Valerio Simoni

Scopus Publications

To make a difference: responding to migration's demands in returns to Cuba
Valerio Simoni
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2025
The article focuses on the predicaments faced by return migrants to Cuba and how they respond to societal pressures to make a valuable difference ‘back home’, opening analytical avenues at the juncture of the anthropology of ethics and morality and migration. It does so by uncovering five distinct but complementary ways in which returnees respond to migration‐related demands. Conceptualized as efforts to ‘make a difference’, it first considers the importance for returnees to exemplify and share the economic gains that are widely expected from a successful migration, before addressing alternative attempts to carve out other sources of prized difference from experiences abroad. To deflect the pressure that weighs on them as (ex)migrants and generates feelings of exhaustion and estrangement, returnees also endeavour to ‘unmake’ migration‐related differences. They do so by deconstructing migration promises, reframing notions and forms of belonging, and downplaying the possibilities afforded by life in Cuba. While the combination of different anthropological approaches to ethics and morality befits the analysis, the returnees’ resistance to scrutiny of their moral lives questions the limitless reach and suitability of such interpretative lenses. Ultimately, this helps assess their relevance and pitfalls in research on migration and beyond.
Anthropology
Naomi Leite, Valerio Simoni, Margaret Byrne Swain
Encyclopedia of Tourism, 2025
Comparative moves: the pursuit of value and belonging in transnational migration toward a “better life”
Valerio Simoni, Jérémie Voirol, Elise Hjalmarson
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2025
Moving beyond comparison as a method that juxtaposes community-based case studies, this article explores how migrants with different backgrounds and trajectories themselves deploy comparison in their everyday lives and decision-making. To do so, it examines Cuban and Ecuadorian migrants’ comparative appraisal of different places, values, and visions of a “better life”, shedding new light on the motives, stakes, and effects of their endeavors. The proposed approach advances understandings of how migrants cope with the dominant comparative scripts and hierarchies that migration activates, notably by either conforming to, subverting, or unraveling them. Also highlighted are comparison’s entanglements with questions of choice, belonging, and its experiential and emotional effects, including the suffering it elicits. A multi-dimensional exploration of how comparison plays out among migrants opens research avenues related to transnational living and people’s pursuits of a “better life”, while also raising ethical and epistemological questions for comparative research on migration and beyond.
Migrant, tourist, cuban: Identification and belonging in return visits to Cuba
Valerio Simoni
Intersections of Tourism Migration and Exile, 2022
In the course of field research among Cuban migrants in Barcelona, I encountered various personal stories and anecdotes about return visits to Cuba. 2 A striking feature in many of these narratives was the value placed on being and behaving like an "ordinary" Cuban when visiting the island. Exemplifying their attunement to the "Cuban lifestyle," Cuban migrants I talked with -who had all left the country in the last thirty years and mostly in the last decade -highlighted their return to simpler routines and behavioral and consumption patterns, in terms of accommodation, food, transportation, dress code, and the rhythm and pace of life more generally. Forget one's mobile phone, forget about checking emails and Facebook daily -via these conversational observations, they presented selves that knew and appreciated what it was to live in Cuba as Cubans. Regularly, such portrayals were contrasted with the attitudes of "other" returning Cuban visitors said to be less sensitive to the Cuban reality and to flaunt their newly acquired foreign tastes and superior socio-economic statuses, a recurrent target being "ostentatious" Cuban Americans coming from the United States. In tension with these narratives, however, were anecdotes by the very same research participants on the differential treatment they regularly received back in Cuba, as "Cubans living abroad" (los cubanos que viven en el extranjero). These could be stories of "interested" (interesados) kin, friends, and acquaintances that only sought to draw money from the "rich Cuban from abroad," scheming, deceiving, and treating them as they would any other foreign tourist. Such narratives of concrete interactions and events during the migrants' visits spoke of challenges of recognition and belonging.
