Keywords

6.1 Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the role of Latin American migrants as actors and agents of the territorial transformation of cities in the era of globalization, taking into account both theory and empiric evidence, following studies done in Argentine cities. The social framework of migrant groups reveals the mechanisms for the appropriation of space in urban areas, creating a spatial capital, that is, in turn, of high selectivity. Among contemporary international migrants arriving at large cities, looking for employments, the geographical logic of spatial concentration, defined as ethnical, cultural, religious, migration, and/or class affinity, prevails. This implies a strategic gregarious sense of those arriving and residing at cities, in dialectic social and spatial relationships, with a shelter seek sense, because immigrants feel that they are among peers.

For a long time, we have been looking for spatial models of international migrations within the Argentine territory, at a local scale, whether at large cities, in the metropolitan suburbs, rural spaces with intensive agriculture, intermediate cities, or surrounding an international border, where the different forms of appropriation of space by a foreigner, that is, international migrant, are recognized. The context of globalization at a global scale, the cyclical crises in Argentina as well as the global crisis of 2008 have offered “paradigm spaces,” going far beyond our expectations when we can relate and explain spatial behavior of migrants. We are looking for evidence when interpreting those processes from a geographical view, but in that way we open us to interdisciplinary interpretation.

When we say that migrants are agents and actors in the transformation of cities, we mean that they contribute to the formation of neighborhoods, define models in the so-called ethnic economies, and adopt cultural and identity strategies for visualization at public spaces, for example, when they celebrate festivities and religious devotions. It is necessary to consider that, when expressing mechanisms for the appropriation of space, based on their cultural identities, each migrant group does so as a community, considered in a wide sense. Therefore, as a community, the migrants grow in number; they form neighborhoods, mainly as a result of chains and networks; they form their own commercial districts or stand above the rest, due to the kind of products sold (Serra Pozo 2006; Escobar Basavilbaso 2011; Hughes and Weise Hurtado 2013). These are types of ethnic economies since they achieve to generate self-employment and establish as entrepreneurship or when they have several and active participation in the public space. Undoubtedly, although we can go deep into these three pillars, in this chapter it is analyzed the conformation and dynamics of residential areas of international migrants in the cities of Argentina.

In order to understand these geographical processes, the qualitative methodologies have been applied; in particular, the migration trajectory has been studied, caught by the biographical method and with the use of the compared life narratives techniques, and of the in-depth interviews to migrants. These primary sources admit the double longitudinal and transversal analysis of the socio-spatial experiences of migrants. The backgrounds of these types of investigations were the researches of Douglas Massey (1987) for the Mexican Migration to the USA, in which the ethnosurvey combines surveys with the biographical method. Other important references were Françoise Dureau contribution (2004) and Dureau and et al. (2002) and her works at Groupe de Réflexion sur l’Approche Biographique (1999), which applied a survey and an in-depth interview to residents of neighborhoods in large Colombian, Venezuelan, and Brazilian cities. This type of access helps the comprehension canals of uses, values, senses, representations and imaginary which direct and redirect the behavior of migrants and suppose the ways of the appropriation of space in the new global order. We would also like to focus on other methodological sources used like the in situ recognition, through visits and rounds in the neighborhoods, with the identification of cultural marks in the landscape, the functioning of stores and services for the migrants, and the recognition of everyday life rhythms. The result of all this activity is the creation of photographical and phonic banks, as primary sources. The combination of these methodological strategies has allowed us to go deep into the key components so as to explain the formation of migrant neighborhoods from the triple view of spatiality, sociability, and temporality of this trialectic of space, proposed by Edward Soja (1990, 1997, 1999). Today, these studies comprise the body of knowledge of the moving etnographies or as Amelina et al. (2014) call methodologies at movement to understand the international migrations from a transnationalism perspective. It is a complete methodological and interpretative effort to understand how international migrants look for residential fixation from their movement experiences at the space they move around.

Recent migrations are becoming diverse, taking composition into account, though Paraguayan, Bolivian, and Peruvian prevail, as well as arrival rhythm, Chinese (Sassone and Matossian 2014). However, there are other origins of interest such as sub-Saharan Africans. Even with the risk of generalizing, although such is not our intention, these groups mentioned grow in visibility, because they outstand in certain activities, joined to others with a little exoticism, all of which is making us far away from the idea of a “white and European” Argentina. In this chapter, some elements for theorization are provided, and, in the same way, empiric evidence is presented regarding residential patterns of Bolivian and Chilean migrants, in particular, at the metropolis of Buenos Aires and at two intermediate cities in the Argentine Patagonia: Puerto Madryn (Province of Chubut) and San Carlos de Bariloche (Province of Río Negro). In each of the cases, we propose to go deep into the conditioning factors of these urban transformations: the formation of neighborhoods, characterized by their own mechanisms for the appropriation of space of these international migrants, generally in the impoverished suburbs of popular habitat.

