By 14ymedio
HAVANA TIMES – The “migrant dream” of Cubans is under the scrutiny of researchers from the University of Oriente in Santiago de Cuba. The official press dedicated a recent article to outline the “concern” of academics about a series of factors that are demographically troubling the province: the youth exodus, an aging population, high infant mortality, and low fertility.
After gathering data on migration from students at five schools at different education levels, the university’s Department of Psychology identified multiple “atypical situations,” as they describe the act of leaving the country. The study was launched as part of a Migration Research Project, and although it does not provide figures, it draws revealing conclusions.
A battalion of “sociologists, educators, journalists, social communicators, economists, psychiatrists” under the leadership of Dr. Raida Dusu, head of the project, noted that Cuban families have suffered serious “alterations.” Teenagers and young adults —who emigrate more frequently— have “replaced” their family role of “studying” or “building identity” to become the family’s “providers,” a role that would traditionally belong to their parents.
The exodus “modifies life projects,” impacts “friendship and romantic relationships,” and “transforms the ways development tasks are approached at certain stages of life,” said Dusu. The consequence for young people who stay behind is total “demotivation towards studies.” When asked about their results, the academic says, the teenagers’ response is that they are “waiting to emigrate.”
Dusu gives an even more telling example. Among the elementary school children studied, who participated in the “five wishes dynamic,” most responded with their first wish being: “to leave the country.”
Many children dream “of a reality they don’t have” and use future migration “as a defense mechanism known as fantasy.” When referring to their life projects, adolescents in Santiago de Cuba “visualize themselves in another place” and talk about plans only possible outside the country.
The academic notes that she has observed “identity confusion” and little certainty when answering “where do you see yourself” in the future. “When one does not fulfill a developmental task, it complicates the life cycle, life projects are not determined because the desire to emigrate leaves no room for this,” she adds.
In fact, Dusu asserts, when emigration plans fail or are delayed, children and adolescents are the first to experience frustration. There is “observable depression” in the cases the University of Oriente has studied, with “conflicts” and “psychopathological repercussions.” Minors often become victims of “anxiety and arguments” with those who stay behind or, via telephone, with their emigrated relatives.
Cuba has become a country of “transnational and dispersed families,” concludes Dusu, without daring to mention the reasons why Santiago residents emigrate (not only abroad, but also to the western part of the island) or to attribute any responsibility to the government. Many “leave their careers and work to wait for that realization.” Others “stop working thanks to the remittances they receive.”
Dusu says the illusion is that emigrants live in “sugar-coated, magnified” scenarios and not in reality. This motivates the desire to “seize the opportunity of the present,” seeking “prosperity outside their place of origin.”
The only figures cited by Sierra Maestra about this situation come from the National Office of Statistics and Information (Onei), which it accuses of being “outdated.” Santiago, the second most populous province in Cuba, had 1,040,897 inhabitants at the end of 2022. In just one year —by December 2023 —that number dropped to 1,034,786. That year, 5,230 Santiago residents died, and 4,703 new births were reported. The rest left. The newspaper concludes that “the pace of these figures,” and the negative growth rate, will produce “incalculable consequences.”
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