Remittances and morality: family obligations, development, and the ethical demands of migration
Valerio Simoni, Jérémie Voirol
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2021
Remittances have moral dimensions that, albeit implicitly addressed in migration literature, have not yet been the focus of explicit attention and analysis by social scientists. Building on recent developments in the anthropology of ethics and morality, this article proposes theoretical and analytical pathways to address this important but often neglected aspect of remittances. It does so mainly via a critical analysis of existing scholarship on remittances, and ethnographic data drawn from research among Cuban migrants in Cuba and Spain. The reflexive scrutiny of scholars’ moral assumptions about remittances opens the way for the study of the moral dilemmas and ethical demands articulated by remittance senders and recipients. Family roles and obligations, and the uses of the money sent by migrants, are identified as key areas of moral difficulty. Their analysis shows how remittances inform moral reassessments of family relations, individual responsibility, economic practice, and development. The notion of ‘moral remittances’ is proposed as a heuristic comparative tool that serves to illuminate the moral aspects of remittances. This notion is put into perspective to complement and reconsider more metaphorical takes on remittances, notably the concept of ‘social remittances’, of which it helps reveal some epistemological limitations while opening future research avenues.
Tourism, Migration, and Back in Cuba
Valerio Simoni
American Anthropologist, 2019
CONTRADICTORY OPENINGS Working in Cuba and on Cuban migrants to Spain for a number of years, I realize that thought of Cuba tends to be overdetermined by the location from which one sees the island. Polarizing views often prevail, notably due to the political profiling of the country by mainstream media and governments. For example, seen from the leftist circles I frequented in the Swiss Italian canton where I grew up, Cuba gripped the imagination because of its peculiar socioeconomic and political system, and its associated narratives of resistance to imperialist and capitalist forces. So before going there for the first time in February 2005, I spoke to one of the leaders of a local Cuba solidarity association, seeking advice and potential contacts on the island. He discouraged me from researching the world of jineterismo (a neologism from the Spanish for “riding”), a milieu commonly associated with the “riding of tourists” for instrumental purposes, evoking hustling, prostitution, commercialized forms of relationality, and exploitation. I remember him saying, “This is not the real Cuba; these people [i.e., jineteros and jineteras] are not the Cubans you should meet!” Jineterismo was a rather embarrassing and marginal phenomenon that would tarnish the positive image of revolutionary Cuba he promoted, countering what he saw as misinformation orchestrated by mainstream media, particularly from the United States. So location mattered. In my subsequent stays on the island, I was repeatedly confronted with the typical tourism trope of seeking and accessing a “real” Cuba but realized that authenticity could be associated with very different, competing, and often opposing realities of social life in the country. People gave me advice—everything from avoiding official tourist circuits to keeping at bay ubiquitous hustlers, recognizing signs of revolutionary achievements, and even reaching beyond governmental propaganda. My own goals were to understand and uncover the moral and epistemological underpinnings and consequences of such narratives, which flourished in the tourism realms I frequented (Simoni 2018a). Later, and in my repeated stays on the island (eighteen months up to February 2019), I became acquainted with a heterogeneous mix of foreign tourists and Cuban men and women actively trying to engage visitors, giving life to what I termed “informal touristic encounters” (Simoni 2016a). Among the promises of this informal realm of interactions was for tourists to get “off the beaten track,” to enter tourism’s “backstage,” as MacCannell (1976) would put it, and to discover the “real” Cuba of “ordinary” Cubans, often said to be cheaper and more authentic than official tourism paths could provide.
{The Borderzone} Living in and Reaching beyond the Touristic Borderzone: A View from Cuba
Valerio Simoni
Ethnography of Tourism Edward Bruner and Beyond, 2019
Approaching difference, inequality, and intimacy in tourism a view from Cuba
Valerio Simoni