Migrants form neighborhoods. This assentation may be difficult to justify in a first reading. Follow the reasoning: migrants characterize social practices and practiced places that justify talking about concentration in sectors of the city where marks carved at landscapes and everyday practices translate a sense of belonging, expressed in particular and specific vicinity relationships. Sometimes those areas are not strictly neighborhoods but a part of urban districts institutionalized in the laws of the respective local governments. There are evidences of the same process of gestation, as migrants’ residential choices are accompanied by logics for the access to housing, the relationships with employment, and the conditions of daily travel and accessibility, both toward and out of their residences, which are generally poor. The appearance of businesses and ethnic services are detected; social and economic strategies within the same group and toward the receptor society are seen. There is a management of the public space where the migrant identity is shown. But, at the same time, the transnationalism relationships, which imply the new profile of the postmodern migrant that reacts to the dynamic of globalization with high flexibility, are shaped, particularly at a local scale, as this chapter aims to show.

6.2 Toward the Construction of Migrants’ Neighborhoods

6.2.1 Concepts and Typology

In Argentina, Samuel Baily wrote a pioneer study, focused on the differentiation of residential areas after the arrival of Italian immigrants in New York and Buenos Aires. Baily (1985) compared the settlement patterns in both cities and distinguished, on the one hand, structural variables like localization, job availability, housing market, accessibility and transport and, on the other hand, cultural variables, such as the desire and need to keep parental or fellow bonds alive, among others, as conditioning factors. Redondo (1988) analyzed the neighborhood La Boca, also in the city of Buenos Aires, as an ethnic neighborhood, characterized by the presence of Italian immigrants who arrived in the first half of the XX century. From a geographical perspective, Sassone (2000, 2002, 2010) analyzed the conceptualization of migrants’ neighborhoods, as communities, as a concentration of people, in particular, coming from the same country, linked to the idea of “place” and the sense of belonging, related to the humanistic geography. Otero and Pellegrino (2003) compared the residential concentrations of Europeans in the cities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The first dominant aspect is always the concentration of people of a same origin, arriving from the same country. Therefore, the researcher must comprehend the reasons for those spatial patterns as well as the several consequences for those willing to live together and are situated at the “inside” in the same way as for those at the “outside.” Social scientists, especially geographers, are interested in the increasing and renovated tendency of these types of settlements in Latin American countries, with migrants from the same country or region of the world.

Although the School of Chicago defined the concept of neighborhood at the beginning of the XX century, this conformation to the interior of the cities was recognized with the origin of the urbanization. The different definitions of neighborhood show that it is an area, sector, or district of a city with historic and cultural characteristics, that is, it is a space of social identity (Gravano 2005). It is part of the urban patchwork, an area with spatial, social, and functional attributes. Estebánez (1988) affirmed: “In each neighborhood, there is a process of evolution as it grows as community and it is possible to identify four stages, from the physical neighborhood to the community neighbourhood.”Footnote 1 The latter is defined as such neighborhood in which people develop a sense of belonging and tend to associate with their neighbors more than with the people living out of it. When the people inhabits in the neighborhoods are international immigrants, the residential concentration is the base of a community conscience; such is a main characteristic. These presences require a consolidated permanence, generally a long-lasting one. In a specific sense, among the migrants’ neighborhoods, the ethnic neighborhood outstands as a distinctive mode, which is a clear expression of the community ones. Here, the contributions of Wilson and Portes (1980) about the ethnic enclave must be highlighted, in addition to the hard criticism of R. Waldinger (1993) in relation to the types of ethnic economies linked to neighborhoods of migrants. Furthermore, the closest and most well- known type of neighborhood where an ethnic minority lives, the ghetto, needs to be mention, notion that recovered part of its sense when it was addressed by Loïc Wacquant (2001) in his book Parias urbanos: marginalidad en la ciudad a comienzos del milenio.

