This week\u2019s reading introduced us to Salvadoran migration to the US, where the vast majority of Salvadorans outside El Salvador reside. The article places geography (social and physical) as an important lens on how to view transnational migration since it places an importance not only on El Salvador and the US, but also the urban centres where many migrants come from, which is also of importance.<\/p>\n
Although I think a geographic perspective is vital to understanding migration, I wonder if the article helped with that. I\u2019m trying to convince myself that the word or concept of the transnational<\/em>, for this article was forced in order to explain how Salvadoran migration could also be regarded within this vein or concept. And although, I don\u2019t disagree that it could be seen through a transnational lens, what the article wrote about was more a static, or traditional (for lack of a better word) form of migration. This form of migration is not difficult to understand given the precarious legal status (temporary protective status or undocumented) that many Salvadorans find themselves in. Both the above-mentioned statuses place a geographic wall in front of many since it makes it virtually impossible to travel back and forth between the US and EL Salvador through channels that will not make them break any laws (e.g. returning via the Mexico-US border), thereby making it almost impossible to gain permanent residency.<\/p>\n What I found interesting (even if the text is about 10 years old) is the important insight on technology. Yes, technology allows many of us to go beyond border, as well as flying faster and cheaper to other countries and continents. Technology, however does not reach everyone, and at the same time, it helps prevent more and more people from moving since they may not have the right tech in their passport for instance (i.e. biometric passports).<\/p>\n The example of remittances brought, in my mind at least, how the transnational in this case exists, yet does not at the same time. On one hand, the transnational aspect of remittances can be thought in how money is wired in a transnational way to families and friends in El Salvador (in this specific case). On the other hand, this same transnationalism, cannot be thought of when in comes to population movement (as it would be in the EU for example) since people (especially those considered low or no skilled labour) are actively prevented from entering a country, or if inside, the loom of constant removal is always present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week\u2019s reading introduced us to Salvadoran migration to the US, where the vast majority of Salvadorans outside El Salvador reside. The article places geography (social and physical) as an important lens on how to view transnational migration since it places an importance not only on El Salvador and the US, but also the urban […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1761,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/migrationstolatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/migrationstolatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/migrationstolatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/migrationstolatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1761"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/migrationstolatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/migrationstolatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/migrationstolatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/66"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/migrationstolatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/migrationstolatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/migrationstolatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}