[LINK] Argentines in Central Europe
Aug. 13th, 2005 11:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldOver at Transitions Online, Andres Schipani-Aduriz explores the phenomenon of return migration by by Argentines of central European descent to their ancestral homelands in his article "The Unbearable Heaviness of Being Argentine".
This wave was emigration was triggered partly by Argentina's economic collapse in 2000. Although the Argentine economy has largely recovered, having a central European passport is still enormously attractive to Argentines who want access to the labour markets of the European Union.
This isn't altogether surprising, considering the still very real income differentials between the EU-15 and the new central European member-states. The future of this migratory wave depends on multiple factors: the growth of the Argentine economy, the development of central Europe as a wealthy destination for immigrants in its own right, changes in naturalization and immigration law. It's worthwhile to pay attention to it because of all of these factors.
Migration on the semiperiphery is always interesting to watch.
Teodoro Brhel [is] a Porteño (native of Buenos Aires) on the verge of gaining Czech citizenship, who is currently working as a Spanish teacher and translator in Prague. And there are many other potential Ariels. "The Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Slovenian communities of Argentina are the second-largest in the world, right after those in the United States," says Josef Opatrny, the head of the Hispanic-American Department at Charles University in Prague. In all, says Dr. Juan Eduardo Fleming, the Argentinian ambassador to the Czech Republic, 40,000 Czechs and Slovaks emigrated to Argentina. Numerous other Argentines are of Central European descent: the Hungarian consulate in Buenos Aires believes as many as 50,000 people in just this one Latin American country could claim a Hungarian passport. Brazil and other South American states are home to many others.
This wave was emigration was triggered partly by Argentina's economic collapse in 2000. Although the Argentine economy has largely recovered, having a central European passport is still enormously attractive to Argentines who want access to the labour markets of the European Union.
But even if the immediate compulsion to leave Argentina weakens, there is another reason for the minor exodus that will almost certainly remain powerful: the prospect of a relatively prosperous, secure, and orderly life that a European Union passport offers. For most Argentinians of Central European descent, it is in fact not the ancient motherland that calls most back to Europe. For Jose Balastik, a car-painter who left Argentina in early 2002, immediately after the economy imploded, the promised land is Spain, not the Czech Republic. "I was an illegal resident [in Spain] until last January," he says, but then "the Czech consulate in Madrid provided me with Czech citizenship." For him, his Czech passport, gained because his father was a Czechoslovak who emigrated to Argentina in 1930, is a passport of convenience.
This isn't altogether surprising, considering the still very real income differentials between the EU-15 and the new central European member-states. The future of this migratory wave depends on multiple factors: the growth of the Argentine economy, the development of central Europe as a wealthy destination for immigrants in its own right, changes in naturalization and immigration law. It's worthwhile to pay attention to it because of all of these factors.
Migration on the semiperiphery is always interesting to watch.
