Law and migration: The argentine experience

SUSANA NOVICK

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 2º Foro ISA de Sociología - Justicia Social y Democratización; 2012

International Sociological Association

La ponencia presentada tiene 37 páginas, pero solo fue publicado un resumen.Analyzing migratory policies in Argentina involves exploring one of the most crucial and hotly debated issues in its history as a nation. Migration is a phenomenon that has left a profound mark on Argentinean society. Virtually from the outset, the state began to concern itself with population issues, prioritizing migrations within its strategy. It needed to populate the country quickly, modernize it and import labor, which was crucial to implementing the dominant project: transforming its extensive territory into farmland to produce the food Europe needed.The purpose of this paper is to analyze the recent transformations in Argentinean migratory policy since the 2001 crisis, based on the state?s passage of laws. Since a long-term perspective was used for this research, the article begins with a brief overview: from the First National Population Census in 1869 to the coup d?état in 1976 and from the coup to the crisis. And it was from that date onwards, when a point of inflection occurred, that different political experiences emerged and a new migratory law was sanctioned, constituting a record degree of progress in the issue. The first two periods are dealt with as a framework and context in which the current processes, their continuities and discontinuities are interpreted. The theme of this study is based on the ideas put forward by Sassen (2001). We are therefore interested in exploring the tensions, ambiguities and contradictions emerging between the control the state has exerted over those entering its territory and the constraints on their practices. Regarding the state s autonomy and sovereignty, we ask: a) Over the course of time, how are processes of "denationalization" on the part of Argentinean policy and "renationalization" on the part of migratory policy in particular developed and linked?; b) who are the social actors who participate in the formulation of migratory policy; c) what characteristics has the process of deterritorialization had in granting rights to migrants? We are therefore concerned with finding out the extent to which the transformation of Argentinean migratory policy has been influenced by the international sphere. In order to answer these questions, it is useful to observe the evolution of Argentinean demography, which has shown historic trends: low total growth, early fertility reduction, early population ageing, a stagnated decrease in mortality, high urban concentration and a decrease in the influx of migrants (Mazzeo, 1993). At the same time, since the 1990s, there has been an increase in the emigration of the youth population. Although this overview contains sharp differences by region and social class, it gives us an idea of the importance migrations have had and continue to have in Argentine. According to census data, the foreign population has continuously decreased in every census since 1914, until it reached 4.2 percent in the last census in 2001. This is a result of the interruption of the European flow-despite the slight upturn observed in the post-war period, its ageing and death. The contribution of foreigners from border countries: Paraguayans, Bolivians, Chileans and Uruguayans has been stable as regards its percentage of the total population, yet failed to offset the loss of the European influx. Thus, in 2001, it accounted for 60 percent of the total foreign population. As regards Argentinean emigration, although in the early 1960s, the flow appeared to be related to the country s political ups and downs successive corps and could be regarded as a merely conjunctural phenomenon, nowadays, Argentineans movements aboard appear to have acquired a structural nature.