An ethnic neighborhood is made up of an accused concentration of migrants, and it is ruled by the strength of personal, familiar, or social relationships, at the same time, consolidated by the intracommunity chains and networks. Migrants located at the urban space and create an impact in it, going beyond the exclusive area of the members of the chain (Sassone 2000, 2002, 2010). In this way, the social hierarchies established within the chain spread over the localized microcommunities. Gandolfo (1988) indicates that: “the degree of ethnicity, [for the conformation of the ethnic neighborhood]… is a function of social control that the migrant elite exercises over a portion of the urban territory.”Footnote 2 According to this author, an ethnic neighborhood “… is not a mere physical place where immigrants with a certain regional or national origin prevail but also a social space where the relationships made by the migratory chains keep on reproducing (and modifying).”Footnote 3 This is not about a static means; migrants are localized in a new place; they live with others, and in this way they see themselves obliged to redefine their social space of belonging as well as to rebuild their territoriality. Like gated communities, migrants’ neighborhoods are expressions from the geographic segregation (also called spatial, residential, or urban). It requires the spatial separation of the different social groups in a city or in a geographical area in accordance with ethnical, religious, income differences, etc. Marcuse and van Kempen (2000) uphold that the segregation phenomena is inherent the history of cities, and they show that what is new is their intensity, visibility, and deployment.

6.2.2 Spatiality, Sociability, and Temporality: The Three Dimensions in the Neighborhood Construction

Three dimensions characterize a migrant’s neighborhood: the spatiality, the sociability, and the temporality. Such modeling of this process of construction of migrants’ neighborhood has certain precedents. Sassone and Mera (2007) studied the two first categories. After the migrants’ settlement patterns in the cities, the concentration in neighborhoods in both dimensions, material and symbolic, is noted. The initial explanation responds to the mechanisms of ethnic cohesion that build from daily life. Although for the eyes of any of the inhabitant of the city the concentration in migrants’ neighborhoods results evident and even obvious, the systematic analysis of these spatial patterns shows that the concentration sense varies according to appropriation and use of the urban space that migrants make.

Some explanations about the analytical proposal resulted from the comparison of three neighborhoods localized at the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires: Baek-ku neighborhood or Korean neighborhood (Flores neighborhood), the Chinese neighborhood (Belgrano neighborhood), and the Charrua neighborhood, a Bolivian neighborhood (Nueva Pompeya neighborhood).Footnote 4 The appropriation of space by migrants is founded in two strategies: one is the replacement of deprived or peripheral neighborhoods and the other is an ex novo settlement. In the analyzed cases, the authors showed that the Koreans and Chinese’ pattern of settlement respond to the first strategy, while the Bolivians’ one to the second. These two strategies show the kind of dialogue that the communities have with the local society; Chinese and Koreans resort to individual strategies for the access to housing through the intermediary of real estate agents, while Bolivians, resorting to collective decisions, with a strong community commitment, achieve this through public lands, whose access to housing overcome conflicts. These types of appropriation has promoted different ways of vicinity relationships; in one case, it must be negotiated with the already settled, usually Argentinean (Korean and Chinese neighborhoods) in the place, while in the other it is monopolized by the community (Bolivian neighborhood) (Table 6.1).

Table 6.1 Territoriality and sociability in migrants’ neighborhoods
Full size table

Regarding settlement patterns, in all the three cases, the creation of migrants’ neighborhoods, identified as such by the same migrants and the local society, is observed. Each neighborhood may be featured according to the function, whether residential, commercial, cultural, or the combination of the three. It has been proved that although ethnicity emerges as a distinctive characteristic of the territoriality migrants build, there are certain variants in which a function outstands the others. In the Korean case, the neighborhood unifies the residential, commercial, and cultural ethnic functions; in the Bolivian neighborhood (Charrua) case, the residential and cultural ethnic functions unify. As for the Chinese neighborhood, it is mainly about cultural and commercial ethnical functions, as well as stores open to Argentines and tourists. This last feature comes from the Chinese neighborhood (Chinatown), a profile of large metropolis in the world like San Francisco, Paris, Sydney, and Toronto, among others. In other words, unlike Charrua or Baek-ku neighborhoods, the Chinese neighborhood uses the cultural difference as a particular consumption brand inside the city.

It has also been observed that while Korean and Bolivian neighborhoods have their own denomination, Charrúa and Baek-ku show the ethnic landscape (by hiding their origin or by demonstration of their identity); the Chinese neighborhood is called “Chinese Neighborhood of Belgrano” by the population of the Chinese community as well as the rest of the city neighbors. The way they call themselves also makes reference to an affective charge that has its origins in a historical process of decades: in the Bolivian case, it is related to the pattern of neighborhood construction and in the Korean case to the way in which it was baptized as Baek-ku (the 107 number bus, which upon arriving, this line took them from shanty towns of Retiro – their first settlement – to that part of Flores neighborhood). Such considerations come from narratives from everyday experiences and are charged with emotions, always transmitted by adults. The Chinese neighborhood seems to be different.

