Migración y desarrollo en Cuba: socialismo, subdesarrollo productivo y globalización neoliberal

Resumen

This article analyzes the specificity of Cuban migration in the context of contemporary debates on migration and development. It provides a theoretical framework that seeks to explain the nature of the vast population flows that characterize Cuba. It argues that the contradictions arising from the socialist productive underdevelopment lead to a series of structural distortions that restrict the possibilities for human development and result in increasing limitations to consumption and social mobility for the majority of the Cuban population. Migration operates as a mechanism to partially offset these distortions through two modalities: economic migration and the export of intensive services. Both modalities are a product and result of the noncapitalist mode of production in force on the Caribbean island.