Facultad de Económicas y CC Empresariales

The experiences of Latin American countries are not fully incorporated into current debates concerning the age of mass migration, even though 13 million Europeans migrated to the region between 1870 and 1930. This survey draws together different aspects of the Latin America immigration experience. Its main objective is to rethink the role of European migration to the region, addressing several major questions in the economics of migration: whether immigrants were positively selected from their sending countries, how immigrants assimilated into the host economies, the role of immigration policies, and the long-run effects of immigration. Immigrants came from the economically backward areas of southern and eastern Europe, yet their adjustment to the host labour markets in Latin America seems to have been successful. The possibility of rapid social upgrading made Latin America attractive for European immigrants. Migrants were positively selected from origin according to literacy. The most revealing aspect of new research is showing the positive long-run effects that European immigrants had in Latin American countries. The political economy of immigration policies deserves new research, particularly for Brazil and Cuba. The case of Argentina shows a more complex scenario than the classic representation of landowners constantly supporting an open-door policy.

The aim of this article is to disentangle the different forces that shaped Argentinian immigration policy from 1870 to 1930. A new index of immigration policy is presented, showing how immigration restrictions increased over time but, in contrast with the US, Argentina remained open to mass migration until the 1930s. The quantitative evidence presented here suggests that there were economic reasons to restrict immigration prior to the 1930s, namely rising inequality, the closing of the frontier, and the declining relative quality of immigrants. A political economy interpretation helps to understand the long-run evolution of immigration policy. Labour interests could not be translated into Parliament in a direct way. A large share of workers did not have the right to vote simply because they were foreigners. Inequality influenced immigration policy through social unrest since those negatively affected by massive immigration developed alternative actions: general strikes, labour unrest, and violence. Contrary to what economic theory would have predicted, antiimmigration legislation came from Argentinian capital and landowners who feared political and social unrest.

The city of Buenos Aires in the 1890s is an extreme case in immigration history since the native workers accounted for less than one-third of the labour force. In this paper, we look at the labour market performance of Argentineans visa`-vis the largest two immigrant groups, Italians and the Spaniards. We find that, on average, Argentineans enjoyed higher wages, but workers specialised in particular occupations by nationality. Immigrants clustered in occupations with lower salaries. Despite higher literacy levels and the language advantage, Spaniards did not outperform Italians in earnings. Ethnic networks facilitated the integration of immigrants into the host society and played a role in the occupation selection of immigrants. Our results suggest that Italian prosperity in Buenos Aires was not based on superior earnings or skills but on older and powerful networks.