Ethnic proletarianization processes among Paraguayan workers at the argentinean construction industry

DEL ÁGUILA, ÁLVARO

Lisboa

Workshop; Workshop Migration and Urban Space in Emerging Countries; 2013

Instituto de Geografia e Ordenamento Territorial (IGOT-Universidad de Lisboa)

This project sets out to explore a phenomenon that has acquired an important social visibility in the last years: the presence of Paraguayan male workers at the construction sites in the main cities of Argentina. According to estimates, the presence of male Paraguayan workers at the Argentinean construction industry is not only related to merely short term factors but, instead expresses a crecently stability as a ?labour niche? for this migrants. An incipient approach to the phenomenon reveals that the Paraguayan workforce insertion at the industry starts at 1970. Since then, the industry has become a privilegiated scope of work for them, up to the point that, nowadays, it is estimated that four out of ten male Paraguayan migrants in Buenos Aires works at that industry (Bruno, 2008). Despite of this, the situation contrast with the little attention that has been paid to this migratory group. Except for a few exceptions (Gavazzo, 2008; Bruno, 2008, Halpern, 2009) almost every research involving Paraguayan people has included them into the more wide category of ?neighbouring migrants?. At the same time, those researchers who disagregated the category, have been more interested in studying Bolivian people migratory process than the one from Paraguay. This is striking, given the fact that Paraguayan people are the first migratory group in Argentina, with more tan 550.000 people according to the last Argentinean National Census of 2010. In addition, during fieldwork, we had the chance to notice a preponderant rural origin among those men. This situation allow us to start thinking about the existance of a migratory field that strongly relates rural communities of Paraguay to the Argentinean construction industry.