Education, migration and internationalism: situating Muslim Middle Eastern and North African students in Cuba

This article was downloaded by: [University of Oxford] On: 28 June 2010 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 773573598] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 3741 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK The Journal of North African Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713677623 Education, migration and internationalism: situating Muslim Middle Eastern and North African students in Cuba Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeha a University of Oxford and School of Oriental and African Studies, Online publication date: 23 June 2010 To cite this Article Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Elena(2010) 'Education, migration and internationalism: situating Muslim Middle Eastern and North African students in Cuba', The Journal of North African Studies, 15: 2, 137 — 155 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13629380802532234 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13629380802532234 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. 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The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. The Journal of North African Studies Vol. 15, No. 2, June 2010, 137– 155 Education, migration and internationalism: situating Muslim Middle Eastern and North African students in Cuba Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh∗ University of Oxford and School of Oriental and African Studies Since the 1970s, thousands of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) students have been amongst the 40,000 recipients of a free education at universities and other further education institutions in Cuba. Drawing on interviews conducted with Muslim MENA university students in Cuba, including both citizens and refugees, I suggest that their legal statuses played central roles during their time in the Caribbean island, as well as structuring their expectations for the future. This article examines both Muslim youth experiences of, and Cuban motivations behind, an internationalist education programme that has been marginalised by both academics and policy-makers alike. Further, it explores and contextualises these students’ perceptions of life in Cuba throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and of the conditions in their places of origin, which in many cases are refugee camps or hosting countries. In addition to offering these individuals a further education with an aim of enhancing self-sustainability in their ‘home’ countries/spaces, I propose that this programme is a clear alternative, and even a challenge, to the way in which the education of foreign students is structured and managed elsewhere by states and institutions driven by different socio-economic and political priorities. Keywords: educational migration; Palestinian; refugee; Sahrawi; self-sufficiency; socialism Introduction Since the beginning of the Cuban Revolution (1959), more than 40,000 students from over 120 countries have been granted full scholarships by the Cuban government, allowing them to pursue their secondary and/or tertiary education in the Caribbean island (Alfaro Alfaro 2005). Amongst these beneficiaries, thousands of young people born in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have attended Cuban universities and other further education institutions, with many of these also having received their primary and/or secondary schooling in the Cuban Isla de la Juventud (Island of Youth). This article focuses on a group of Muslim MENA students’ participation in the Cuban scholarship programme. The Cuban initiative to give scholarships (covering school and university fees as well as all accommodation, food and medical costs) to youth from around the world is one of the state’s ∗ Email: elena.fiddian-qasmiyeh@qeh.ox.ac.uk; ef14@soas.ac.uk ISSN 1362-9387 print/ISSN 1743-9345 online # 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13629380802532234 http://www.informaworld.com Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 138 E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh key internationalist programmes. In addition to the broad support offered to African, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries through this programme, the scholarships can be considered to be one way in which the Cuban state has assisted the struggles of various independence and anti-colonial movements since the 1970s, including those of the Palestinians and Sahrawi. By providing youth with access to formal secondary and tertiary education, the Cuban government on the one hand enables fully trained doctors, engineers, lawyers and teachers (amongst others) to return to their places of origin to serve their communities and ensure a high degree of national and local self-sufficiency, including in Palestinian and Sahrawi refugee camps. It is also hoped that through experiencing life in Cuba and participating in its particular education system, graduates will take socialist values with them to their places of origin upon their return. In the case of students arriving from socialist Arab countries, such as Syria and Yemen, this educational journey is in itself a continuation of the solidarity shared between these countries and Cuba on an ideological level. Indeed, one simple and yet essential approach to solidarity is embodied in the educational programmes run by the Cuban government despite the serious material limitations which Cuba has faced due to the US embargo: ‘compartir lo que tienes, no dar lo que te sobra’ (‘to share what you have, not to give what’s left over’).1 The scholarship programme has attracted some attention from researchers interested in its role in Cuban foreign policy, with analysts attempting to discern Cuba’s political and ideological rationale in giving these ‘gifts’ to non-Cuban students (Fernández 1988; on Cuba’s ‘educational diplomacy’ see Richmond 1991). However, such studies focus on macro-level institutional and political relations between states and political organisations from the ‘second’ and ‘third’ worlds, while non-Cuban students’ experiences of studying in the Cuban archipelago have received little or no attention from academics in Habana or beyond. Although the Cuban state’s motivations are indeed worthy of exploration, this article moves from the macro- to the micro-level, reflecting on the conditions which make these particular students’ stay in Cuba desirable or necessary, exploring and contextualising their experiences in Cuba itself as well as their expectations for the future. Doing so will also allow us to explore some assumptions surrounding study-abroad programmes per se, such as Altbach’s conjecture that students ‘return home imbued with the norms and values of the host country’ (1989, p. 125). Taking the Cuban programme as a case study also indicates that, while ‘Third World students’ often pay exorbitant ‘foreign student’ fees in European or North American universities and then ‘carry knowledge from the industrialised nations to the Third World. . . and also return home with Western values’ (ibid), alternative, less financially motivated and uni-directional models of international education provision for foreign students also exist. The interviews This article draws upon research completed in Cuba during late 2006, including interviews with 20 North African and Middle Eastern Muslim university students. The students included both citizens of MENA countries and MENA refugees: one interviewee was a Syrian citizen and three were Yemeni citizens, while five respondents were of Palestinian origin and 11 young people had been born in the Sahrawi refugee camps in southwestern Algeria. As I suggest throughout the article, the students’ refugee or citizen backgrounds played central roles during their time in Cuba, as well as affecting their expectations for the future. Although there are many Christian Arab students in Cuba, this article will focus specifically on the experience and presence of Muslim2 Arab students on the island. It thereby complements Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 The Journal of North African Studies 139 a newly emerging (Cuban and international) interest in documenting the historical and multifaceted nature of (forced and voluntary) immigration from the Middle East and North Africa to the island from the sixteenth century to the present. I suggest that the presence of Muslim Arab youth in Cuba today can