The social mobility of Galician families in Buenos Aires belonging to the latest migratory flow: Strategies and trajectories

Abstract

Galician migration constituted the largest ethnic-regional group of overseas immigrants to Argentina to such an extent that Buenos Aires was popularly known as Galicia’s ‘fifth province’. Despite the considerable scientific production addressing this migratory issue, only scant attention has been given to the social mobility of this ethnic-regional group. The aim of this article is to analyse the intra- and intergenerational social mobility patterns and strategies deployed by Galician migrant families of working class origin which comprised the last migratory flow that arrived in Argentina between 1940 and 1960 and to identify the opportunities and obstacles families encountered in their class trajectories. The research is based on a theoretical perspective which considers the articulation between spatial and social mobility strategies through a gender and intergenerational-based approach to the analysis of the class status of several family members. This approach highlights the need to consider multiple factors beyond education and occupation when analysing social mobility strategies. A mixed methodology combining both quantitative and qualitative techniques was used and a statistical analysis was performed of intergenerational social mobility surveys and 34 life story interviews conducted with members of migrant families in Buenos Aires. The study reveals how a complex network of articulated strategies, influenced by a migratory project based on the desire to settle, provides clearer insight into the class trajectories of families of Galician origin in Buenos Aires, which involved staggered, short-term and long-term upward social mobility processes based on sustained inter-generational effort and resource accumulation.