The institutions that comply with the reproduction of the commercial and cultural ethnic functions are the ones that strengthen the mechanisms of social cohesion of the respective groups. In the Korean case, it is about use and consumption activities from and for Koreans (associations, churches, bars, and restaurants) and, in the Bolivian case, about sociability activities (associations, first-aid facilities, kindergartens, and churches) from and for Bolivians. On the contrary, in the Chinese case, it is possible to see that the cultural functions (Buddhist temples, associations) are from and for Chinese, while in the case of commercial activities, a double orientation can be seen: one inside the community and the other one outside. Such depends on the opening strategy of these communities to the local society from the constructed neighborhoods, notwithstanding the administrative divisions imposed by the local policies.

The neighborhood spatial concentration – in all the three cases – organizes and structures the community life and conditions the ways that the ethnocultural identity adhesion adopt. In Table 6.1, the two dimensions of the construction of an ethnical neighborhood, by means of which it is possible to evidence the ethnic-cultural urban segregation shaped in socio-territorial cohesion mechanisms, have been summarized. Out of the three, the Bolivian and Korean neighborhoods are closer, and the Chinese neighborhood of Belgrano shows channels open to the external society. In the landscape of these neighborhoods, it is possible to explain that socio-territorial cohesion because it is combined the appropriation and use of space with the ways of access to housing and land property, as well as sociability relationships which show visible traits, strengthen by everyday practices that speak of the reproduction of the ethnic identity.

However, there is a third dimension in our own studies: the appropriation of space by migrants in cities and, within this category, the residential patterns, as conformations closely related to temporality. The rhythms of migrant actions are seen at several scales: global, intermediate, and local. It is possible to observe that there are short- term processes, the everyday ones, which combine with long-term processes, the annual ones, as the generational and intergenerational time periods. This issue has also been pointed out, for instance, by García Almirall and Frizzera (2008), who proposed four stages for the process of locating the immigrant in the city: (a) landing, (b) arrival, (c) settlement, and (d) stabilization. A preliminary issue has also been dealt with by us (Sassone 2009a) precisely related with the formation of a neighborhood of migrants. It is possible to identify five stages. As a first stage, we identify the arrival, featured as residential instability, a sense of uncertainty and dependence to networks. The second stage implies spatial strategies of intragroup social cohesion which come into action; there is a fixation in the access to housing (e.g., inhabiting with family, friends, renting alone, or sharing with other migrants) with the appearance of commercial and cultural functions, together with that residential use. This is a key stage as it creates new social relationships in each spatial gathering. In a third stage, the members of the neighborhoods interconnect several ethnic enclave concentrations in the metropolis. A fourth stage refers to the appropriation of public space and institutional practices. For the fifth stage, we identify processes such as migration interchange, with a feedback process with the arrival of newcomers of the same origin, or not, which reveal succession mechanisms. The consequences are new social compositions and newer demographic profiles. All these socio-spatial behaviors are justified through migration paths, considering residence, which become collective thus, once again, redefining chains and networks. Therefore, the reasons for residential choices are related to the creation and reproduction of urban migration clusters, already started by pioneer migrants.

6.3 Neighborhood of Migrants: Residential Strategies and Ethnocultural Identity

It frequently speaks in the literature about the presence of migrants in the urban re-composition, both in residential or commercial areas or public spaces. Amsterdam, Madrid, Toronto, San Pablo, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Rome, Milan, and London, among others, have neighborhoods of migrants and ethnic commercial centers. There are even public spaces where certain days migrants meet, for example, the Peruvian migrants used to gather every Sunday at the beginning of the year 2000 in one of the streets in Duomo square in Milan (Tagmano 2002), or the sub-saharan men, sellers of different souvenirs arrived at sunset at one of the esplanade at Geneva Port in order to go to their community lodging at the outskirts of the city together, as checked in June 2012.