be understood as constituting a new form of migration – educational migration – that supersedes previous forms of connections between the Middle East and Cuba. In terms of the gender of interviewees, it is necessary to stress that only two young Sahrawi women were interviewed, whilst I was unable to meet any other MENA female students during my research in Cuba. This article therefore primarily discusses the perspectives of a group of male MENA students regarding their experiences in Cuba, whilst recognising the limitations of being unable to include more female voices in this account. It is, however, equally important to note that the gender ratio represented amongst the interviewees (18 males and two females) broadly reflects the fact that considerably fewer women than men from the MENA region currently study in Cuba. While much larger numbers of Sahrawi girls studied in Cuba in the 1980s and early 1990s, the number has decreased substantially since the Periodo Especial, with only a small number still based in Cuba (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2009b). The Palestinian, Syrian and Yemeni students interviewed highlighted the fact that only small numbers of young women of their own nationalities are based in Cuba, with the students’ opinions vis-à-vis this matter varying greatly. The reasons for such an imbalance are many, as discussed elsewhere with reference to changes in the Sahrawi approach to transnational educational programmes (Chatty et al. 2010; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2009a, b), and were touched upon in some of the students’ interviews, as quoted below. Cuban scholarships: a history In order to view the experiences of Muslim MENA university students in perspective, it is firstly important to provide a brief outline of the two main forms of Cuban scholarships which have historically been granted through bilateral agreements between Cuba and other states and organisations: school scholarships and tertiary education scholarships. Studying in La Isla de la Juventud Formerly known as La Isla de Pinos, the island’s name was formally changed to La Isla de la Juventud (the Island of Youth) in 1978, coinciding with the celebration of the XI World Youth Festival. The transformation of this previously under-populated Cuban island into an ‘International Centre for Studies’ revolutionised both the island’s demography and economic capacity, as students boosted citric agricultural activity in the region (Alonso Valdés 1984). The first Escuela Secundaria Básica en el Campo (Secondary Basic Countryside School) in La Isla de la Juventud was created in 1971, with a total of 56 schools having been built there for secondary level Cuban and foreign students between 1959 and 1981 (Comité Estatal de Estadı́stica 1982). Eight pre-university installations were also created in the same time period, ensuring that many of these students could access Cuban universities with the state’s financial support. To offer an idea of the number of foreign children involved in this programme, 10,468 nonCuban children took up school scholarships in 1982 alone, amounting to 37.7% of the total number of students in La Isla de la Juventud (Alonso Valdés 1984). In 1988, foreign students numbered 13,098, with 1,972 of these being in primary schools, 9,151 in secondary schools, and 1,975 in pre-university centres (Richmond 1991). 140 E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh In addition to creating schools for both Cuban and non-Cuban students, one initiative allowed some groups of non-Cuban children to study and live alongside their compatriots. In 1987, for instance, there were seven Angolan schools educating 3,581 students, and four Mozambican schools with 2,231 children (Richmond 1991). In the case of Sahrawi refugees, one doctor who was completing her graduate medical studies in Habana in 2006 recounted: Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 When I was 11 I travelled to Cuba with another 800 Sahrawi children from the refugee camps. There were three schools just for us in the Isla de la Juventud, but that year they had to open a fourth school because there were so many of us. I lived with about 100 Sahrawi girls who arrived with me, although there were 25 new girls who lived with the older girls in another student residence. These nationality-based schools also receive, in line with Cuban Ministerial resolutions, up to six foreign teachers to cover the following national (i.e. non-Cuban) subjects: national history, national geography and national language (Art. 35, Ministerio de Educación 1982b). These teachers accompany the students when they travel, living with them, sharing responsibility for their care and ‘helping the adolescents to preserve their linguistic and cultural identity’ (UNHCR 2003). Sahrawi refugees are amongst the last group of non-Cuban children who continue to receive this sort of scholarship and schooling in La Isla de la Juventud, since most foreign students currently in Cuba arrive to receive a tertiary, rather than a primary or secondary, education. Tertiary education in Cuba It is estimated that more than 16,500 non-Cuban students have obtained university degrees in Cuba since the programme began in 1961 (Martı́n Sabina 2002). In the 1990s alone it is calculated that around 4,000 graduates returned to their countries of origin (ibid), with over 4,200 students being matriculated in tertiary education courses in the last year of that decade (UNESCO 1999). In 2001/2002, almost half of all foreign students in Cuba were studying courses supervised by the Ministry of Public Health: 2020 were studying medicine, 71 dentistry and 22 nursing degrees, amounting to a total of 2113 students (Ministerio de Salud Pública 2002). In terms of the expenses covered by the Cuban scholarships, the state pays for all tertiary students’ university or polytechnic costs, provides all necessary study materials, clothes and uniforms, as well as housing them in student residences and catering for their nutritional and medical/dental needs, offering them a small stipend for additional expenses, and sending them home with books relevant to their area of expertise (as well as 10 kg excess baggage). Further, the Cuban government covers all national transportation costs, although students’ states of origin are responsible for their international travel. The major exception to this rule is when students are in Cuba through agreements made with non-state organisations or liberation movements including the Polisario/SADR (Ministerio de Educación 1978, 1982a, 1982b).3 Students’ origins and Cuban motivations Table 1 outlines the total number of non-Cuban students in Higher Education in Cuba from 1977 to 1992, and for the year 1996. It also specifies how many of these were from African countries during the same time period. 141 The Journal of North African Studies Table 1. Total number of non-Cuban and African students in Cuban Higher Education (1977–1996). Derived from Yearbooks produced by UNESCO (1990, 1994, 1999, 2004) and Comité Estatal de Estadı́stica (1982 and 1991). African Total Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 African Total 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 856 1411 913 2031 592 1691 1114 2530 1352 2887 1335 2830 1552 3178 1836 3435 1966 3161 2687 4075 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 2844 4143 3345 4660 2815 4057 5654 5723 3040 4811 N/a N/a N/a 4243 It is clear from this table that the majority of students receiving scholarships from 1977 until the mid- to late-1990s were from African countries. This was equally the case in terms of students in La Isla de la Juventud, with the Cuban government providing an education to large numbers of students from Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Congo, Namibia (amongst others), and hosting between 13,000 and 15,000 African youth throughout the 1980s (Entralgo and González 1991; López Segrera 1988; Richmond 1991). The reasons for Cuba supporting African countries through scholarships during this time are too many to list here, but include ideological and political ones. These range from an historical commitment to Africa due to the Cuban population’s African heritage, to a desire to support African socialist states and anti-colonial and liberation movements (including Angola) which Cuba also often assisted militarily. In light of more recent figures, however, it is equally evident that Cuba’s current focus is no longer Africa, as had been the case for over two decades, but rather Latin America.4 