Caribbean Migrations

ANKE BIRKENMAIER is a professor of Latin American literature and culture at Indiana University, Bloomington, and the former director of its Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. She is the author of The Specter of Races: Latin American Anthropology and Literature Between the Wars, and co-editor of Havana Beyond the Ruins: Cultural Mappings after 1989.

"Profoundly interdisciplinary and nearly Pan-Caribbean in scope, Caribbean Migrations transforms our understanding of how migration has shaped the Caribbean and how Caribbean migration has shaped the United States. The analysis of Caribbean people on the move, asserting political power across digital platforms and through art, explodes the long-held notion that Caribbean migration is the story of flight from poverty to a better life in the United States and breaks down the boundary between Caribbean and American Studies." - Leah Rosenberg (co-editor of Beyond Windrush: Rethinking Postwar West Indian Literature) "The starting point of Caribbean Migrations is a series of reflections that help illuminate the fascinating legal fiction that is Puerto Rico's 'unincorporated' status, using the unique experiences of Puerto Rican subjects as a poignant counterpoint and a compelling framework to understand Caribbean migration more generally. Together, the essays in this collection offer a rich blueprint to understand pervasive as well as new forms of colonialism, virtual and real citizenship, affect, and structural violence in a post-disaster world." - Guillermina De Ferrari (author of Community and Culture in Post-Soviet Cuba) "All in all the book represents a rich contribution to an international literature constantly transforming the way we view and try to understand the links between colonialism, migration and identity, and particularly in the case of the Caribbean and Caribbean diasporas." (Ethnic and Racial Studies) "The essays emphasize the geo-strategic ambitions of the US in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, especially Puerto Rico. However, the theoretical breadth of the volume sheds new light on migration throughout the Caribbean region, as well as the formation of transnational identities in other parts of the world. This study is a must read for Caribbean studies specialists and postcolonial scholars. Highly recommended."  (Choice)