Atelier: L'Amérique du Sud ou l'émergence d'un nouveau théâtre des migrations africaines Regis Minvielle

The present paper intends to analyze the processes of social integration of Cape Verdeans immigrants and their descendants (children, grand-children and great grandchildren) in Argentina. They are considered as the first migration from Sub-Saharan people in the country. They arrived at different time lapses from the late nineteenth century to the mid 1960s.

This work will focus on three aspects. The first one will be called “The generational angle”. This will allow us an approach to understanding the phenomena from a relational and comparative perspective. My aim is to analyze how the migrational dynamics configured “age diacritics”, due to establish contrasts between the different groups arrived at the different periods, configuring distinctions within the social relations: a “youth identification” with the main collective African/Cape Verdean identity distinguished from a “Portuguese” identity. At the same time, this paper will study the changes produced in the Cape Verdean associations located on the area of “Gran Buenos Aires” by processes of inter-generational negotiations.

In a second place, the “institutional angle”, which is articulated with the previous objective but which is differenciated in an analytical terms, will allow to analyze, how the process of adaptation of the argentines-Cape Verdean was bond to the associations, which constituted in the main spaces of meeting. Although the new generations remain distant from the institutional activities, in the actual context, the older members claim for the afro-descendants assistance of the associations.

The third angle will focus on the relations and bonds of Cape Verdeans and their descendants in a broader and transnational level, in other words, in terms of diaspora, seeking to integrate the Cape Verdeans development in Argentina with their symbolic bonds to the land of origin, Cape Verde , and to their relatives and friends that remained in this island.