Migration: the experience of Argentina"

ALEJANDRO GRIMSON

Conflicts and Tensions

Sage

Lugar: Los Angeles; Año: 2007; p. 264 - 271

During the 1990s the Argentine government and mass media regularly announced the entry of a new wave of immigrants, comparable to the transatlantic migration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This time around, however, the immigrants were from the border countries of Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru. The Argentine government took this to mean that Argentine had entered the First World: Germany had Turkish immigrants; the United States had Mexicans, and Argentina, Bolivians, Peruvians, and Paraguayans. This idea of entering the First World, was the way that Argentina inserted itself into the increasingly globalized world from 1990 and was directly related to its traditional self-image as a European enclave in Latin America. People proudly affirmed, in accordance with the racist ideology of the era, that Argentina was a country with no African-born or indigenous population. Yet globalization and the changes introduced by neo-liberalism produced a new scenario in which social conflict began to be seen as cultural conflict. Ethnic identities and ethnic politics became relevant as State and subaltern politics. Bolivians and migrants from other neighbouring countries came to the centre of of new ideas and definitions of nationality, class and citizenship. But overshadowing the celebration was an official xenophobia that blamed the newcomers for the country’s growing social and economic ills. According to government and media accounts, the torrent of immigrants from bordering countries was causing an explosion in unemployment and crime. But demographic data showed that there was no jump in immigration rates. The proportion of the population made up of immigrants from neighbouring countries increased but a fraction of a percent during the 1990s. Between 1991 and 2001 their representation within the total population increased only from 2.6per cent to 2.8per cent.