In this dissertation, I explore deported Salvadorans' experiences of detention, deportation, reception, and reintegration, with an emphasis on the structural barriers that they face and their strategies for surviving these barriers. I also examine returned Salvadorans' sense of belonging, perceptions of citizenship, and civic engagement practices in the United States and El Salvador in order to understand when and how deportees are able to express and enact agency. I argue that deportees' extreme precarity and exclusion makes them "outsiders within" their sending and receiving states, which gives them valuable perspectives on citizenship and national belonging. Using in-depth, semi-structured interviews and observations with deported Salvadorans, I find that the Salvadoran deported population is segmented by migration history, gender, and age, producing distinct deported masculinities that foster-and more often constrain-deported Salvadoran men's ability to act as change agents. My fieldwork further reveals that Salvadoran men and women develop diverse, innovative strategies for coping with deportation-related challenges such as violence, un- and underemployment, and social exclusion. These strategies include both individual and collective actions, in addition to claims of belonging and deservingness in El Salvador and the U.S. Together, these findings exemplify the central role that neoliberal globalization plays in creating productive citizens and a disposable global workforce, as well as ways in which deportees use neoliberal ideologies to advance rights claims. This project thus extends theorizing around immigrant re/incorporation, citizenship, masculinities, and agency, in addition to highlighting important implications for migration scholars and practitioners in deportee-sending and receiving states.
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