South-South Migration and Transnational Ties between Cuba and Mozambique

Over the past decades the social sciences and humanities have been greatly influenced by the effects of and discourses on globalization, migration and transnationalism. In so doing scholars have tried to theoretically understand and explain the complexities involved in a world of increasing movement, interconnectedness and mixture of cultures (Appadurai 2001; Castells 2000; Hannerz 1996; Kearny 1995; Rosaldo and Inde 2002; Smith and Guarnizo 1998; Trouillot 2003; Vertovec 1999). Despite these efforts much of the research on migration and transnation-alism has tended to be conducted and conceptualized along traditional geographical axes. Whether it is research on types of migration or specific migrant communities, (Anderson 2000; Mahler 1995; Killingray 1994), remittance-sending practices (Lozano Ascencio 1993; León-Ledesma and Piracha 2004; Orozco 2002), transnational politics (Glick Schiller 2001; Ong 1998; Østergaard-Nielsen 2003) or the multifarious social and cultural phenomena that occur in and/or between diasporas and their countries of origin (Caglar 1995; Karim 2003; van der Veer 1995; van Hear 1998), the focus continues to be overwhelmingly North-South and East-West. In contrast, research on migration and transnational links between countries in the global South is still relatively limited. ¹