Nations of Emigrants: Shifting Boundaries of Citizenship in El Salvador and the United States

The violence and economic devastation of the 1980-1992 civil war in El Salvador drove as many as one million Salvadorans to enter the United States, frequently without authorization. In Nations of Emigrants, the legal anthropologist Susan Bibler Coutin analyzes the case of emigration from El Salvado...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Coutin, Susan Bibler (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Ithaca, NY Cornell University Press [2011]
Subjects:
Online Access:DE-859
DE-860
DE-739
DE-473
DE-1046
DE-1043
DE-858
Volltext
Summary:The violence and economic devastation of the 1980-1992 civil war in El Salvador drove as many as one million Salvadorans to enter the United States, frequently without authorization. In Nations of Emigrants, the legal anthropologist Susan Bibler Coutin analyzes the case of emigration from El Salvador to the United States to consider how current forms of migration challenge conventional understandings of borders, citizenship, and migration itself. Interviews with policymakers and activists in El Salvador and the United States are juxtaposed with Salvadoran emigrants' accounts of their journeys to the United States, their lives in this country, and, in some cases, their removal to El Salvador. These interviews and accounts illustrate the dilemmas that migration creates for nation-states as well as the difficulties for individuals who must live simultaneously within and outside the legal systems of two countries.During the 1980s, U.S. officials generally regarded these migrants as economic immigrants who deserved to be deported, rather than as political refugees who merited asylum. By the 1990s, these Salvadorans were made eligible for legal permanent residency, at least in part due to the lives that they had created in the United States. Remarkably, this redefinition occurred during a period when more restrictive immigration policies were being adopted by the U.S. government. At the same time, Salvadorans in the United States, who send relatives more than
Item Description:Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jan 2019)
Physical Description:1 online resource 1 table, 1 map, 6 halftones
ISBN:9780801463518

There is no print copy available.

Interlibrary loan Place Request Caution: Not in THWS collection! Get full text