While 76% of foreign students in Cuba in 1996 – 1997 were of African origin (UNESCO 1999),5 by 2001/ 2002 they represented only 16.2% of foreign students (Martı́n Sabina 2002). Conversely, the number of Latin American and Caribbean students multiplied almost tenfold in the same time period: although only 8.3% of foreign students originated from Latin America in 1996 – 1997, over 78% of the 11,000 foreign students receiving a Cuban education in 2001/2002 were from Latin America and the Caribbean (ibid). This significant reversal in students’ place of origin is indicative of major changes in Cuba’s political, diplomatic, and material priorities, indicating the relevance of considering Cuba’s motivations for the scholarship programme. As a Cuban university professor indicated during our interview, this increase in Latin American students is related to ‘la izquierdización’ (‘the left-isation’) of Latin America, associating this change with Cuba’s support for ‘progressive’ leftist political parties. Further, however, I suggest that Cuba’s economic isolation due to the long-standing US embargo, and the need to confront the realities of the acute economic crisis faced from the 1990s onwards (known as the Periodo Especial – the ‘Special Period’) following the fall of the Communist Block, have been determining factors influencing the state’s current focus on Latin America, and on countries such as Venezuela in particular. The scholarships that Cuba currently grant to Venezuelan and other Latin American students, paralleled by Cuban doctors completing ‘internationalist’ medical placements in the region,6 are a strategic necessity when we consider Cuba’s increased material dependence on Venezuelan oil and other forms of technological assistance.7 As I shall now discuss, however, while such strategic or functionalist analyses of Cuba’s motivations for the scholarship programme may provide some insight into the nature of relations 142 E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh between Cuba and certain other states, such approaches appear less coherent when examining the cases of a range of students from the MENA region. Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 MENA students in Cuba: motivations and necessities Statistics apropos the number of Middle Eastern and North African students in Cuba are limited, although Alfaro Alfaro (2005) indicates that 14 MENA countries sent students to Cuba between 1961 and 2002. Bilateral educational agreements include those which exist between Cuba and the following ‘progre’ (‘progressive’, López Segrera 1988) MENA states and organisations: Algeria, Lebanon,8 the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), and Syria (Fernández 1988; López Segrera 1988). A brief overview of the number of Sahrawi students who have been granted scholarships will give an idea of the extent of the MENA programme: UNHCR statistics specify that more than 1,400 Sahrawi refugee students were based in Cuba in 1995, with over half of these having returned to the refugee camps in the following decade. Around 600 Sahrawi students remained in Cuba in 2005 (ACN 2006). Cuban and Sahrawi media reports state that the number of Sahrawis who have trained specifically as doctors in Cuba is approximately 300 (RHC 2002a, 2002b; SPS 2002) while the total number of Sahrawi beneficiaries is estimated as being well over 4,000 (Salazar 2002; Um Draiga 2001; Garcı́a in San Martı́n 2005). This section will explore some of the features of the scholarship agreements benefiting MENA students of Palestinian, Sahrawi, Syrian and Yemeni background, including a discussion of some possible scenarios prompting Cuba to give MENA students’ scholarships. Scholarships for MENA refugees Over half of the students interviewed during my institutional visit9 and fieldwork in Cuba were members of the protracted Palestinian and Sahrawi refugee contexts. The Cuban state has allocated scholarships to these groups of students since the very start of its internationalist education programme, providing a free education to Palestinian students through bilateral agreements with the PLO, and to Sahrawi refugees through the Sahrawi refugee camp-based government (the SADR) and the Polisario Front (the Sahrawi liberation movement). Unlike Cuba’s relationship with Venezuelan and other Latin American states, one Sahrawi student spontaneously reflected on her understanding of the basis of the connection between the SADR/Polisario Front and the Cuban government: When Cuba offered Sahrawi refugees a free education, Cuba was selfless in this respect, for what could the Polisario Front offer Cuba in return? Perhaps we will be able to repay their solidarity in the future, but for now, it is selfless. While we cannot assume that Cuba was entirely ‘selfless’ when it gave scholarships to these young refugees, I would suggest that ideologically based motivations may have played a significantly more important role in the case of Sahrawi and Palestinian students than in the case of scholarships offered more recently to Latin American students. On the one hand, neither the Palestinian nor the Sahrawi refugee students themselves, nor their political representatives, are able to offer Cuba significant material or political support. Indeed, the scholarships extended to these groups, and in particular to the Sahrawi, are necessary due to Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 The Journal of North African Studies 143 their almost total dependence of externally provided humanitarian aid and very limited educational infrastructure in their places of origin. In the Sahrawi refugee camps, for instance, there is only one secondary boarding school, and no universities, for a population of around 155,000 refugees, meaning that refugee youth must study outside of the camps if they are to study at all. In such situations, the education of refugee students in Cuba allows for a relatively high degree of self-sufficiency in labour-terms, which can be interpreted as embodying a fundamental Cuban socialist priority: to ensure that lesser-developed countries and communities are not reliant upon, and dominated by, western-run humanitarian aid and development industries. It is, however, also worth noting that not insignificant numbers of Cuban-educated students have, upon their return to the refugee camps or their host countries, obtained important administrative, ministerial and diplomatic positions. Many Polisario representatives and diplomats around the world, as well as camp-based SADR ministers, were educated in Cuba, in addition to those former-students who have taken on roles of great responsibility in administering the Sahrawi refugee camps10 and attending to prominent Spanish-speaking politicians, journalists and activists during their visits. It may therefore be suggested that, if one motivation underlying the programme is the hope that students might return with socialist principles to their places of origin, these individuals may indeed have the capacity to play a significant role in determining the political projects and orientation of their own political organisation in the refugee camps. A small example of the potential to ‘repay’ Cuba in diplomatic and political terms is identifiable in a short article about Fatma Mahfoud, a Polisario representative in Italy who studied psychology in Cuba. She explains: Cuba is helping a lot of third world countries. . . The revolutionary government has opened up the Isle of Youth [sic.], and each country has its own school on the island. I feel very strongly about this. It is unfair that in Western countries you never see any newspaper speak about this. (Fatma Mahfoud, quoted in Cogga 2003) By virtue of having studied in Cuba, and having obtained positions of relative power, former students may be able to support the Cuban scholarship programme via what we may call a ‘public relations’ strategy. In terms of Cuba’s potential motivations for allocating scholarships to Palestinian refugees specifically, most of the students interviewed explained that the Cuban government has a long-standing commitment to the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation. This commitment is evident not only through many of Cuba’s foreign policy decisions (including its history of voting in the United Nations: see Dı́az Garcı́a 1991; Sánchez Porro 1994), through the official representation of many Palestinian factions and groups in addition to the existence of a Palestinian Embassy in Habana, but is also reflected in the history of the Palestinian scholarship