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      International Journal of Cuban Studies is published by Pluto Journals, an Open Access publisher. This means that everyone has free and unlimited access to the full-text of all articles from our international collection of social science journals. Furthermore Pluto Journals authors don’t pay article processing charges (APCs).

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      International Journal of Cuban Studies

      Volume 11, Issue 1
       
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      • Article: found
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      The Cuban Refugee Criminal: Media Reporting and the Production of a Popular Image

      research-article
      Author(s): 1
      Publication date (Print):
      Journal: International Journal of Cuban Studies
      Publisher: Pluto Journals
      Keywords: Cuban, Marielito, refugee, criminal, boatlift
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            Abstract

            On 15 April 1980, Fidel Castro opened the port at Mariel Harbour, prompting 125,000 people to depart for the United States in search of asylum. Unlike those who emigrated from the island thirty years earlier, these refugees did not encounter empathy from the American public. Rather, Marielitos encountered hostility, as they found themselves scattered in detention centres around the United States. As refugee camps sprang up in small communities in the US South and Midwest, sensationalised accounts of crimes committed by the migrants shaped negative local perspectives of Cubans. This article complicates the legitimacy of the image of the refugee criminal, however, by describing the context within which Marielitos travelled to remote areas in the US, specifically in west-central Wisconsin. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how media reporting on the Mariel boatlift, along with the contentious socioeconomic climate that Cuban refugees encountered while detained in rural America, influenced the popular representation of their criminality.

            Content

            Author and article information

            Journal
            Journal ID (doi): 10.2307/j50005551
            Journal ID (jcode): intejcubastud
            Title: International Journal of Cuban Studies
            Publisher: Pluto Journals
            ISSN: 1756-3461
            ISSN: 1756-347X
            Publication date (Print): 1 July 2019
            Volume: 11
            Issue: 1 ( doiID: 10.13169/intejcubastud.11.issue-1 )
            Pages: 61-83
            Affiliations
            University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA
            Author notes
            [1]

            Jillian Marie Jacklin is Lecturer in History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She specialises in labour and working-class history with an emphasis on US social movements and political activism. Her research includes cultural and carceral studies, critical race theory, economic and industrial relations, gender studies, and the history of American capitalism.

            Article
            Publisher ID: intejcubastud.11.1.0061
            DOI: 10.13169/intejcubastud.11.1.0061
            SO-VID: 016f77e8-19dd-495d-a5f0-1e3001e2ef66
            Copyright © © International Institute for the Study of Cuba
            License:

            All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

            History
            Custom metadata
            lang eng

            ScienceOpen disciplines: Literary studies,Arts,Social & Behavioral Sciences,History,Cultural studies,Economics
            Keywords: criminal,refugee,Cuban,boatlift,Marielito

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