Nations of Emigrants: Shifting Boundaries of Citizenship in El Salvador and the United States

Nations of Emigrants moves beyond studies of the experience of migration and the struggle for citizenship; instead, its aim is to rethink the nation itself. Focusing on El Salvador and the United States, Susan Coutin calls attention to the complex and shifting ways that nations are constituted through the movement of subjects and objects that cannot be fully contained within their borders.... Migrants appear not as immigrants who seek to settle and assimilate into a 'different' culture, but rather as emigrants defined by multidirectional movement and residence in multiple spaces simultaneously. This innovative analytical point of departure, buttressed by Coutin's rigorous methodology and original ethnographic approach, provide an important contribution to current studies of nationhood and migration.

Susan Bibler Coutin has done an excellent job of capturing what it means to be Salvadoran, both in El Salvador and in the United States as well as transnationally. Having grown up Salvadoran in the United States, this book resonated with my personal life experiences; chronicling many of the challenges that my community, friends, family, and I personally have had to face and continue to confront. Throughout the book, the author weaves together different strands of Salvadoran reality in a way that covers vast dimensions of Salvadorans' lived experiences. While she does this through the lens of emigrants' lives and struggles, she does so in a way that connects the Salvadoran experience to issues of relevance to scholars of U.S. foreign policy, comparative politics (revolution and civil war), Latino politics (political incorporation and political engagement), and contentious politics (solidarity and sanctuary movements).... Coutin has written a brilliant ethnographic study rich with Salvadorans' personal accounts of their political reality and in their own voices. But the book is also valuable for the insights it offers for the study of other emigrant communities with significant undocumented populations.

A comprehensive review of the multiple and often contradictory effects of migration between El Salvador and the US.... Its greatest strength is in synthesizing empirical data, legal histories, and ethnographic portraits.

I enjoyed Nations of Emigrants very much-I like the nonlinear approach Susan Bibler Coutin takes to examine citizenship, immigration, and nation. She weaves flawlessly theory and sharp ethnographic observations while at the same time putting a human face to the conundrums of immigration law. The result is theoretically innovative, methodologically sophisticated, and a truly engaging account. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in contemporary immigration debates and Central American immigration in particular.

Nations of Emigrants is the product of Susan Bibler Coutin's longstanding engagement with Salvadoran migrants to the United States-their situation of multiple partial belonging, their vulnerability to political crosswinds in both countries, and their creativity in building communities in the intricate spaces left open by law. Everyone interested in migration will find rich resources here. And anyone interested in how ethnography rises to the challenges of contemporary sociolegal complexity will find a vivid demonstration of the genre at its best. Coutin's work is compelling, provocative, timely, rigorous, innovative, and deeply felt.

Powerful and poignant, this important study in legal anthropology traces the twists and turns of Salvadoran migrants' relationship to the United States over the last twenty years as they change from asylum seekers to remittance providers to criminal deportees. As she follows the striking shifts in Salvadoran migrants' legal status, Susan Bibler Coutin brilliantly shows how legality and illegality are not distinct categories. Instead, each contains elements of the other in its logics and practices.