programme. Not only are Palestinian students from Gaza and around the Middle East able to apply for scholarships through the PLO (and its component factions and groups), but many of the current students are the children of Palestinians who themselves studied in Cuba during the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, following a new agreement developed in the early 2000s, Palestinian students who married Cubans are now eligible to send their children to complete their university degrees and graduate studies on the island, free of charge. One doctor who was completing his medical specialisation in Cuba at the time of interview reflected: My father studied in Habana in the 80s, and married my mother while he was here. We returned to the Middle East when I was about 4 or 5, but we never went back to Cuba. . . When I was old enough, my father suggested that I study in Habana, as he knew about the scholarships for PalestinianCuban children. . . I am happy, and grateful, to be able to study here, although it often seems 144 E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh that neither the Cuban government, nor we ourselves, are clear if we are considered to be Cubans or Palestinians here. As in the case of Sahrawi refugee students, infrastructural limitations, in addition to legal and economic barriers to accessing an education in hosting countries (such as Syria and Jordan) or in the Occupied Territories, to a large extent underlie the necessity of the Palestinian scholarship agreement. Cuba’s motivations, on the other hand, appear to be less tangible than in the case of scholarships given to Latin American students, and rather more ideological and political in nature. Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 Scholarships for MENA citizens Beyond Cuba’s multifaceted and complex ‘apoyo’ (‘support’) of liberation and anti-colonial movements, another motivating factor behind Cuba’s scholarships for students from the Middle East is the political connection between Arab and Cuban socialisms in general. It is important to start by recognising the diversity of interpretations and developments of socialist thought and policy in different Arab countries, and that the birth of Arab socialism as a political philosophy preceded the Cuban Revolution by several decades (A.M. Said 1972).11 Whilst sharing many elements, Nasserism in Egypt in the late 1950s and 1960s, Ba’athism in Syria and Iraq from the 1940s onwards,12 Qaddafi’s inconsistent approaches in Libya from 1969, Algeria’s non-aligned/socialist perspectives since independence (1962), and the Marxist interpretations advocated by the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (1970 – 1990) are examples of a range of political, ideological and pragmatic approaches to socialism in the Arab world (for analyses documenting this diversity see the edited collections by Hanna and Gardener 1969, Karpat 1968, as well as A.M. Said 1972). The differences encountered within the MENA region itself, and the discrepancies between the socialism of the Arab world and that espoused by Fidel Castro and his state, however, has not impeded Cuba from backing these MENA socialist states in a selection of ways since the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Cuba has created and maintained close connections with Arab socialist states in different ways: in addition to providing military support at times, the Cuban state has also sent both doctors and teachers to many of these countries, as well as providing a free education to MENA students in Cuba itself via bilateral arrangements. These programmes of assistance have often overlapped, as indicated by one of the students I interviewed: a Palestinian-Cuban doctor currently completing his medical specialisation in Cuba, who had been taught by Cuban doctors in a Yemeni university prior to arriving in Habana. Given the ideological connection which (partially) underlies Cuba’s decision to educate the citizens of Arab-socialist states, and given that the Cuban state, via both the Ministries of Education and of Higher Education, clearly indicated throughout the 1970s and 1980s that foreign students should benefit from a ‘politico-ideological’ education whilst in Cuba (Ministerio de la Educación Superior 1980; Ministerio de Educación, 1982a,b), it is worth briefly remarking on the possible impact of Cuba’s socialist ideology on these students. I feel that such a discussion is particularly important since, following my return from Cuba, I have been confronted by several people who claim (or assume) that one of Cuba’s main motivations in running the education programme must be to influence students’ ideological inclinations, or, in essence, ‘to brain-wash’ or ‘to indoctrinate them.’ While I did not systematically ask students to share their opinions of Cuban socialism with me, one student spontaneously reflected on one of the differences between Arab socialism Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 The Journal of North African Studies 145 and Cuban socialism. He explained that, ‘since materialism is by nature atheist, one cannot be a materialist socialist and a Muslim at the same time.’ He stressed that, although he respects Cuban socialists, he feels that he cannot reconcile such an approach with his own religious identity and practice (on the Islamic foundations of Arab socialism, and early Arab socialists’ antagonistic relationship with Marxism, see Hanna and Gardner 1969; A.M. Said 1972). In this sense, given that all of the students interviewed were both Muslim and originated ostensibly from Arab socialist states, I would suggest that their encounter with Cuban socialism must have been directly influenced by their previous exposure to and understandings of socialist approaches in the MENA region. Such an encounter would not have been characterised by the students being ‘imbued’ with Cuban socialist values (as per Altbach’s suggestion regarding Western values), but rather by a critical engagement with the ideologies and policies they faced throughout their stay. I asked another student, a Sahrawi MD, a subtly posed question regarding the ways in which she felt that studying in Cuba might have influenced the way that she sees the world. In response to my question pertaining to how studying in Cuba might have influenced students’ world views, a female Sahrawi student indicated that, at medical school, she had never had any overtly political classes. She continued by noting that the only ‘socialist’ approach she could remember having been taught was in a Philosophy course explaining the Hippocratic Oath and its application in medicine. As the majority of students I interviewed were students of medicine or dentistry,13 I suggest that they would have had similar experiences throughout their education to those presented by this Sahrawi – any potential engagement with socialist values would not have arisen primarily due to formally provided academic or political instruction, but rather from their exposure to the Cuban society and system more broadly. MENA students in Cuba: material conditions and social relations The main focus of my interviews with MENA students was to obtain further insight into Muslim students’ experiences of living in Cuba, about their impressions of Cuba itself and how they believe that studying in Cuba has influenced their lives and will impact upon their futures. One of the main themes that arose during our discussions relates to students’ impressions of life in Cuba. Beginning with this theme will allow the reader to start contextualising these students’ day-to-day lives in the island. Material conditions When I asked students about their arrival in Cuba, almost all reflected first and foremost on the harshness of living on the island and on the material difficulties they had faced, before turning to cultural or religious issues. This is simultaneously indicative of the longstanding nature of Cuba’s economic situation; students’ expectations regarding life on the island, and the differences in living conditions they believe exist between Cuba and their places of origin. A Syrian medical student, whose Cuban scholarship is supplemented by the Syrian state, described his arrival in the island in the year 2000 as follows: I arrived in Cuba with another Syrian student, but he didn’t stay for longer than a month. We had expected that having a Syrian scholarship would mean that we’d have really good conditions, but we weren’t expecting the harshness and difficulties we faced here. Everything was difficult: the