Cuban Privilege: The Making of Immigrant Inequality in America
When:
Monday, Oct 16, 2023 3:00p -
4:30p
Monday, Oct 16, 2023 3:00p -
4:30p
Where:
MIT Building E40-496, Pye Conference Room
1 Amherst St
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142
Admission:
FREE
Hosted by:
Categories:
Lectures & Conferences, University
Event website:
https://calendar.mit.edu/event/cuban_privilege_the_making_of_immigrant_inequality_in_america
This is an in-person event with a virtual option. Register for the Zoom webinar here: bit.ly/ImmigrantInequality
For over half a century the US granted Cubans, one of the largest immigrant groups in the country, unique entitlements. While other unauthorized immigrants faced detention, deportation, and no legal rights, Cuban immigrants were able to enter the country without authorization, and have access to welfare benefits and citizenship status. This book is the first to reveal the full range of entitlements granted to Cubans. Initially privileged to undermine the Castro-led revolution in the throes of the Cold War, one US President after another extended new entitlements, even in the post-Cold War era. Drawing on unseen archives, interviews, and survey data, Cuban Privilege highlights how Washington, in the process of privileging Cubans, transformed them from agents of US Cold War foreign policy into a politically powerful force influencing national policy. Comparing the exclusionary treatment of neighboring Haitians, the book discloses the racial and political biases embedded within US immigration policy.
About the speaker:
Susan Eckstein is a Professor in the Pardee School of Global Studies and in the Sociology Department at Boston University. She has written numerous books and articles on Mexican urban poor, political-economic developments in Cuba, Cuban immigrants, immigration policy, impacts of Latin American revolutions, and edited books on Latin American social movements and social rights, and on immigrant impacts in their homelands.