Although neighborhoods of migrants do not pass unnoticed, they may be made invisible at local political and national levels and do not appear at media, despite having complex and even marginal stories to tell. Only as examples, we mention Paris when in 2005, as well as in approximately 300 cities in France (like in other European ones), there were complaints at public space in some of their neighborhoods, due to lack of employment and access to services, like health and education. Due to the great number of reactions, such demonstrations reached the media, television, and social networks in the web. As we have said, migrants tend to concentrate in neighborhoods where cultural ties of ethnic cohesion are observed and where there are daily rhythms that make them different. The socio-spatial relationships are loaded with other senses, values, and representations. Three cases (all are ex novo settlements) among the great number already found in metropolis and middle-sized cities of Argentina will be dealt with. The first of them is located at the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires: the Charrua neighborhood of Bolivian migrants (already mentioned in the previous point). The second is the El Porvenir neighborhood in the city of Puerto Madryn (Province of Chubut), a Bolivian neighborhood, and the third is the Arrayanes neighborhood in San Carlos de Bariloche, a Chilean neighborhood.Footnote 5

6.3.1 “Charrua” Neighborhood: The Bolivian Neighborhood

General San Martín neighborhood or Charrua neighborhood is a neighborhood of Bolivian migrants (the different concentrations of these migrants within the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires are called this way), characterized by cultural and residential functions as well as services functions for their members. This, in particular, is recognized as the first Bolivian neighborhoods. Szulik and Valiente (1999) said: “it is the first Bolivian neighborhood or, in other words, the first ghetto in which Bolivian can easily be recognized as a community.”Footnote 6 It was a slum at first (a shanty town o villa de emergencia as they are known in Argentina), and it was first called Villa Piolín and then Villa 12. As time went by, it was a neighborhood of migrants but above all an ethnic neighborhood (Sassone 2002, 2007a). Their few squares make it possible to observe the creation of a landscape where inhabitants’ interaction with the physical space modeled a physiognomy of their own ethnocultural identity. It was and still is the meeting point for all the Bolivian community in Buenos Aires and even Argentina. At mid-2000, 3000 Bolivians and their families with Argentine children resided, according to unpublished official sources.

Charrua neighborhood is situated at the administrative district of Nueva Pompeya, near Villa Soldati district and surrounded by Erezcano Street, Fernández de la Cruz Avenue, Bonorino Street, and the Ferrocarril Metropolitano (former Belgrano) railway crossing. A particular building evolution may be studied in very few squares. The area is about 2.6 ha or 26,000 m2. The Charrua planning shape is special; although its inhabitants speak of three squares (Bertone de Daguerre 2003, 2005), these are not complete but rather a part together with the surface occupied by the chapel, the school, and the Asociación Vecinal de Fomento General San Martín. All are public spaces.

Going back to history, Villa Piolín was the first name given to this neighborhood in the 1950s. The newcomers settled during the night, hidden and carrying only the few belongings they have, and traced the limits using threads as a territorial appropriation method. After a number of fires and toward long-lasting solutions, much was done among neighbors in order to achieve housing through self-construction under the coordination of Municipal Committee for Housing (Comisión Municipal de la Vivienda), the local government institution of the 1960s. Bolivians built their housing units on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays, all together, brick by brick. The construction was finished approximately in 1968, and so they went on with the distribution of housing units by draw. The housing planning was based on single-family units, distributed in 18 interior corridors. The assignment required several years, and the allotment was finished in 1992 when all the housings were allotted. Laumonier et al. (1983, p. 24) pointed out that buildings were planned in two floors, but in the first years most only had one. Later, the housing units started to increase in size “upward” in order to overcome lack of space, therefore making the narrow corridors darker. For 20 years, there have been apartments with up to four floors. Although the external appearances have improved, the neighborhood has kept the look of a construction site for a number of years (Sassone 2002, 2007a).

In 1981 School n° 13 Presbítero Alberti was inaugurated, which used to be a parcel called by inhabitants “the canchita” (neighbors used to meet every Saturday so as to play football). As to the neighborhood committee (Asociación Vecinal de Fomento General San Martín), it was funded in 1989, and it is one of the first ethnic associations of Argentina, created by Bolivians from the neighborhood. The daily activity in the streets is very intense. A fair situated at Charrua Street in front of the chapel, the school, and the association is opened every Saturday; for a number of years, the fair’s administrator was one of the first inhabitants of Charrua, who was also president of the committee mentioned. It starts very early, and in the middle of the morning, a lot of people, mainly from the neighborhood, move around; hardly nobody can walk among stands. It is a fair from Bolivians to Bolivians. Meal smells remind them those of traditional foods from the Andean countries, and they are sold to passersby.

