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Accepted Paper:

The dangerous strangers: Gypsies, pimps & anarchists in the formation of modern Argentina  
Aleksandra Pudliszak (University of Amsterdam)

Paper short abstract:

In the past century the preoccupation with racial makeup led to regulations in the flow of peoples. The paper demonstrates how the processes of boundary-setting in Argentina constructed ‘Gypsies’ as natural groups and how this racial element was produced out of variables peculiar to the area.

Paper long abstract:

In the formation of modern Argentina, national identity has been strongly tied to immigration. 'Whitening' via European immigration was linked to the very definition of modernity ('el progreso'). Settlement of the vast pampas and the notion that to 'govern is to populate' was a powerful political discourse and long helped to promote an open immigration policy.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, a growing number of Argentine intellectuals and policy-makers became concerned with undesirable immigrants that appeared to pose a vital threat to the nation state. By focusing on bio-political discourses the paper explores how the notion of 'Gypsies' took shape in Argentine immigration policy (legislation and practice) and how 'Gypsies' became one of the focal points in state politics of control and regulation. The paper approaches 'Gypsies' as a construction in time and place. Races are not preexisting entities but 'social groups produced out of unequal power relations and discriminatory practices' (Stepan 1996: 136).

Although the existence of contemporary Argentine Gypsy communities is often cloaked in silence, according to recent research 'Gypsies' belong to one of the most discriminated groups in the country. In contrast to other minorities, the 'Gypsies' do not easily fit into Argentine racial categories. Neither do they have a place in the current historical narrative. The paper addresses these and other methodological difficulties arising in the study of Gypsies in Latin America.

Panel P23
Gypsies, Roma or Travellers and anthropologists of Europe
  Session 1