Francesco Rotondo, Italiani d’Argentina. Dall’accoglienza alla “difesa sociale” (1853-1910), in “Historia e ius. Rivista di storia giuridica dell’età medievale e moderna”, 12/2017, paper 13.

Abstract

Roughly three and a half million Europeans reached Argentina between 1857 and 1909. This mass migration was supported by most of the Argentine authorities through numerous legislative and economic interventions. The Italian community was the largest and most dynamic one and gradually penetrated the social and economic structures of Argentina. However, after 1902 the Argentine government’s approach towards South European immigration changed radically with the introduction of measures aimed at restricting the possibility of immigration and at allowing the expulsion of “undesirable” foreigners. Through the analysis of legal and literary sources of the time, the article investigates the reasons and characteristics of this radical shift in the nineteenth-century Argentina’s immigration policies.