‘Doing’ Transnationalism: The Integrative Impact of Salvadoran Cross-Border Activism

Abstract

This paper enters the discussion on immigrant transnationalism by exploring the integrative effects of ‘doing’ public and political transnational activity. Early on, immigrant transnationalism was posed as an alternative or opposed force to more traditionally conceptualised processes like assimilation and integration. Later renderings of the phenomenon conceded that, indeed, processes of transnationalism and assimilation might even be interdependent, with integration as the facilitator of action that can occur either beyond or between nation-states. Here, I draw on life-history interviews and multiple years of ethnographic observation with US-based Salvadoran activists to reveal the opposite side of the transnationalism–integration coin. With the intent and in the process of trying to carry out transnational activity, Salvadoran activists become embedded into the host-state civic and political landscape.

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