrants are considered as and referred to as exiles. However, in the face of the economic transformations in Cuba, as well as the rapprochement between the U.S. and Cuba, it has become necessary to revise the epistemological and semiotic foundations of this phenomenon. The current migratory trends among the Cubans do not meet the definition of exiles. Thus, the title of this article reflects the research assumption and the principal aim that the current circumstances in Cuba, as well as the migratory flows of Cubans mark the decline of the myth of the Cuban exile; a myth built by the media.

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Author Biography

Katarzyna Dembicz, University of Warsaw, American Studies Center

Katarzyna Dembicz – Ph.D., since 1992 at the University of Warsaw, currently as an associate professor in the American Studies Center. Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Ameryka Łacińska [Latin America]. She specialises in regional integration and social and demographic changes in Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2017 Professeur invité at the IHEA Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3. Polish National Science Centre-funded an international project: Quo vadis Cuba? Impication for Europe and Poland; at present Head of the “Discourses and development dilemmas of Central American local communities” project (Polish National Science Centre); member of the Jean Monnet Network Foro Europa-Cuba, coordinated by CIDOB Barcelona, Spain. Author of numerous academic publications, i.a. PosCuba. Lo imponderable de la transformación insular (2016); Cuba Actual y Futura. Realidad Económica y Transformación Politica y Social (Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica 2014); Barboza Lizano, O. & Dembicz, K., “Environmental Cuba versus Economic transformation”. EUROPA XXI (2017).

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