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.
Throughout the 19th century, political migration within the Caribbean coincided with large-scale labor migration. This essay reconstructs the long-overlooked experience of political refugees who fled from Cuba to Jamaica during the Wars for Independence, focusing on their early reception and their eventual assimilation. Despite the official position of neutrality, white and brown elites, anxious to increase the number of Europeans, welcomed the Cubans who were mainly white.
