Identidades in English No 2, May 2014 | Page 23

and participation in unauthorized socioeconomic activities are the response to exclusionary, dominating and oppressive structures that prevent young people from demonstrating their skill and potential within what could be a freer space that acknowledged their rights. The ever increasing and general tendency of Cuban youth to migrate also deserves attention. They leave to seek in other latitudes the spaces and perspectives that are denied them in their own. This desperate or impulsive search, or the passive and apathetic wait to embark on one—by leaving the island—represent the only strategy for success or development, which has a sort of invalidating effect on these young people and how they view and act in response to their society’s problems and needs. Thousands of young Cubans are wandering the planet’s many corners, often caught up somewhere between having a legitimate desire to personally develop themselves and feeling an insurmountable nostalgia for a country that never produced many emigrants. Youth is an important time of professional alternatives and professional, social and personal definitions, for which reason F