public transport, the accommodation, the food, and the cultural differences. . . He left after a few weeks. I’ve been here for five years and it’s still hard. 146 E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 He continued by stressing that conditions in the student residences were ‘shocking,’ although he and many other students also highlighted that foreign students tend to be privileged by the system and are allocated to ‘better’ accommodation blocks than Cuban students.14 Indeed, the Cuban Ministry of Further Education indicates that foreign students must be offered accommodation with ‘adequate conditions’ specifically due to the recognition that these hostels greatly influence students’ impressions of life in Cuba (Ministerio de Educación Superior 1980).15 Despite the material difficulties currently characterising life in Cuba, and which have even led to several students renouncing a free university education in favour of a more comfortable life in their place of origin, it is important to note that material conditions in Cuba have improved considerably since the 1990s, when Cubans and foreign students alike lived through the Periodo Especial. One female Sahrawi student’s comments not only outline the extent of these difficulties, but also allow us to consider the differences and similarities that may exist between students’ places of origin and Cuba: When we arrived [in 1988], the lack of food was one of the biggest shocks. There wasn’t much food in the [Sahrawi] refugee camps, of course, but it was different there because we knew that our parents would always give us the best food, even if they went hungry themselves. She continued: Here, when the Periodo Especial started, the [Cuban] government told us that the Cuban citizens, as well as the non-Cuban residents, and students were hungry. They treated us all the same, sharing their rations with us, and promised that they would continue to support us. But they also stressed that if any of us wanted to return to the refugee camps, where more food was assured because of humanitarian aid, we could leave Habana and then continue with our studies later, when the situation in Cuba was better. Some children returned, but most of us stayed. We knew that our future depended on our education. Overall, students’ descriptions of life in Cuba suggest that the physical structure of the city, alongside material and food scarcity, have impacted upon many foreign students greatly, with some of them having decided that living in the Caribbean island was ‘too difficult’ for them. Those who have stayed may have become accustomed to the living conditions, but, as we shall discuss in greater detail below, food repeatedly emerged as a critical concern for students, especially those who did not eat pork for religious and/or cultural reasons. Further, when considering their experiences in Cuba, these students continually drew comparisons with their places of origin, and wished that things were easier in Cuba. In the case of the refugee students, it is perhaps paradoxical to note the frequency with which Sahrawi students stated that material conditions in the refugee camps were ‘better’ than in Cuba in many respects, despite having been sent to study in Cuba due to the extremely limited educational infrastructure in the camps. Students’ comments included: suggesting that there would have been a more reliable supply of food in the refugee camps than in Cuba during the Periodo Especial; indicating that there is greater availability of pharmaceutical ingredients to make medicine in the camps than in Cuba;16 and noting there are cheaper telephone services (including mobile phones) in the refugee camps than in the island. Many of these students felt that it was ‘strange’ that a nation-state such as Cuba could have more material limitations than a refugee population which has been dependent on humanitarian aid for over three decades. Social relations and religious identity/practice While material conditions were mentioned first by most interviewees, social relations became the subsequent focus of most of my discussions. A central issue for most of the students The Journal of North African Studies 147 Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 interviewed was a recognition that Cuban approaches to social interactions and gender relations, as well as religious identity and practice, differ greatly from those characterising their places of origin. It is worth stressing that while most of their places of origin (Palestine, Syria, SADR, Yemen) have secular governmental institutions, the majority of their populations are Muslim, with social, gender, and religious matters being viewed accordingly. Cuban society, on the other hand, was described by a Cuban man who converted to Islam in the 1990s as being ‘intrinsically erotic,’ based around ‘hedonism, dancing, sex and seduction.’ Whilst this is a somewhat exotic and one-sided representation of Cuba, his description does capture many aspects of Cuban social life encountered by Muslim students based in the island. I asked a Yemeni doctor who had studied in Habana for six years what he considered to be a ‘typical’ trajectory of a Muslim student arriving and studying in Cuba: His [sic.] arrival is a massive shock. When he sees another Muslim drink, kiss a woman, or go dancing, he says ‘You can’t do that! What are you doing? It’s haram [Islamically prohibited] to drink!’ The student who’s been here for longer will respond by saying ‘It’s normal here!’ This leads to a change in the newly arrived student, who becomes not only tolerant but also enacts these forbidden activities. He continued by suggesting that, after an initial shock and subsequent enactment of these ‘forbidden activities,’ they will eventually develop a deeper understanding of Islam. . . As they grow older, they will mature, and will understand this and grow closer to Islam. They will see how life works in Cuba: relationships, marriage, divorce, child-rearing. . . and they will return [to Islam]. Many students did indeed reflect this pattern when they recounted their experiences of living in Cuba, although these explanations varied significantly since the period of time spent in Cuba by the different interviewees ranged from two months to 18 years. One Palestinian student from the Occupied Territories recounted his own experience of living in Cuba for over 10 years: I admit that I became lost. . . I was lost spiritually, I used to go out drinking, dancing, and even ended up marrying a Cuban woman. But that didn’t work, and we divorced. I gradually grew closer to Islam again and am now a fully practicing Muslim. I am at peace with myself now. For most of the students, they considered that doing some ‘haram’ things (in the present or past) did not mean that they were no longer Muslim. For two of the students interviewed, however, these transgressions were viewed very seriously, and they did everything in their power to, as they saw it, bring the younger students back to Islam. There was therefore a reasonably high degree of tension between some students regarding the precise meaning of religious identity and practice in Cuba. As the Syrian student who had lived in Cuba for five years explained to me: I think that religion is a personal matter and you shouldn’t be judged by others for how you behave. That is a matter between you and Allah. You also shouldn’t judge others – if they want to drink, or have a relationship, that’s the other person’s choice. I think it’s very problematic when others judge you, or when you believe you must behave in a certain way to be viewed in a positive light by others. In addition to often radically different opinions on drinking alcohol, having relationships, or “going out dancing,” the difficulty of finding halal (Islamically allowed) food in Cuba was also a major concern for many of the Habana-based students, especially those who prayed together on a regular basis. One group of students had managed to negotiate special cooking rights with the management of their student hostel, enabling them to cook their own meals 148 E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 whenever pork products were used in canteen food. This, in essence, meant cooking for themselves almost every day, which, as the Syrian medical student stressed, can be draining after a 24-hour shift in the Accident and Emergency department. The above discussion suggests that while some aspects of Cuba’s permissive society may have initially been welcomed by visiting MENA students, a process of selection