“NO ESTAMOS VIVIENDO, ESTAMOS SOBREVIVIENDO”: A qualitative study of experiences of everyday life of young adult Cubans

Abstract

This thesis investigates how young adult Cubans describe their experiences of everyday life. The study situates itself in the timeframe of the Covid-19 pandemic and in light of the U.S. blockade towards Cuba, within a framework of Global Studies.

The empirical material was collected through semi-structured interviews with young adult Cubans living in various urban regions in Cuba. The material is analyzed with a thematic content analysis, and engages with a theoretical framework drawing from works of Judith Butler discussing precarity and grievability as ontological conditions. The main conclusions of this thesis illuminate how the enforcement of the U.S. blockade against Cuba in the latest years and the hit of the Covid-19 pandemic concurrently have had ramifications for the social and economic climate in Cuba. The imaginary of Cuba by the U.S. is discussed through a lens of grievability. Moreover, the study demonstrates how the young adult Cubans live in a day-to-day manner and that everyday life is riddled with struggles of uncertainty and scarcity. In turn, these hardships result in social and existential consequences for their present as well as for their scope of the future; such as how they reason about plans and dreams. The precarity of the everyday is unequally distributed, both internationally and nationally. Finally, the uncertainty and vulnerability are seemingly maximized conditions, and these conditions generate future plans of young adults to leave life in Cuba behind.