Truncated Transnationalism, the Tenuousness of Temporary Protected Status, and Trump

For this JLAG retrospective on our article “Truncated Transnationalism” (Miyares, Wright, Mountz, Bailey, & Jonak, 2003), we focus on the current U.S. administration’s posture toward immigrants, especially Salvadorans, and immigration, especially the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. Our original JLAG article described the transnational spaces that conjoined places and communities in Northern New Jersey and El Salvador. We linked the experiences of daily living in this social field to the TPS legal status that many Salvadorans held. Through our collaborative research, an understanding emerged of Salvadorans’ social field as “truncated”: that is, a “transnational social field largely void of circulating transmigrants… an imagined community” (Miyares et al., 2003, p. 75). As we write in late 2018, this transnational social field has become more tenuous, mirroring the direction the program itself has taken under the Trump administration. We begin our short retrospective by summarizing our earlier reading of how TPS truncated Salvadoran transnationalism and then think through what has changed and what has not, foregrounding the actions and rhetoric of the Trump administration.