SSIIM PAPER SERIES
SSIIM Paper Series, Vol. 4, April 2010
Contribuciones para una teoría de la segregación residencial y los mercados étnicos de los inmigrantes en ciudades de América Latina
by Tito Alegría
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In the last decades many cities in Latin America have received a growing number of international migrants, mostly from neighboring countries. Inside several of those cities some neighborhoods or zones present high concentration of foreign residents and/or economic activities guided mostly to the immigrants’ final consumption and managed by them too. This research conceptualizes the immigrants’ residential concentration as segregation by national origin, and their economic clustering as ethnic markets.
This immigrant’s intraurban spatial pattern seems to be similar to that present in countries of the North, however in countries of the South the reasons of the immigrants’ spatial concentration look different in type or intensity. Even more, an interpretation does not exist on that spatial concentration emergence neither of its localization, for Latin American cities. The few cases that appear in the scant literature are the “China towns” in almost each great city, the concentration of Bolivians in Sao Paulo and of the Peruvians in Santiago.
This research proposes for Latin American cities explanatory models for, first, the particular social marginalization that immigrants experiment generated by the local social structuring conditions; second, the mechanisms that produce the immigrants’ residential segregation and its localization inside the city; and third, the determining mechanisms of the formation of ethnic markets and its localization inside the urban area.
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SSIIM Paper Series, Vol. 3, February 2010
Practice of citizenship, practice of resistance: Mozambicans in Johannesburg, South Africa
by Elena Ostanel
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With the end of the apartheid regime and despite the strict immigration policies introduced since 1994, the number of foreign workers in Johannesburg, South Africa, has increased significantly up to approximately 7 percent of the city population. The Census 2001, recorded approximately 220.000 international migrants (6.7%) around 10.000 from Mozambique. In South Africa, one of the main obstacles to constructive thinking about international migration is the growth of xenophobic intolerance (Crush, 2005). Policy response is greatly influenced by the strong public perception that immigration is a threat to the economic and social stability of the local population. Starting form this assumption, the paper looks at some critical aspects of the relationship between Mozambican migrants and urban inclusion in Johannesburg. The paper wants to analyze the issue of citizenship looked at from the point of view of the practices immigrants put in place ‘to access’ the city, with special focus on security and public space. Self-governing initiatives that are neither planned nor provided by the local government poses major challenges to urban policies that address issues of social and spatial inclusion and has important implications for urban governance (Toner, Taylor, 2008).
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SSIIM Paper Series, Vol. 2, December 2009
Conexiones translocales y formación de territorios migratorios. El caso de los cochabambinos de Bérgamo
by Mirko Marzadro
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This paper focuses on the trans-local migration processes from Cochabamba (Bolivia) to Bergamo (Italy). It explores a deep rooted and complex international migration system which led to a very high concentration of Bolivians in a limited territory as the province of Bergamo is. About 20 thousand Bolivians are settled in Bergamo today, i.e. more than half of all Bolivians living in Italy. Over the last ten years this phenomenon started to emerge as a relevant social issue at the local level. The paper try to explain that such a migration system is based on two apparently independent processes that are instead strongly interconnected. On the one hand the Diocesan Cooperation of Bergamo is working in Bolivia since 1962; on the other, the migration process from Bolivia to Bergamo started during the early ‘70s. Through reference to theories on ‘transnationalism’, the paper aims at demonstrate how these two processes led to the creation of a ‘migratory territory’ made up of a ‘population’ (i.e. the Bolivian community in Bergamo plus all the people with whom they keep connections back home) and ‘actors’ structuring an international migration system.
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SSIIM Paper Series, Vol. 1, October 2009
Social and Spatial Inclusion of International Migrants: Local responses to a Global Process
by Marcello Balbo
