"Destination: Neuquén." Migrations and residential patterns in Northern Patagonia (1960-1970)

Abstract

In the sixties, Germani used the residential patterns as key to explain the rapid assimilation of the immigrants to the Argentine society. In spite of using as catalyst to a leafy production, this worry rarely advanced beyond the pampeana region and of the limit imposed by the closing of the inmigratory massive cycle. For this reason, Neuquen constitutes an interesting place from where observe residential patterns deployed in cities that had his hour of growth with the diffusion of desarrollista's ideas. It is not a question of examining this problematic of isolated form, without of contemplating the relations that it supported with other factors of great explanatory value. In the dialog between place of birth, occupation and the urban ecology we find a way for explore the relations between micro and macro dimensions from a new place. Far from the tempting impulse ofgeneralizing from the study of a network, we will try to individualize the conditions that used as substratum for the action the individuals who were integrating them. With this general aim we will describe, first, the Neuquen urban landscape in order to indicate the continuities that it was dragging from the "territoriana" stage and the existing transformations in the sixties. In the second part, we present a sketch of the accessions of the migrants (Argentinians and Chileans) an effort for understanding the Neuquen urban ecology for this period.