“Les Mando Saludos”

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores cross-border video greetings, asking why they are only sent to migrants and not vice versa. Why are children in El Salvador—but not their counterparts in the United States—socialized to send such greetings? Transnational families understand greetings as care through which nonmigrants reciprocate the economic care migrants provide. Greetings sustain existing care circuits, enacting an imaginary in which asymmetrical reciprocity is the foundation for social life. Through uneven socialization, transnational families envision cross-border life as enduring across generations through the continual migration of individuals raised in El Salvador and socialized as children to transnational family life. Thus, greetings bring political economic inequities between Global North and South into family care even as they resist capitalist normativity by envisioning family relations as the foundation of social life and economic exchange.