Journal of Anthropological Research, 2018
Based on ethnography of touristic encounters in Cuba, the article reflects on competing approaches to difference, inequality, and intimacy in tourism and in anthropology. Comparing the understandings of tourists and Cubans involved in these informal engagements, of the Cuban authorities, and of scholars and commentators, three idealized scenarios and modes of interpretation are teased out. Rather than assessing their degree of accuracy or suggesting the primacy of one over the other, the article reflects on their co-presence and competing rationales, focusing on the conditions of their emergence and assessing their epistemological, moral, and political implications. In so doing, it foregrounds how the expectations, desires, and moral underpinnings that inform our findings and interpretative horizons resonate with those of the people we study, opening up different possibilities for estrangement and familiarization, and highlighting what is at stake in these processes both for anthropology and for those with whom we work.
True love and cunning love: Negotiating intimacy, deception and belonging in Touristic Cuba
Intimate Mobilities Sexual Economies Marriage and Migration in A Disparate World, 2018
Business, Hospitality, and Change in Cuba’s Private Tourism Sector: A View from Casas Particulares in Viñales
Valerio Simoni
Tourism Planning and Development, 2018
Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the town of Viñales, this article addresses some key features, stakes and debates that characterize privately run tourist accommodations known as casas particulares, including important (dis)continuities in their evolution in the last decade. Praised by tourists as a way to experience the “real” Cuba and establish closer contact with Cubans, casas particulares exemplify the burgeoning private tourism sector on the island. In Viñales, their number has increased dramatically in recent years, engendering changes that have become a heated issue of debate among the town’s inhabitants. Examining the economic and social dimensions that characterize this form of tourist accommodation, its current developments, and their perceived impact on everyday life in Viñales, the article considers the tensions between ideals of hospitality and more business-oriented endeavours, uncovering the emerging controversies and moral economic critiques articulated by proprietors, tourists, and other inhabitants of this tourist town.
Informal guiding enacting immediacy, informality and authenticity in Cuba
Valerio Simoni
Ethnologia Europaea, 2018
Economization, moralization, and the changing moral economies of 'capitalism' and 'communism' among Cuban migrants in Spain
Valerio Simoni
Anthropological Theory, 2016
Rethinking Euro-anthropology: part three. Early career scholars forum
Francisco Martínez, Mariya Ivancheva, Valerio Simoni, Martin Demant Frederiksen, Livia Jiménez, Laura Hirvi, Kacper Pobłocki, Lili Di Puppo, Damián-Omar Martínez, Perry Sherouse, Alessandro Testa, Ana Gutiérrez, Maria Theresia Starzmann, Hannah Wadle, Vita Peacock
Social Anthropology, 2016
Shaping money and relationships in touristic Cuba
C. Ren, R. Duim, G. T. Jóhannesson
Tourism Encounters and Controversies Ontological Politics of Tourism Development, 2016
Tourism and informal encounters in Cuba
Tourism and Informal Encounters in Cuba, 2015
Breadwinners, sex machines and romantic lovers: Entangling masculinities, moralities, and pragmatic concerns in touristic Cuba
Valerio Simoni
Etnografica, 2015
Masculinities in times of uncertainty and change: Introduction
Adriana Piscitelli, Valerio Simoni
Etnografica, 2015
From tourist to person: The value of intimacy in touristic Cuba
Valerio Simoni
Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 2014
Coping with ambiguous relationships: Sex, tourism, and transformation in Cuba
Valerio Simoni
Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 2014
The morality of friendship in touristic Cuba
Valerio Simoni
Suomen Antropologi, 2014
Friendship, morality, and experience
Suomen Antropologi, 2014
Tourism and transformation: Negotiating metaphors, experiencing change
Sofia Sampaio, Valerio Simoni, Cyril Isnart
Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 2014
Dancing tourists: Tourism, party and seduction in Cuba
Emotion in Motion Tourism Affect and Transformation, 2012
Tourism materialities: Enacting cigars in touristic Cuba
Actor Network Theory and Tourism Ordering Materiality and Multiplicity, 2012
Scaling cigars in the Cuban tourism economy
Valerio Simoni
Etnografica, 2009
'Riding' diversity: Cubans'/jineteros' uses of 'nationality-talks' in the realm of their informal encounters with tourists
Tourism Development Growth Myths and Inequalities, 2008

