Women, Gender, and the Politics of Refugee Resettlement in the Cuban Mariel Migration of 1980
2021-11
Loading...
View/Download File
Persistent link to this item
Statistics
View StatisticsJournal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Title
Women, Gender, and the Politics of Refugee Resettlement in the Cuban Mariel Migration of 1980
Authors
Published Date
2021-11
Publisher
Type
Thesis or Dissertation
Abstract
This dissertation examines how gender influenced the reception and resettlement of Cubans who arrived in the United States during what came to be known as the Mariel Boatlift. It explores the tension between treatments that stigmatized Mariel Cuban women and those that portrayed them as more “traditional” types of Cold War refugees. It analyzes relationships among media discourse(s) and other sites of Mariel Cuban knowledge production, including agencies of the federal government and private institutions tasked with aiding in the sponsorship and resettlement of Mariel refugees. It demonstrates that perceptions and treatments of Cuban women reflected long-held suspicions of unaccompanied migrant women, larger national, international, and geopolitical concerns, including U.S. anxieties about immigration, the economy, national identity and politics, and the status of the American family and the welfare state. It contends that damaging constructions of Mariel women influenced broader American perceptions of the larger group and complicated their ability to find sponsors and resettle in the United States. Often these understandings of Mariel women were sexualized, racialized, and classed, depicting Mariel women as prostitutes, as especially fertile, or otherwise as sexually or criminally deviant. In turn, these deeply sexualized and racialized understandings of Mariel women contributed to the growing perception that Mariel Cubans constituted a new kind of refugee underclass. Overall, the dissertation illuminates how Mariel women became centered in larger social, economic, and political debates of the period, and most especially the deliberation over what made migrants, and Cubans, in particular, worthy of national belonging and political asylum.
Description
University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation.November 2021. Major: History. Advisors: Barbara Welke, Regina Kunzel. 1 computer file (PDF); v, 250 pages.
Related to
Replaces
License
Collections
Series/Report Number
Funding information
Isbn identifier
Doi identifier
Previously Published Citation
Suggested citation
Hampton, Melissa. (2021). Women, Gender, and the Politics of Refugee Resettlement in the Cuban Mariel Migration of 1980. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/260122.
Content distributed via the University Digital Conservancy may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor. By using these files, users agree to the Terms of Use. Materials in the UDC may contain content that is disturbing and/or harmful. For more information, please see our statement on harmful content in digital repositories.