Eckstein Expounds Findings of “Cuban Privilege ” at FIU Book Talk
On December 9, 2022, Susan Eckstein, Professor of International Relations and Sociology at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, presented her latest book – Cuban Privilege: The Making of Immigrant Inequality in America – at a symposium hosted by Florida International University’s Cuban Research Institute.
Eckstein’s remarks focused on United States-Cuban immigration policies, their origins, their evolution over the years, and their consequences. As noted in her book, the U.S. has historically granted Cubans many unique entitlements, such as refugee benefits when they did not meet the official criterion for refugee status, special entry rights when they entered the country without authorization, and rights to welfare denied to other immigrants. The initial benefits were an instrument of the United States’s Cold War foreign policy designed to undermine Castro’s revolution; however, Washington expanded benefits after the Cold War’s end because by then Cuban émigrés, building on their unique earlier entitlements, became a political force that successfully influenced U.S. Cuba policies.
Dr. Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, spokesperson for the Cuban Democratic Directorate and author of “Cuba: The Doctrine of the Lie,” offered a retort to the book and its findings. Most of his comments were a diatribe of the Cuban government with few focusing on Eckstein’s analysis of U.S. Cuban immigration policy – the focus of the book and book talk – and none focused on U.S. Haitian immigration policy, contrasted in the book with U.S. Cuban immigration policy.
Full details of the event can be viewed on the Cuban Research Institute’s website.
Susan Eckstein, Professor of International Relations and Sociology at the Pardee School, focuses her research on Latin America and Latin American immigration. She has written extensively on Mexico, Cuba, and Bolivia, and, in recent years, on immigration and its impact across borders, as well as on U.S. immigration policy. She has written and edited books on the urban poor, the impacts of revolutions, social movements, and social rights. On Cuba, her books have focused on the impact of the Castro-led revolution, on Cuban immigrants, and on U.S. Cuban immigration policy. She is the recipient of many fellowships, including from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as awards for her writings. Learn more about Professor Eckstein on her faculty profile.