{"id":268989,"date":"2023-05-02T18:50:51","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T22:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=268989"},"modified":"2023-05-02T18:50:51","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T22:50:51","slug":"inside-and-outside-the-cuban-family-and-transnationality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/cuba\/inside-and-outside-the-cuban-family-and-transnationality\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside and outside: the Cuban family and transnationality"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cuban <\/span>family<\/b><\/a>\u00a0is increasingly transnational. The island\u2019s migratory dynamics, impacted by the socioeconomic and political context of recent decades, have fostered the expansion of the Cuban diaspora and, consequently, have modified family structures and environments.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, around 38% of families in Cuba have one or more of their most important members \u2014 up to the second degree of consanguinity \u2014 residing outside of Cuba.<\/span><\/p>\n

Families of Cuban origin have also grown, which, inside or outside the island, are made up of people \u2014 couples and children \u2014 of other nationalities.<\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>changes in Cuban immigration policy<\/b><\/a> from a decade ago have influenced this panorama by consenting to stay abroad for up to two years \u2014 or more, after <\/span>the moratorium still in force<\/b><\/a> due to the COVID-19 pandemic \u2014 without losing resident status in Cuba. This has allowed many Cubans to emigrate while maintaining ties to their country of origin, including family members.<\/span><\/p>\n

The constant facilities historically granted to Cuban migrants in the United States largely define the profile of this transnational family within the largest community of Cuban \u00e9migr\u00e9s in the world, which concentrates more than a million residents in that country.<\/span><\/p>\n

The sustained development of global interconnection \u2014 even after the impasse forced by COVID-19 \u2014 and communication technologies facilitate relationships between family members.<\/span><\/p>\n

The gradual economic, social and legal transformations \u2014 with the new <\/span>Family Code<\/b><\/a> as a representative example \u2014, in the midst of a severe crisis that has strained the national reality, enable and stimulate family support networks that are being strengthened.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of this forms a complex and diverse scenario, in which traditional concepts and practices are revitalized.<\/span><\/p>\n

OnCuba<\/b> spoke with Laura Pujol, the Cuban Foreign Ministry\u2019s deputy director general of Consular Affairs and Attention to Cubans Resident Abroad, about the transnational family in the current context.<\/span><\/p>\n

Based on her experience as a researcher and her governmental responsibility, she addresses various aspects of the subject and offers assessments in this regard.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is understood by transnational family and how is it manifested in the Cuban scenario? Can one speak properly of a Cuban transnational family?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

In reality, the etymology itself prevents the concept from being included in a national framework, and if we talk about the Cuban transnational family we are creating a great contradiction right there.<\/span><\/p>\n

A transnational family is understood as a family group that is crossed by several nationalities. Therefore, we could not only speak of the Cuban transnational family, because that family has, by definition, more than one nationality coming together in itself. Instead, we can talk about how the Cuban family is impacted by the phenomenon of transnationality.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is a subject on which several investigations have been carried out in the country, for example, by the Center for Demographic Studies. Based on some debates that took place around the Family Code, we became interested in this issue, especially in what refers to private international law, and because of the need to know, through our work, what is being handled at an international level on transnationality, a relatively new concept, and how it impacts our migratory dynamics and the Cuban family as such.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, a priori we were perfectly aware of the weight of the phenomenon of transnationality in the Cuban family since one of the characteristics of Cuban emigration is its high level of communication with residual families in the national territory. In other words, Cuban emigrants have high connectivity with the family that remains in the country, recently boosted by the possibilities offered by video calls.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is strange that congratulations are sung here in Havana or Santiago without someone making a video call to Uruguay, Argentina, Spain, the United States, and that one or more members are not somehow present in this family activity of the family who are not in the country at the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cuba, current migration crisis: characteristics and testimonies (I)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n