Beyond Remittances: Contesting El Salvador's Developmentalist Migration Politics

At a conjuncture of changing migration conditions and shifting political formations, El Salvador's remittance-motivated political strategy on migration has been challenged in new ways. Since the ending of the civil war, the neoliberal statehas encouraged migration and remittances in favor of a particular developmentalist imaginary of "progress" and well-being for a "transnational" El Salvador. In recent years, however, Salvadorans have faced new hardships as the conditions of international migration have shifted and as El Salvador has grown more deeply dependent on migration and remittances. By focusing on demandsmade by transnational migrant community activists at a series of events as El Salvador's government took a leftward turn, this article examines the way developmentalist-centered politics, discourses, and logics on transnational migration are contested and reimagined. The collective articulation of activists' demands makes way for new political imaginaries of transnational state formations, migration, and development.