Description: Diplomacy Meets Migration examines diplomacy, migration, and the history of US relations with Cuba during the Cold War. Hideaki Kami draws on declassified US and Cuban diplomatic sources, as well as Miami-Cuban lobby records, to challenge traditional interpretations that mainly focus on the two national capitals, Washington and Havana. By incorporating Miami into the story of foreign affairs, Kami assesses the intersection between migration and diplomacy, and considers how migration emerged as a critical issue that shaped the dynamism of US relations with Cuba. Kami demonstrates that the US government reformulated its Cuban policy in response to Fidel Castro's institutionalization of power, while simultaneously trying to build a new relationship with the Miami Cuban community, a new, politically mobilized constituency within US society. He shows how both migration control and migrant politics became important components of US foreign policy, which in turn influenced Cuban policy toward the United States.
Brief description: Hideaki Kami is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Kanagawa University, Japan. He is a recipient of the Saito Makoto Prize and the Fulbright Award for Doctoral Studies, and has conducted archival research in the United States, Cuba, and elsewhere.
Review Quotes: 'Kami has fashioned a compelling assessment of Cuban immigration as a factor of decisive policy importance, and thereupon to plumb deeply into the complexities of Cuba-US relations between the 1960s and the 1990s. He answers some old questions and, just as important, he has raised new ones.' Louis A. Pérez, The American Historical Review