David Pedersen, UC San Diego
This paper examines the phenomenon of migrant remittances, focusing on the transfer of money to El Salvador by Salvadorans living and working for extended periods of time in several major US cities. Over the past three decades, El Salvador has shifted dramatically from a country organized around agro-exports (coffee, cotton) to one now hugely reliant on remittances sent by a quarter of its population in the USA. As part of this transformation, remittance transfer from the USA to El Salvador has become more formalized and regimented, with major banks, government agencies and commercial transfer services in both countries gradually increasing their direct role in the process. In particular, a variety of electronic accounting and transfer methods have replaced the technique of physically carrying the money across borders and holding it for recipients. This paper examines the relationship between these new technologies and modalities of remittance transfer and the way that remittance transfer has shifted from being understood popularly as a regressive crisis-driven informal activity of poorer rural migrants to become widely recognized as the central pillar of a financially sophisticated and "globalized" Salvadoran modernity.
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