Paper short abstract:

What is valuable work? This question has come up for debate in Cuba as the government has opened up for a new private sector, transforming the way citizens can legally make a living. The paper explores how this transformation shifts how citizens naturally experience and consider the value of labor.

Paper long abstract:

What is valuable work? In recent years, this question has come up for debate in new ways in Cuba as the government has warily opened the way for a legal private sector, transforming the way citizens can legally make a living. The unprecedented *quantitative expansion* of private business in socialist Cuba is accompanied by a *qualitative shift* in how Cubans can value labor. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic research among Cuba's new entrepreneurs, the so-called *cuentapropistas*, this paper proposes the concept of "the labor of labor" as a tool to understand these processes, and particularly how the emerging group of licensed entrepreneurs value work. The present material demonstrates how the symbolic meaning of labor in Cuba is in state of flux, corresponding both to past socio-economic transformations, and the current changing nature of the Cuba's economic model. Cuentapropistas are engaged in a battle for the meaning of work in relation to unlicensed informal workers and the state apparatus. While private sector workers have recently experienced policy setbacks, the paper argues that within the possibility of a legal and legitimate entrepreneur in Cuba lies also the prospect of a more assertive and collectively demanding citizen.