Migration, cultural heritage and resignification of the local territory: the French community of Pigüé (Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina)

ALBALADEJO, CHRISTOPHE; BUSTOS CARA, ROBERTO; SASSONE, SUSANA

Buenos Aires

Conferencia; International Conference "Heritages of Migration: Moving Stories, Objects and Home" (Conferencia Internacional "Herencias de la Migración: Huellas materiales y simbólicas del Flujo Transatlántico"), Buenos Aires, 6 -10 Abril 2017; 2017

University of Birmingham

How can the revaluation of a past of migrants be a resource for the construction of individual and collective identities and for local development? In this paper we analyze the role of the recent revaluation of a marginal immigration (the French one) in a country strongly marked by massive immigration: Argentina. The objective of the article is to analyze the role of social subjects in this process and, on the other hand, the generation of development and also of resistances or tensions that entails.The case of the town of Pigüé, a French settlement of the Aveyron of the beginning of the 20th century in the southeast of the province of Buenos Aires, is analyzed. This is a small town of 15,000 inhabitants, linked to agricultural activity, where it is recognized the strength of the reconstruction of its identity as a "French collectivity": the heritage of the main actors, language, written production, gastronomy and local festivities are used as vectors of identity by the descendants, and also to give singularity to the locality and territory in its entirety. These processes lead to a redefinition of the representations of self as well as of the rural locality and of its place in the national society. Is this resignification a resource for local development?