The neighborhood strong sense of belonging was celebrated at the Copacabana Virgin Festivity in October 1975 (other sources speak of 1972) when the statue of that Marian devotion, venerated in Bolivia, was brought to Argentina and to the neighborhood and the festivity, like the ones in Bolivia, was given (Laumonier 1990; Sassone 2002, 2007b, 2009b). As Vargas (2002), a Bolivian leader, points out, “this place in the city of Buenos Aires is the reference for the Bolivian community… due to the inevitable relationship with the festivity, which is a part of their community identity. The celebration of the Lady of Copacabana is the most important and significant event for the Bolivian residents in the county.”Footnote 7 It calls thousands of people of the Bolivian community in Argentina and in particular in Buenos Aires city. Today it is included in the official calendar of festivities in the city government, at the official program called “Buenos Aires Celebra.”Footnote 8

6.3.2 “El Porvenir” Neighborhood in Puerto Madryn City: A Bolivian Neighborhood

Puerto Madryn is a middle-sized city in the Province of Chubut, in the region of Patagonia. Its importance lies in: (a) being the closest entry to Península Valdés, an international tourist attraction center and (b) its industrial activity, linked to heavy industry with the production of aluminum and to the fishing industry, both projected to the international market (Sassone et al. 2013). Such activities hold a migratory issue, which does not often spread when defining the city profile. As to demographic growth, Puerto Madryn is one of the most dynamic cities in Argentina and the third out of the five most important in the Province of Chubut (after Comodoro Rivadavia, Trelew and followed by Rawson and Esquel). Its population was nearly 90,000 people (2010) with a population growth rate of 4 % (2001–2010). Nearly 50 % of its population was not born in the province, and this city is one example of migration diversity (Sassone et al. 2011). The 7 % of its population is foreigners and comprises the 3 % of Bolivians, the 2 % of Chileans, and another 2 % of other origins. Concerning Bolivian migration, Puerto Madryn is the city with the greatest participation of population of that origin: 38 %, exceeding the Chilean (34 %). These migrants were attracted by the demand for labor in construction industry, economic niche dominated, at a national level, particularly by them as well as the Paraguayans. In the case of the Bolivians, their arrival was linked to the installation of aluminum company Aluar Aluminio Argentino S.A.I.C. in the 1970s and then with the enlargement in the middle of 2000 (Sassone et al. 2012).

Puerto Madryn’s urban structure reveals the existence of three different sectors considering socio-spatial division: (a) the industrial port city, (b) the “window to the world” city, and (c) the popular city, all of them living together. One of the oldest Bolivian neighborhoods in the Argentine cities, without considering Buenos Aires and San Salvador de Jujuy (where Mariano Moreno neighborhood has been the proper of the Bolivian migration, pursuant Sassone 1984, p. 22) is situated there. Such neighborhood is El Porvenir. The “popular city” – the other Madryn, the city of the suburbs – is characterized by unpaved streets, with no trees and no sewer and flooded, with a difficult topography. The sector is situated toward the West where there is a strong urban growth; neighborhoods formed from the interaction of national housing policies, provincial policies, and the local urban planning predominate. At first, they were illegal settlements, and, then, thanks to the municipal social parceling, inhabitants, including migrants, were encouraged to build their houses by means of self-building practices. This pattern is expanded, and, thus, migrants achieve to have their own houses. In this way, the fact is that migration influences in the cultural diversity of the city, and spatial fragmentation is verified. Such part of the city kept growing uncontrollably and to a great extent due to the strong demand for workforce in the construction sector like in other services, all of which encouraged the arrival of more internal and international migrants, particularly of Bolivian and even Paraguayan origins. Such population increase was not accompanied by governmental housing planning (whether municipal, provincial, or national); thus, access to the urban land market turned a serious problem to be solved.

The first inhabitants of neighborhood “El Porvenir” came from the first informal settlement in Puerto Madryn, called “Loma Blanca” and formed in 1973, near the current city bus station. At the micro-local scale, square dispositions resemble the ones in Charrua neighborhood; they are rectangular squares with narrow passages as streets. The neighborhood is organized on two axes: the street Roberto Gómez and Juan XXXIII Avenue. That avenue truly separates more than joins although neighbors walk within the area. This neighborhood is the main focus of attention to Bolivians. It is a residential sector with a different physiognomy, compared with the adjacent neighborhoods, and only nearby shops, mostly in charge of Bolivian owners, can be found. They are Bolivian shops for Bolivians, and this is seen especially when Bolivian names and place names predominate in notices (kantuta, the Bolivian national flower; or Copacabana, in relation to the devotion of Lady Copacabana, Bolivia’s patron saint, whose temple is in the city of equal name, near La Paz in Bolivia; or Urkupiña, to the devotion of Lady Urkupiña, patron saint of the Department of Copacabana, in Bolivia, etc.). It is striking that the buildings have extended “upward” due to lack of lot surface, like the Charrua neighborhood case in Buenos Aires (Sassone 2002; Bertone de Daguerre 2003, 2005; Sassone et al. 2012). The increase in Bolivian migration has encouraged other ethnic concentrations of that origin in other nearby periphery neighborhoods like Pujol II, V.E.P.A.M., CO.DE.PRO., and “21 de enero” (ex Pujol I) at the same city.