and rejection played a central role in students’ approaches to their host society. Importantly, almost all students maintained a clear distinction between items they considered to be haram, and those they considered to be halal, even if they sometimes applied a liberal interpretation that allowed them to engage in some activities they recognised would Islamically be classified as haram. Students often associated the process of selection and rejection with an increasing form of ‘maturity,’ with students growing to understand the significance and implications of their actions with time. This clearly counters Altbach’s assumption that students ‘return home imbued with the norms and values of the host country,’ or that societies which may be labelled ‘permissive’ or ‘liberal’ societies will necessarily be welcomed by students. Cuban – Muslim interactions As well as discussing their personal relationships with religious identity and practice, many of the interviewees commented on the way that Cubans approach, evaluate, and criticise Islam. According to the students, gender-based notions play a pivotal role in Cuban understandings of Islam: most students claimed that when Cubans first learnt that they are Muslims, they immediately said ‘Muslims beat their wives,’ ‘you force your women to wear the veil’ and ‘you keep them indoors.’ For the students, this depiction of Islam was ‘highly insulting’ and ‘clearly incorrect.’ Countering these Cuban representations, for instance, some students drew upon their knowledge of both the Qur’an and the Bible to point out historical commonalities between the covering of women’s hair/head in Islam and in Christian settings. Further, however, many of the interviewees reflected that they also found such claims, to some extent, ‘paradoxical’ and ‘hypocritical’: as doctors and medical students working in the Accident and Emergency departments of various hospitals, they explained that they regularly witnessed the physical results of ‘disrespect, violence and abuse’ towards Cuban women. Whilst not explicitly claiming that Cuban society is quintessentially violent towards women, the students’ responses did at times appear to reproduce the stereotypical approach to culture and society they themselves rejected in Cuban accounts of Muslim gender relations (for an analysis of discourses surrounding violence against women in the Sahrawi refugee camps, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2010). By means of contexualising Cuban understandings of Islam, as reported by the students, it is worth stressing that Muslims in Cuba tend to be hidden from both social and academic view, with Cuban converts to Islam reportedly preferring to lead a relatively discrete life (converts pray in informal meeting houses since there are no mosques in Cuba17), and with Cuban academics apparently believing that there is little of interest to be discussed in relation to the experience of Muslims in the island, either now or in the past.18 My research in Cuba’s National Archives demonstrates that the connection between Arab Muslims and the Cuban archipelago is a long-standing one (going as far back at the sixteenth century), and Muslim populations have played a significant role in many aspects of Cuban life for many centuries. Muslim students’ presence in the island in this sense is not a ‘novel’ one, although most students interviewed were unaware of the history of Muslim Arab immigration to Cuba. What is certainly different is that, while individuals from North Africa and the Middle East had in the past primarily travelled to/via Cuba for economic and/or political reasons (either as slaves, as individuals The Journal of North African Studies 149 escaping from religious and/or political persecution, or generally searching for a better life in the Americas), the more recent arrivals can be categorised as ‘educational migrants.’ Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 Education in Cuba and expectations for the future The vast majority of students approached were studying courses related to medicine or dentistry, although others were studying degrees such as biology, pharmaceutical studies, or accountancy. Their studies were very practical in nature, with medical and dentistry students spending most of their days, and many of their nights, working alongside qualified practitioners to get ‘hands on’ experience. Most stated that their courses were hard, whilst others suggested that non-Cuban students enjoyed ‘special treatment’ and, moreover, were rarely suspended or expelled if they performed poorly in exams. In addition, some students indicated that if their colleagues did not work hard, they might be transferred to less challenging courses. Others stressed that they had worked very hard and had been able to ‘move up’ the educational ladder, ‘progressing to’ medical or dentistry studies and leaving their initial (‘easier’) subjects behind. The students’ degrees tended to be selected bearing in mind specific employment/existential priorities in their places of origin, with most expecting to return ‘home,’ or, according to many of the Middle Eastern students interviewed, ‘maybe to another Muslim country,’ to work there. The recognition that they would be able to find ‘a good job’ at home encouraged most of the Yemeni and Syrian students, whilst the Palestinian and Sahrawi refugee students sometimes admitted that returning to their refugee camps or hosting countries was a less attractive prospect. For some of the refugee students, the humanitarian, political and security situations ‘at home,’ alongside their limited mobility rights as refugees, affected their plans and expectations for the future greatly. Torn between wanting to return to their place of origin to be with their families and to work for the benefit of their entire refugee community, they also considered the possibility of making the most of their professional capacities by working in a European country and sending remittances to their families in the camps (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2009b). Experiences in Cuba, as well as expectations for the future, therefore often depended on the students’ legal statuses, as well as the number of years they had spent in the island. Many students reflected on some potential difficulties of returning home following graduation. Some of these were linguistic in nature, while others were more firmly framed in cultural terms. Most of the students spent their first year in Cuba learning Spanish to fit into the Cuban education system: although the Sahrawi students had an advantage in the sense that Spanish is the second official language spoken in the refugee camps,19 all students found it difficult to learn Spanish and complete their studies (including their exams) in their newly acquired second, or third, language. Whilst bearing in mind that ‘(l)earning to work with the contradictory strains of languages lived, and languages learned, has the potential for a remarkable critical and creative impulse’ (Bhabha 2006, p. x), a related difficulty was reflected upon by a Sahrawi medical student who noted: It is ironic. As we don’t have any universities in the refugee camps, Sahrawi youth have to study around the world, but they never study medicine in their own language! In Cuba we study in Spanish, in Algeria they study in French. . . I really don’t know how I’ll communicate with my patients in the camps! Indeed, all of the Middle Eastern students will have to become accustomed to working in their mother tongue (one of a range of Arabic dialects) upon their return to their countries of origin, and the shift will clearly be a complicated one at first. In the case of Sahrawi students who 150 E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 studied in the Island of Youth from a young age, however, it is worth noting that these students are in general neither fluent in their mother tongue (Hassaniya Arabic) nor in Spanish. In fact, unlike most other MENA students who arrived as young adults to Cuba and therefore had a firm understanding of Modern Standard Arabic (Fushā) in addition to their national dialect, Sahrawi ˙˙ students who arrived as children indicated that they are now ‘Cubarauis’ [¼ Cuban + Sahrawis], whose main ‘language’ in Cuba is what they have labelled ‘Arabañol’ [¼ Árabe + Español] a hybrid combination of Hassaniya Arabic (the Sahrawi dialect) and Spanish (also see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2009b). The difficulties these students will encounter upon their return ‘home’ (in this