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

Abstract

This article analyzes the speci-ficity of Cuban migration in the context of contemporary debates on migration and de-velopment. 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 consump-tion 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 non– capitalist mode of production in force on the Caribbean island.