MOST CITED SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS

Tourism and informal encounters in Cuba
V Simoni
Berghahn Books , 2016
2016
Citations: 107
Remittances and morality: family obligations, development, and the ethical demands of migration
V Simoni, J Voirol
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47 (11), 2516-2536 , 2021
2021
Citations: 83
Tourism and transformation: Negotiating metaphors, experiencing change
S Sampaio, V Simoni, C Isnart
Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 12 (2), 93-101 , 2014
2014
Citations: 51
From ethnographers to tourists and back again. On positioning issues in the anthropology of tourism
V Simoni, S McCabe
Civilisations. Revue internationale d'anthropologie et de sciences humaines … , 2008
2008
Citations: 43
From ethnographers to tourists and back again. On positioning issues in the anthropology of tourism
V Simoni, S McCabe
Civilisations. Revue internationale d'anthropologie et de sciences humaines … , 2008
2008
Citations: 43
Economization, moralization, and the changing moral economies of ‘capitalism’and ‘communism’among Cuban migrants in Spain
V Simoni
Anthropological Theory 16 (4), 454-475 , 2016
2016
Citations: 38
From tourist to person: The value of intimacy in touristic Cuba
V Simoni
Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 12 (3), 280-292 , 2014
2014
Citations: 38
Shifting power: The (de) stabilization of asymmetries in the realm of tourism in Cuba
V Simoni
Tsantsa, 89-97 , 2008
2008
Citations: 37
Intimate stereotypes. The Vicissitudes of Being Caliente in Touristic Cuba
V Simoni
Civilisations. Revue internationale d'anthropologie et de sciences humaines … , 2013
2013
Citations: 34
Tourism Materialities: Enacting Cigars in Touristic Cuba1
V Simoni
Actor-Network Theory and Tourism, 59-79 , 2012
2012
Citations: 34
Intimacy and belonging in Cuban tourism and migration
V Simoni
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 33 (2), 26-41 , 2015
2015
Citations: 33
Coping with ambiguous relationships: sex, tourism, and transformation in Cuba
V Simoni
Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 12 (2), 166-183 , 2014
2014
Citations: 33
Breadwinners, sex machines and romantic lovers: entangling masculinities, moralities, and pragmatic concerns in touristic Cuba
V Simoni
Etnográfica. Revista do Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia 19 (2 … , 2015
2015
Citations: 32
The Ethnography of Tourism: Edward Bruner and Beyond
KM Adams, EM Bruner, MB Swain, QE Castañeda, MA Di Giovine, ...
Bloomsbury Publishing USA , 2019
2019
Citations: 30
Business, Hospitality, and Change in Cuba’s Private Tourism Sector: A View from Casas Particulares in Viñales
V Simoni
Tourism Planning & Development 15 (3), 293-312 , 2018
2018
Citations: 29
Revisiting hosts and guests: Ethnographic insights on touristic encounters from Cuba
V Simoni
Journal of Tourism Challenges and Trends 6 (2), 39-61 , 2013
2013
Citations: 28
Riding’diversity. Cubans’/Jineteros’ Uses of ‘Nationality-Talks’ in the Realm of their Informal Encounters with Tourists
V Simoni
Tourism development: Growth, myths and inequalities, 68-84 , 2008
2008
Citations: 28
Scaling cigars in the Cuban tourism economy
V Simoni
Etnográfica. Revista do Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia 13 (2 … , 2009
2009
Citations: 22
Dancing tourists: tourism, party and seduction in Cuba
V Simoni
Emotion in motion: Tourism, affect and transformation, 267-282 , 2012
2012
Citations: 21
Anthropology of tourism
N Leite, MB Swain
Encyclopedia of Tourism, 2nd edn. London: Springer. Available at: https … , 2015
2015
Citations: 20

Valerio Simoni

RESEARCH, TEACHING, or OTHER INTERESTS

Scopus Publications

RECENT SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS

MOST CITED SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS