A city of trades: Spanish and Italian Immigrants in Late Nineteenth Century Buenos Aires. Argentina

Leticia Arroyo Abad and Blanca Sánschez-Alonso ()
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Blanca Sánschez-Alonso: Universidad CEU-San Pablo

No 88, Working Papers from European Historical Economics Society (EHES)

Abstract: The city of Buenos Aires is an extreme case in immigration history since the native workers were less than one third of the labour force. This paper is the first attempt to present empirical evidence on occupations and wages for Buenos Aires ca. 1890s. Using a large dataset, we look at the performance of Argentineans vis-ˆ-vis the largest two immigrant groups, the Italians and the Spaniards. We find that, on average, Argentineans enjoyed a higher wages; however, this group did not dominate all skill levels. We find skill specialisation by nationality. Despite higher literacy levels and the language advantage, Spaniards did not outperform Italians when looking at earnings and access to homeownership. With deeper and older ties to the community, Italians formed richer networks that helped their fellow countrymen in the host labour market.

Keywords: migration; wages; labour force; Buenos Aires (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 N36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2015-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-mig and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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https://www.ehes.org/wp/EHES_88.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: A city of trades: Spanish and Italian immigrants in late-nineteenth-century Buenos Aires, Argentina (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hes:wpaper:0088

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