Center for Comparative Immigration Studies

This article offers a new approach for deepening our understanding of the immigrant experience. It describes how and explains why a historically grounded cohort analysis brings to the fore aspects of émigré views and involvements, including within a single immigrant generation, other approaches leave undocumented and unexplained. Differences in pre-migration experiences are shown to shape both how immigrants adapt to their new country of settlement and how they relate to their homeland. The utility of the approach is illustrated by contrasting the experiences of different cohorts of Cuban immigrants: how they have adapted here and the nature of their transnational ties.