Currently we cannot use persistence extension in a Cucumber test.

Cukespace extension added events that other extensions can observe in order to e.g.: do something before a step.

see this issue for more details: https://github.com/cukespace/cukespace/issues/37

Also there this blog post which details the limitations of using both extensions: http://rpestano.wordpress.com/2014/11/08/arquillian-cucumber-dbunit/