Cuban Privilege: The Making of Immigrant Inequality in America - Softcover

Eckstein

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1108822398 ISBN 13: 9781108822398

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2025

Synopsis

For over half a century the US granted Cubans, one of the largest immigrant groups in the country, unique entitlements. While other unauthorized immigrants faced detention, deportation, and no legal rights, Cuban immigrants were able to enter the country without authorization, and have access to welfare benefits and citizenship status. This book is the first to reveal the full range of entitlements granted to Cubans. Initially privileged to undermine the Castro-led revolution in the throes of the Cold War, one US President after another extended new entitlements, even in the post-Cold War era. Drawing on unseen archives, interviews, and survey data, Cuban Privilege highlights how Washington, in the process of privileging Cubans, transformed them from agents of US Cold War foreign policy into a politically powerful force influencing national policy. Comparing the exclusionary treatment of neighboring Haitians, the book discloses the racial and political biases embedded within US immigration policy.

About this title

About the Author

Susan Eva Eckstein is Professor in the Pardee School of Global Studies and the Sociology Department at Boston University. Specializing in social movements, rights and justice in, and immigration from, Latin America, she has single-authored, edited and co-edited nine books. She is the recipient of many fellowships, including from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1108822398
• ISBN 13: 9781108822398
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 392