Immigration and education in Argentina. An overview from school records, 1884-1938

CEVA MARIELA

Viena

Congreso; 54 International Congress of Americanists 2012; 2012

For several years the study of immigration towards Argentina has become a central issue in the national historiography. It has been approached from different perspectives and views. Together with these developments and from a historical perspective, this paper intends to reconstruct an issue that has received less attention, as it is the relationship between immigration and education. In this sense, our intention is to deepen the link between: immigrants and their integration into the Argentinean society through school. The paper analyzes the problem comparatively among diverse groups, mainly Italian, Spanish and Argentinean, in a way to study ethnicity and education under reviewing the existence or not, of unequal treatment and its relation to mechanisms of personal relationships. The analysis will also include the creation of ethnic educational social spaces to preserve and redesign its own origin ownership and its relationship with national public education. The study is based on traditional government sources still unexplored such as records from elementary schools, dockets made to educators, correspondence between neighbors and authorities as well as other sources like school photographs.