Scaling Intersectionality: Negotiating Empire and Diasporic identity in Tourism through U.S. Study Abroad to Cuba

• In Event: 4366 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 13. Race, Ethnicity and Identity in the Global and Transnational

Abstract

This paper applies a transnational intersectional approach to understanding the negotiation of power and inequality across nation-states, which in this case is between the U.S. and Cuba. While scaling intersectionality as a concept has largely been restricted to transnational families and sociology of the family, this paper demonstrates its strengths for understanding transnational education, and tourism, through study abroad. The U.S. and Cuba are a particularly interesting case for examining culturally specific and interlocking systems of inequality in part due to the over half century U.S. blockade of Cuba by the United States. The lessening of restrictions for travel by the U.S. government has largely come through international education, study abroad in particular, due to the argument that U.S. students are ambassadors for the U.S. Through interviews and ethnographic fieldwork of 34 students who studied abroad in Cuba between 2013 and 2015, this paper reveals how students’ complex positionalities (of race/ethnicity, gender, and nationality) impacted their interests, experience, and views on U.S. – Cuban relations. The findings reveal that study abroad highlights the tangible realities of first world privilege even by students whose interests are to undermine and establish diasporic connections in Cuba and even if those privileges are mitigated by race and gender.

Author

• Jamie Lynn Palmer, University of Nevada Reno