UC Irvine

This dissertation fills a gap in migration literature by analyzing the question of coerced return. It uncovers the conditions under which individuals deported from the U.S. feel like they have been warmly accepted "home" or have been marginalized and made to feel like strangers in their native country. It draws upon an ethnographic case study of El Salvador. Findings are informed by an inductive analysis of 100 life-history interviews with Salvadoran deportees, as well as observations in nonprofit organizations in Los Angeles and El Salvador and 20 unstructured interviews with experts on Salvadoran migration and deportation. It brings together literature on the meanings of `home,' as well as immigrant incorporation and return migrant reintegration. It seeks to understand not only how contemporary deportation law impacts lives but how deportees make sense of their realities and adjust their behaviors to establish a sense of belonging upon return.

The dissertation shows that post-deportation trajectories--the degree and ways of being embedded in El Salvador after return--are varied, non-linear, and sometimes paradoxical. They are determined by an interaction of deportees' personal characteristics and the trans/national and local levels contexts to which they return. In El Salvador, the context of return is experienced differently depending upon deportees' degree of acculturation in the U.S. versus El Salvador. Individuals with high levels of identification and affiliation with El Salvador--Salvadoran nationals--were more likely to experience a return `homecomings,' but they maintained low levels of economic embeddedness. Conversely, U.S. nationals who grew up or spent significant time in the U.S. experienced removal as banishment from the `homes' they built in the U.S. They were constructed as foreigners and as threats to national security in El Salvador and were thus regulated to socially and economically marginal positions. Persons with gang histories or who were presumed to have them were highly stigmatized and criminalized. They were also targets of state surveillance, police abuse, and violence from gangs. Though all deportees employed coping and homemaking strategies, those who were more socially accepted were more likely to claim El Salvador as their `home.'