ABSTRACT
The chapter considers the return visits of Cuban migrants to Cuba and the tensions these experiences generate, as productive entry points for reflecting on mobility-related categorization processes and on different approaches to identification and belonging. Empirically, it draws on long-term research with Cuban migrants in Spain and on situations of return to this Caribbean island. Visits back “home” reveal strong expectations regarding what it means to be a Cuban and to return to Cuba when living abroad. As these visits unfold, normative visions of intimacy, family ties, and economic relations are hotly negotiated and contested. Such experiences lead to rethinking the meaning and stakes of people’s identification and belonging and to rearticulating their relations with the island and their place in the world. Drawing on the Cuban case, the chapter sheds new light on the power and value associated with dominant understandings of “tourism,” “migration,” and “return.” It thus contributes to a broader reflection on when and how these categorizations matter, the ways they constrain or enable certain modes of being and becoming, and the challenges entailed in escaping and overcoming them.