case, to the refugee camps in Algeria) will transcend a shift in their work language, and will rather be related to major changes in all social settings. One major difficulty envisaged for their return home was outlined by one of the female Sahrawi students interviewed who recognised that, having lived in Cuba for so long, I will have to adapt to life in the refugee camps when I return. I realise that it is I who will have to become accustomed to living there, not my family or the other camp residents who will have to accept what I have become in Cuba. I know that it will be hard. Whilst perhaps being most pronounced for young women returning home, leaving Cuba and returning to their Muslim societies may be difficult at first for many male students as well (on refugees’ experience of acculturation in host countries and re-acculturation upon the return to their country of origin, see Doná and Berry 1999). This was a concern vividly expressed by many of the students interviewed. One Palestinian student from the Occupied Territories wondered if he would be able to adapt to living there at all, seriously considering applying for asylum in a third country so as to avoid having to encounter that major difficulty upon his return. Experiences of visiting ‘home’ during the holidays sometimes strengthened these fears: a male Sahrawi student who had recently visited the refugee camps admitted that he had found it difficult to know how to speak with different members of the community, how to engage with Sahrawi women, or to determine what would be considered appropriate or inappropriate for him to say to his mother, father or grandparents. The particular problems faced by students upon their return will in most likelihood be related to the period of time that they have spent in Cuba, with longer stays probably generating greater strain and stress when readapting to non-Cuban styles of life and social engagement (for an analysis of Sahrawi youth’s experiences of return see Chatty et al. 2010 and FiddianQasmiyeh 2009b). Reponses to a question regarding students’ plans to marry and have children were also indicative of the significance of some problems students had experienced during their time in Cuba. The matter of finding a marriage partners was one issue that unmarried male students often felt ambivalent about, claiming that ideally there should be no difference between marrying a Cuban or a Middle Eastern woman, but tending to favour the latter nonetheless. They stated that they did not believe that marrying a Muslim woman would necessarily be better than marrying a Christian (or secular) woman, although they did feel that a common cultural understanding would be important for rearing children in the future. One reason presented by several students for not marrying a Cuban woman was that the students do not want to remain in Cuba, and they knew that Cuban women rarely want to move to the Middle East. They were concerned that if they had children with a Cuban woman, the mother would be responsible for raising these children, and they did not wish their children to be brought up in a non-Islamic fashion and in a non-Muslim environment. The Journal of North African Studies 151 A more interesting discussion pertaining to children arose in answers to the question of whether students would want their own children to study in Cuba. Although all students were greatly appreciative of having been given the opportunity to study in Cuba for free, they admitted that their experiences would impact many of the decisions they might have to take as fathers. The Syrian student addressed this question (‘would you send your own child to study in Cuba in the future?’) by drawing on a conversation he had during his summer holidays in Syria: I asked that exact question to a friend of mine who studied here in Cuba before. He said ‘No’ to this question when I asked: he’s worried that his son could return to Syria from Cuba not only with a medical degree but also with an infectious disease, like AIDS. Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 Although my interviewee considered that his friend’s response was a reasonable one, he felt that this was not the only issue to be considered: In conclusion, I think that. . . no. I wouldn’t send my own son or daughter here [to Cuba]. I know that sometimes a parent has to decide what’s best for his child, and it might be good to send them here if they can gain something special. When I look back, I can see some good things, but also many difficult things that I have lived through. I just want to return to Syria. On the other hand, however, it is worth stressing that the Cuban-Palestinian students’ fathers had been in precisely this situation, as one medical student pointed out: My father was happy for me to come here now that I am 24, since he knows what Cuba’s like. He wanted to be sure that I wouldn’t let myself be carried away by the Cuban ways, and we know that, for younger students, it’s harder not to be influenced, it’s harder to resist the general flow of things. For the older students, it’s easier to resist, although it’s still difficult. The issue of maturity and age was mentioned by a range of students, including Yemeni, Palestinian and Sahrawi students alike. A Sahrawi graduate answered the same question of whether he would send his son to study in Cuba as follows: ‘When he’s mature enough, and has reason. . . when he’s mature enough, he can decide for himself what he wants to do.’ All of the students interviewed agreed that arriving in Cuba at a young age is very problematic, generally explaining this in terms of requiring a firm grasp of Islamic and cultural knowledge upon arrival. A Yemeni student framed this in terms of having the tools required to ‘defend yourself’ from certain aspects of Cuban society, while the Syrian student indicated that: If you’re 17 or 18, you can get lost easily, but when you’re older, your ideas are fixed, you won’t be dragged along by others or change your mind. If you arrive when you’re 11, you lived as an Arab for 11 years but then you become Cuban while you’re here. You lose your Arabness. It’s not good to come here so young. Concluding remarks It was, gentlemen, after a long absence – seven years to be exact, during which time I was studying in Europe – that I returned to my people. I learnt much and much passed me by – but that’s another story. (Salih 1969, p. 1) This article has explored one side of a story, not the experiences of returning home ‘after a long absence’ in Europe but rather some of the experiences of a group of Muslim MENA students during their ‘long presence’ in Cuba. By addressing some of the reasons behind these students’ participation in the study abroad programme, in addition to their impressions of life on the island, I have presented both commonalities and particularities shared by Muslim refugee and Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 152 E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh citizen students from the MENA region. Whilst sharing a common religious identity, the students’ nationalities and legal statuses, as well as the political situations underpinning their places of origin, highlight not only the heterogeneity of the MENA region itself, but also the way in which individual and collective identities have inevitably influenced students’ interpretations of living in Cuba. Far from simply being ‘imbued’ with Cuban values, the Yemeni and Syrian citizens, like the Palestinian and Sahrawi refugee students constantly referred to their situations ‘at home’ (be this in a refugee camp, host country, or state of citizenship) when evaluating their encounters with Cuban society and the Cuban system. In this sense, the interviews which form the basis of this article allow us not only to better understand the ways in which participants view the Cuban international education programme itself, but also presents us with a wealth of material on these students’ perceptions of both of these locations (‘home’ and Cuba). The significance of longstanding connections between Cuba on the one hand and MENA liberation movements or Arab socialist states on the other, is, I suggest, simultaneously epitomised and paralleled by the transgenerational nature of Palestinian-Cuban students’ experiences of following in their fathers’ footsteps. While all students expressed reservations about sending their own children to study in Cuba in the future, and although concerns were also expressed regarding the future of Cuba’s education programme following Fidel Castro’s