Newly arrived from Cuba, Angelica, Dora, Marina, and Damaris attempted to negotiate new surroundings and immigrant identities, building a sense of home for themselves and their families. Data from qualitative interviews, classroom observations, and focus group conversations revealed hopes that by acquiring English language skills, they would improve their quality of life in their new country. Struggles included personal factors situated in their pasts in Cuba and their new surrounds in the Miami Cuban exile enclave, contexts that were further complicated by uncertain expectations of new lives in Miami and the overwhelming task of learning a new language at a local adult education center.
When the earthquake of 7.0 on the Richter scale struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, the forcibly displaced on and off the island were the object of emergency planning, but so too were the host populations in Haiti and the neighbouring Dominican Republic. This article seeks to examine the emergency response to the earthquake and ongoing challenges through the lens of critical mobilities, with special reference to forced migration island-wide. Who (men, women, boys and girls) is able to move, how, where, for how long and through which networks? What is the legal framework, if any, governing these movements? Who wants visibility and who prefers to move 'incognito', in the context, for example, of ambiguous migration policies in the Dominican Republic towards impoverished Haitian immigrants?