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ABSTRACT
Discourses of free movement and “open doors” circulate widely in official Argentine narratives about migration. In fact, some migrant youth cite more lenient Argentine policies as the reason they choose the country over global north contexts. Yet everyday mobility can become a complicated reality for migrant youth of colour who do not fit dominant constructions of Argentine nationhood which have historically centred around whiteness. This article looks at Latin American and African migrant youths’ narratives about their presence and everyday mobility in Buenos Aires. It elucidates the ways in which markers of race, class, and nationality shape youths’ encounters with state and non-state actors alike, often complicating their free movement throughout the city. Further, this article shows how migrant youth come to understand these realities as “normal”, develop strategies to move about the city more freely, and challenge the exclusionary narratives that shape their lived experiences.
Acknowledgement
I am deeply appreciative of all research participants who shared their lived experiences with me. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and to those who have provided feedback on earlier versions of this article including Percy Hintzen, Jorge Duany, Vrushali Patil, and Ana María Bidegain. Any errors are my own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 See González and Tavernelli (Citation2018) and García and Nejamkis (Citation2018) for discussion of recent changes to Argentine immigration policy. Further, see Domenech (Citation2007) for analysis of Argentina's current immigration law, Ley 25.871, its socio-legal context and limits.
2 In order to protect the privacy of participants, names provided throughout this text – unless part of widely available public discourse – are pseudonyms.
3 All translations are mine.
4 While the overall interviews were divided roughly equally between male and female participants, the bulk of the themes analyzed here emerged in the interviews with male participants. Further analysis is required to understand how gender may be a significant factor differently impacting youths’ everyday mobility in Buenos Aires. Further, the term “non-white” is used here to encompass a variety of terms used by youth to describe their ethno-racial identifications. Such included terms like indigenous, black, mestizo/a, trigueño/a and moreno/a. Although these terms may be divided between racial classifications and colour labels (see Golash-Boza Citation2010), they all were used by youth in ways that signalled distance (whether “social” or “racial”) from whiteness.
5 Arlanda identified as genderqueer or non-binary, hence the use of the pronouns they/their/them.
6 A stop may take on a variety of forms, meaning “to cease, to end, and also to cut off, to arrest, to check, to prevent, to block, to obstruct or to close” (Ahmed Citation2007, 161). In this article, stops range from moments of intensified questioning to more prolonged forms of stopping such as searches and detentions.
7 The Gendarmería Nacional is Argentina’s border police force.
8 In Argentina, Villa, or Villa Miseria is used to refer to shantytowns or slums.
9 As Ko (Citation2016) notes, a large percentage of neighbourhood grocery stores in Argentina is owned by Chinese migrants and their descendants. Small locally-owned grocery stores are thus often referred to as El Chino. As Ko describes, such supermarkets have been a central site of racial tensions in Argentina.
10 As Golash-Boza (Citation2010) found in research with Afro-Peruvian populations, blanco, trigueño, moreno, and negro are part of a continuum of colour labels from lightest to darkest. Such categories, however, are fluid and deeply contextual. Ezequiel Adamovsky (Citation2016), for example, points to the ambiguity of the term morocho in Argentina, which may or may not be used as a colour label. In this quote, Ian is using the terms negro, morocho, and trigueño interchangeably to describe his brother-in-law’s “racial” and “social” distance from whiteness. Negro (literally translated to “black”) is a racialized term often derogatorily used in Argentina to name poor, mestizo, or indigenous persons (Gordillo Citation2016, 214).
11 Cheto, similar to “posh”, is a slang term used in Argentina to refer to a middle and upper-class style or habitus.
12 The Obelisco is one of Buenos Aires’ most iconic monuments, located between the Avenues of Corrientes and 9 de Julio.
13 A shorthand used to refer to the city’s Ministry of Environment and Public Space.
14 Retrieved from the 12 January 2017, Twitter feed of the City of Buenos Aires (@gcba).