To make a difference: Responding to migration's demands in returns to Cuba

Abstract

The article focuses on the predicaments faced by return migrants to Cuba and how they respond to societal pressures to make a valuable difference ‘back home’, opening analytical avenues at the juncture of the anthropology of ethics and morality and migration. It does so by uncovering five distinct but complementary ways in which returnees respond to migration-related demands. Conceptualized as efforts to ‘make a difference’, it first considers the importance for returnees to exemplify and share the economic gains that are widely expected from a successful migration, before addressing alternative attempts to carve out other sources of prized difference from experiences abroad. To deflect the pressure that weighs on them as (ex)migrants and generates feelings of exhaustion and estrangement, returnees also endeavour to ‘unmake’ migration-related differences. They do so by deconstructing migration promises, reframing notions and forms of belonging, and downplaying the possibilities afforded by life in Cuba. While the combination of different anthropological approaches to ethics and morality befits the analysis, the returnees’ resistance to scrutiny of their moral lives questions the limitless reach and suitability of such interpretative lenses. Ultimately, this helps assess their relevance and pitfalls in research on migration and beyond.