“El Porvenir” has become the place of reference for the local Bolivian community in particular due to the festivities for the Lady of Copacabana and the Lady of Urkupiña, which sequentially take place during the month of August every year since the mid-1980s. Both celebrations go beyond the neighborhood space since rehearsals include community members living in others (Sassone and Hughes 2009). During the weeks, before the festivities, members of the fraternities rehearse diverse Bolivian dances in the street or in neighborhood assemblies or in houses in other neighborhoods (e.g., Puyol II). Furthermore, celebrations gather Bolivians settled in the nearby cities of Trelew and Gaiman and the horticultural producers from the Lower Valley of Chubut River. Dancing and musical groups from Comodoro Rivadavia, Caleta Olivia (Province of Santa Cruz), and Sierra Grande (Province of Río Negro) also participate. This neighborhood is recognized as a Bolivian “place,” not only due to the greatest presence of that origin since its own creation but also due to the visibility the community obtains when that public space is used every year as of the popular religious expressions. We would be in the presence of a socio-religious structure, whose study “allows the understanding of organization, characterization and differentiation of the places, taken as experience-based spaces full of sense and significance” (Campos and Santarelli 2007, p. 134).Footnote 9

6.3.3 Arrayanes Neighborhood in San Carlos de Bariloche: A Chilean Neighborhood

San Carlos de Bariloche is one of the main centers of population attraction, among the intermediate cities of the Patagonia. It is located at the edge of the Nahuel Huapi Lake, in the Province of Río Negro, very near to the boundary with Chile. The year 1902 is considered by the official history the city’s foundation year, when the agricultural-shepherding Colony Nahuel Huapi was organized. Since the middle of the XIX century, during several decades, economic and social activities in the region were linked to Puerto Montt and city’s businessmen of Germany, Italy as well as of other origins. Since 1947, Argentinien population has increased: from a little more than 6,000 people in that year to 50,000 in 1980 and to 77,600 in 1991, with population growth rate ranging between 44 and 58 per 1000. According to 2010 census, there are more than 110,000 inhabitants (Matossian 2011).

The city’s development has been accompanied by the Chilean presence, even when it was only an incipient village. There are 9 % of Chileans’ residents there, considering the total population; that percentage represents 80 % of the international migrants in the city. Argentineans born in other provinces, both of rural and urban origin, are added. All together they contribute to the target of heterogeneous demographic, social, and cultural structure of San Carlos de Bariloche. Like in other Patagonian cities, the presence of Argentineans is manifested at the debate among the identities VYQ (from Spanish “venidos y quedados”: arrived and stayed) or NYC (from Spanish “nacidos y criados”: born and raised). Particularly, this city is distinguished by both its national and international tourism, thanks to location at the Patagonic Andes and the forest and the lakes, specially the Nahuel Huapi Lake. The surrounding is dominated by natural beautiful landscapes, in addition to topography and seasonal changes, which encourage both winter mountain sports as well as adventure ones.

However, it must be recognized the existence of a complex urban variety giving room to several “cities” living together. The first frequent division coincides with the installed idea of the “Bariloche’s double faces”: one overlooking the lake and enjoying the best environmental and socio-economic conditions, strictly related to tourism and the other one back toward the lake, with a population living in unfavorable conditions and even in some cases of extreme marginality. This idea has contributed to harmonize differences in a city that has grown fast (Matossian 2010). Chilean migrants’ concentration in certain neighborhoods within periphery sectors of the city, linked to a process of greater urban segregation, also constitutes one of those marks (Matossian 2007), one of which being Arrayanes neighborhood. The origin of these neighborhoods has been defined by the interaction of the different elements in the complex urban expansion, influenced by urban land market, housing practices, and planning public policies and demographic growth, among others.

