Marginalisations and Redefinitions of Kinship in Contemporary Cuba

This article examines new margins of kinship and the resources that persons in a precarious social position draw on to cope with such shifts in the context of large-scale social, legal, political and economic change. The article focuses on how people end up in the margins in their kin relations and the ways in which they can alleviate, resist or redefine such processes. Analytically, this article calls for attention to the margins as producing particular kinds of agency that is precarious and articulates complexly with gender, sexuality, race and generation. The article seeks to expand our understanding of the interplay between kinship relations and legal regulations, especially in situations where their interrelations are renegotiated in the context of global and local shifts. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research amongst low-income, racially mixed Havana residents, this article focuses on the emerging margins of kinship in late-socialist Cuba, a country that is currently undergoing extensive structural developments. As Cuba transforms from a socialist, egalitarian society into a new social order guided by the privileges of money, that which becomes pushed to the margins in kinship and in social relations more widely, undergoes significant shifts. I argue that we find new arrangements of both discrimination and support at the margins as well as conflicting understandings, legacies and definitions of kinship, agency and relationships.This article examines the marginalisations and redefinitions taking place in kinship relations and the resources that persons in a precarious social position draw on to cope with exclusions in the context of large-scale social, legal, political, and economic change. In situations of global and local transformation, people may become marginalised in their social relations for various reasons, but in the margins, they can also find resources to alleviate or redefine such experiences. Such processes are complexly shaped by intersectional differences and inequalities of gender, sexuality, race, and age. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in Cuba, a country that is currently undergoing extensive structural changes, this article focuses on the marginalisations of kinship through the ethnographic story of an elderly woman and her kin encountering unexpected exclusions in their relationships. As Cuba transforms from a socialist, egalitarian society into a new social order increasingly guided by the privileges of money, social relations are redefined in terms of shifts in understandings of marginality. In the margins, we find new arrangements of both discrimination and support, but the political potential of such processes is ambiguous and culturally and historically contingent.Peer reviewe