inevitable death, the potential for Cuba to welcome and educate a third generation of Palestinian students continues to be an imaginable reality. The potential of such a transnational and transgenerational programme goes beyond the benefits to individual students, or even the possible benefits offered to their communities or states. Whilst largely marginalised by academics and policy makers alike, I propose that this programme is a clear alternative (and even a challenge) to the way in which the education of foreign students is structured and managed elsewhere by states and institutions driven by capitalist priorities. Indeed, Cuba’s determination to continue supporting liberation movements and socialist states including those located in the MENA region suggests the extent to which Cuba still strives to unsettle major superpowers, as reflected by Cuba’s voting history against Israel and the United States at the United Nations, and its systematic support for both the Palestinian and Sahrawi causes from the 1960s and 1970s respectively. As has been widely discussed within the postcolonial literatures, global systems have consistently been divided, interpreted and (mis)represented through the problematic centre/margin dichotomy, with the margin tending to correspond to the Other, in this case the ‘developing’. While both Cuba and the Middle East are commonly conceptualised as the Other by mainstream European and North American authors, and simultaneously as marginal and marginalised in political and economic terms, I suggest that the international education programme which this article revolves around provides us with another perspective on centre/margin relations. By situating marginal(ised) MENA youth, including doubly and triply (dis)placed Palestinian and Sahrawi refugees, at the centre of their education programme, the politically and economically sidelined Cuban state has taken a step towards creating a space for what Qasmiyeh and I would call the centralised margin.20 This space not only challenges existing centre/margin dichotomies (US/Cuba, for instance), but simultaneously refuses to reproduce a similar dichotomous and unequal system within itself. Acknowledgements This article is based upon research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. I offer my gratitude to all of the students who shared their experiences with me in Cuba. Yousif M. Qasmiyeh has provided me with unwavering support as well as his thoughtful insights and criticisms of my work. The Journal of North African Studies 153 Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 Notes 1. All interviews were conducted in Spanish (my mother tongue) and all quotations included in this article are my own translations. 2. As outlined below, whilst recognising the diversity of its interpretations and implementations, personal and collective identification in relation to Islam was a central, and often ambivalent, element arising throughout the interviews conducted. Although I use the term ‘Muslim’ in this article, it will become apparent that interviewees’ multiple (re)presentations of religious identification reflect not only the heterogeneity of the category ‘Muslim’, but also the multiple ways in which people define themselves and present themselves to others (also see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Qasmiyeh under review). 3. In the case of Sahrawi refugee students, for instance, the Cuban state systematically paid for students’ transport to and from the refugee camps based in Algeria from the late 1970s until 1994, when it requested that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees cover these costs due to the Cuban economic crisis. 4. The opening of the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (Latin American School of Medicine) in the late 1990s was one of the first steps taken to embody this shift. 5. The connection with African countries remains in place in different ways, however. For instance, some Cuban scholarships are now also offered to African students via the UNESCO. In 2003, 12 African students benefited from this UNESCO-Cuban Fellowship Programme (Alfaro Alfaro 2005). 6. Teachers, as well as doctors, have completed international placements since the Cuban revolution began. In 1987, for instance, 125 teachers offered technical assistance to different countries, thereby, according to the Ministry of Education ‘completing the internationalist characteristics of our Revolution’ (Ministerio de Educación 1987. My translation). 7. It is also worth noting that in the 1980s, Venezuela was forced to ‘severely cut back on government funding for overseas study when [it]. . . encountered severe economic problems after the drop in oil prices’ (Altbach 1989, p. 130). 8. Whilst categorised as a ‘progressive’ country by López Segrera (1988), I would suggest that Lebanon’s ideological fabric, especially in light of the civil war at its peak in the 1980s, was of such a heterogeneous nature (including ‘progressive’ and ‘anti-progressive’ alliances) as to make such a classification highly contestable. 9. From October to December 2006 I completed an ESRC-funded Overseas Institutional Visit at the Habana-based anthropological Fundación Fernando Ortiz. I would like to thank all of the members of the Fundacion for their assistance and support during my stay. 10. One member of the Polisario Front’s National Secretariat suggests that around 2000 Sahrawis who graduated from Cuban higher institutions now occupy important political, social, administrative and professional roles in the refugee camps (Sayed, quoted in ACN 2006). 11. According to Mohgny Said, whilst existing as a concept well before then (1972, p. 24), the term ‘Arab socialism’ was first used after the establishment of the Arab League (1945) to distinguish a ‘political philosophy as distinct from marxism [sic.] as it was from other forms of socialism’ (ibid: 21– 22). 12. Whilst still present in Iraq, the reader will be aware that the Iraqi Ba’ath party has been displaced from the national political scene by recent international events. 13. It is possible that students completing courses in subjects related to the humanities or politics may have had greater exposure to Cuba’s socialist perspectives. However, it is worth reiterating that around 50% of all foreign students in Cuba in 2001/2002 were studying health related degrees (Ministerio de Salud Pública 2002). 14. Indeed, UNHCR reports on the protection situation of Sahrawi refugee adolescents studying in Cuba indicate that, in relation to Cuban students, Sahrawis ‘enjoy equal educational opportunities as well as slightly more advantageous treatment in terms of material and health support provided in Cuban schools’ (UNHCR 2005). 15. My visits to a selection of student hostels around Cuba indicate that conditions vary depending on the location, with residences being ‘better’ outside of Habana than in the city itself. 16. These are limited in Habana due to the US embargo, whilst the camps receive materials through humanitarian projects. 17. There is a small ‘tourist mosque’ (which is in reality not a mosque but a prayer room) in the Casa de los Arabes (the House of the Arabs), a small museum based in the old part of Habana. This location is primarily frequented by Muslim ambassadors and visitors to the island, rather than by either Muslim students or Cuban converts to Islam. 154 E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 18. There is a distinct absence of literature on this topic, with scant reference to Muslims throughout existing reports on Arab immigration to Cuba (i.e. Charón 1992; Departamento de Estudios Socioreligiosos 1998; Fundación Fernando Oritz y la Unión Arabe de Cuba 2001; Menéndez Paredes 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001; Perdomo Lorenzo 1992). 19. While Spanish is the second language taught in schools based in the refugee camps, and is the second official language in political terms, the majority of the Sahrawi students interviewed had left the camps at a relatively young age and had therefore not yet received in-depth Spanish language classes before arriving in Cuba. This explains their need for a year’s Spanish language training before starting their formal studies. 20. Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, personal communication, 2006. Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 13:17 28 June 2010 References Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN), 2006. Sahara: 30 años de exilio y lucha. 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