Arrayanes neighborhood is one of the popular ones in “El Alto,” comprising the Southern and Southeastern neighborhoods situated at the moraines 800 m above sea level. “El Alto” is known as the city of marginality, and its name is loaded with a certain degree of discrimination. The municipal government recognized this neighborhood, through Resolution 138-C-86, despite the fact that at those years the neighborhood already had its history (Matossian 2011). Toward the end of the year 1979, the municipal government decided to relocate population of the so-called Ceferino and Nahuel neighborhoods, the latter being close to the lake (Duran unpublished, c. 1982) by force. The replacement was made, and in the first years the sector was called “New Neighborhood.” Some authors explain this process and affirm that forced eradication was made “using aesthetic political reasons” (Nuñez 2007, p. 14). Then months after relocation, other Chilean migrants settled irregularly surrounding the first core. Afterward, such lands were transferred to the local government by the province, and the subdivision was declared of social interest. The neighbors did a great deal to get the regular possession of the lots: in 1986 the application was submitted at the provincial government, and 2 years later precarious allotment was achieved. With it, neighbors, mainly Chilean or their Argentinean sons, started paying for their lots as contemplated in a contract, establishing 125 quotes in total (Matossian 2011).

In its origins, Arrayanes lacked public services; the accessibility conditions were difficult, and the fact of being far away from commercial, educational, and health centers increased isolation even more. Sanitary conditions were deploring; nearly there were rubbish dumps, and then the same inhabitants, the Chileans, readapted them. Also, there were physical barriers such as the high edge of Ñireco stream and a quarry toward the Southwest. In addition, the cemetery has always been a barrier, with a negative impact as shown in the migrants’ narratives (Matossian 2011). The habitat has been conditioned by all these situations, especially as to accessibility and intra-urban mobility. In the face of all these difficulties, the neighbors gathered in an attempt to solve their main problems. With the return of democracy, the “Juntas Vecinales” (neighborhood committees) were consolidated. Chileans comprised the first boards of the Arrayanes neighborhood. Thanks to their performance, the neighbors achieve the installation of a sports campus, the construction of a committee house, the local health service center, the incorporation of a bus line, as well as the public lightning, the improvement of pavement and the water services. All these have been positive collective actions for the community in a context of several hardships. Their own local committee fostered the fact that Chilean migrants could keep their original culture, through the celebration of their patriotic holidays, like the Ramada on September 18. The neighborhood is the “place” to which they belong and with which they identify.

6.4 Final Reflections

International immigration has expanded disproportionately, in both traditional and emerging receiving nations and their cities. We know the most impoverished migrations tend to become visible due to their residential patterns in depressed central areas or in the suburbs of the urban peripheries, and, in turn, they have access to the labor market formal and informally. At the residential spaces, international migrants are actors and agents of territorial transformations (in the sense that they make them and cause them, respectively). Understanding those processes requires immersing in both micro-spatial and micro-social dimensions and in this chapter the mechanisms of the appropriation of space of the migrants in order to form neighborhoods are shown.

They arrive, look for strategies to acquire housing, help themselves, and seek residential stability. Every neighborhood has been and still is the privileged geographical frame for the social analysis of the city due to its identity and social integration, as place of growth, interaction, and belonging. The birth and organization of certain neighborhoods have Bolivian and Chilean migrants as outstanding actors in several Argentine cities and towns; their informal networks of nationals and relatives are functional tools to the spatial concentrations. The strength of the cultural identity guides and models the ways of living. The migrants form neighborhoods where ordered and/or planed urbanization had not taken place. In migrants’ neighborhoods, practices and uses are identified, and neighborhood representations are formed through everyday life. In such dimension, political, cultural, historical, economic, and personal circumstances are mixed, which place migrants as subjects with their own behaviors of the identity reproduction.

Inside the neighborhood, migrants feel comforted, in a place, in their place, in which they move with trust, familiarity, and safety, showing relationships of vicinity, within their ethnocultural identity. These same neighborhoods determine the process of identity construction of the group in a particular way. For example, stores, churches, ethnic associations, sports sites, and the public spaces, which are under their own control day by day. All these elements become ways of appropriation of space, which reinforces the consolidation of their cultural identities as immigrants.

There are evidences of the same process of gestation, as migrants’ residential choices are accompanied by logics for the access to housing, the relationships with employment, and the conditions of daily travel and accessibility, both toward and out of their residences. They contribute with the building process of the neighborhood because there is a strong sense of solidarity intracommunitary. Otherwise, it is possible to recognize that the same group shows social, economic, and associative strategies between them and claim to the local governments for their building needs. That social and territorial cohesion are related to the transnationalism relationships, which imply the new profile of the postmodern migrant that reacts to the dynamic of globalization with high flexibility and shape the landscape of the city.