The Interrupted Circle: Truncated Transnationalism and the Salvadoran Experience

Abstract

This paper examines the transnational experience of the Salvadoran community in New Jersey and El Salvador. We argue that this experience is "truncated", stunted as much by the tenuous residency status of many Salvadorans as by distance or poverty. We use unstructured and survey-based interviews to illustrate how the Salvadoran transmigrants have responded to separation from their families in El Salvador by struggling to maintain place ties by substituting vicarious return for actual return. We propose that migrant circulation can occur vicariously through gifts, remittances, and telecommunications when a migrant's legal status, in this case Temporary Protected Status, constrains corporeal circulation. We also explore the downsides to this vicarious return, with our particular interest in the children left behind and the longer term viability of remittance-based economies.