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OCR
HERNÁN OTERO talks of ordinary people and intellectual debates, although we must recognize that the traditional myth according to which "Argentinians descend from ships" has been losing its force. Ihe historical distance from the period of mass migration, the economic and political crises of the 20th century, and the revival of indigenous identity, among many other aspects, have produced the emergence of a more Latin American point of view. There are, at least, two ways to study migratory integration and its main result: national identity. First, there is a more discursive or philosophical approach, that analyses the reflections of intellectuals, politicians, writers, and so on about identity (or its lack) and economic and social features (positive or negative) of the mass migration period as a whole. This approach has focused on the cultural aspects (the levels of xenophobia and prejudice, the conflicts, for example) using qualitative sources (such as the press, literature, etc.). Second, there is a more sociological or statistical approach, using quantitative sources (such as censuses, surveys, etc.). The distinction between both approaches is in some way artificial but useful for our purposes Briefly, there are two academic schools of migratory integration in Argentina. On the one hand, there is the Melting Pot Theory (or Crisol de Razas in the Argentine version, another icon of national identity), proposed by the Italian sociologist immigrated to Argentina, Gino Germani, one of the fathers of Modernization Theory. According to Germani, Argentina underwent a fast process of “fusion” (not assimilation like in the United States) between natives and foreigners, produced by two factors: the stopping of immigration in the 1930s and the demographic “weakness” of the host society, that is, the scarce proportion of the native population in relationship with the migratory “avalanche”. On the other hand, there is the theory of Cultural Pluralism, proposed by North American authors such as Mark Szuchman and Samuel Baily and the Argentinian Fernando Devoto.’ According to this interpretation, migratory integration in Argentina would have been slower and more complex than Germani suggests. The followers of this school use internal sources of ethnic institutions and case studies, deeper but also more biased (the middle classes are overrepresented in these societies). The debate between both schools has been rich and powerful and it has produced many important results in essential indicators such as marriage integration, spatial segregation and ethnic associations.” Mark Szuchman: Mobility and Integration in Urban Argentina. Cordoba in the Liberal Era, Austin, The University of Texas Press, 1980; Samuel Baily: Immigrants in the Lands of Promise. Italians in Buenos Aires and New York City, 1870-1914, Cornell University Press, 1999. An eclectic review of the debate in Devoto and Otero: Veinte afios después. Una lectura sobre el Crisol de Razas, el Pluralismo Cultural y la Historia Nacional en la historiografia argentina, Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos, 2003, 50, 181-227. + 24e
