Evaluating the Female Cuban "Entrant": The Intimate Politics of Refugee Resettlement in the Cuban Mariel Migration of 1980

Fall 2016 Legal History Workshop
When
October 21, 2016, 9:00 to 10:30 am
Where
Walter F. Mondale Hall
Room 473

University of Minnesota Law School
229 19th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Drawing on case files from the American Council of Nationalities Services, this paper explores how state-affiliated resettlement agencies (VOLAGS) negotiated resettlement of Mariel Cuban migrant women in the United States in the early 1980s.  It pays special attention to the processes through which state agents, doctors, and mental health specialists identified, constructed, and evaluated the race, class, sexuality, and marital and mental statuses of Mariel women.  It also examines to what extent narratives of criminalization, pathologization, and victimization affected Mariel women's ability to resettle in the United States.  Ultimately, the paper reveals how detention camps came to serve as important sites where discourses and policies towards Mariel women came together and shifted.

Note: This is a discussion based workshop of work-in-progress with the expectation that those attending have read the workshop materials. Please contact Jacquelyn E. Burt at ruppx077@umn.edu for a copy of the materials.