Alexandrea Gayda, University of Southern California
“In Between Borders of Space and Time: Salvadoran Emigration, Transnationalism and the Social Impacts on those Left Behind”
Bio: Inside my pack were my two most prized possessions: a tape recorder and notebook. Before arriving at my last year at USC, I found myself alone, navigating a labyrinth of a public transportation system over a stretch of Salvadoran highway – mostly dirt, rock or a combination of the two. From Santa Marta's picturesque countryside to a layout of urban chaos in San Salvador, 25 cents bus fare was all that mattered in getting me to the next interview. How all of this falls into a Public Relations/Journalism major at USC, I still am not quite sure. Though quite some time ago, I had come to the wonderful realization that studying the principles of human dignity over strategic marketing plans just makes so much more sense. That said, I spent last semester studying in Nicaragua under SIT's Revolution, Transformation and Civil Society program and doing field research on Salvadoran emigration. And within that short time frame of four months, I am confident to say that I have lived the most out of life so far. Cheers to world and experiential learning -- and, most importantly, learning for the sake of learning!
Abstract: If the principal resource of a nation is its people, what happens, then, if more than one-fourth of the population has packed up and left? According to the United Nations Development Program in El Salvador in 2005 (UNDP), Salvadoran emigration continues today as an immense drain of human development – one that can be best described, rather, as a hemorrhaging of human capital. This research considers the social impacts on the family members and communities left behind as a result of emigration to the United States. The researched looked at the circumstances and motivations that drive emigration, how people make it "over there," what exists beyond a change in family structure, and the double standard of remittances. This paper attempts to provide a comprehensive background of this phenomenon that is Salvadoran emigration – one in which the causes, repercussions, contradictions, limitations and possibilities within this transnational process flow and at times collide with one another. The hope of the research is that a process as complex as emigration can be brought back down to its simplest, yet most fascinating element. People. Moving bodies, moving lives, and why humans, as humans, act in the way that we do.
