THE IMMIGRATION
FROM INDIA TO ARGENTINA
By Dr. Lía Rodriguez de la Vega
origin” (High Level Committee of the Indian Diaspora, n.d.,
paragraphs 1 and 2).
In this context, the Indian presence in Argentina can be
dated from the 19th century, which are the fi rst signs and
documents that attest to this. From that time until now, this
small community (2400 persons, according to what has been
indicated by the Embassy of India in Argentina) has been
integrating themselves into the residence society, with the
presence of a continuous fl ow towards the country.
This text aims to address the community of Indian
residents and their descendants in the Argentine Republic,
noting their general characteristics, their insertion, their
contributions and challenges.
The Indian Diaspora and the migration to Argentina
Leclerc (2004) points out that the idea of a “diaspora” to
refer to the emigrants from India already appears in an article
by Bharati (1976), but was popularized in the decade of the
‘90s, associated with the holding of international conferences
on the theme, the creation of a Center for the Study of this
Diaspora, at the University of Hyderabad, in 1996, and
the creation, by the Indian government, of the High Level
Committee on the Indian Diaspora (2000), which carried out
a survey of expatriate communities.
It should be noted that the Indian Diaspora is considered
one of the largest in the world, in terms of its volume,
estimated by the Indian Ministry of Foreign Aff airs / MEA
(2017) in 31.2 million Indians (and their descendants),
residing outside India.
Argentina, a country that has traditionally been a recipient
of immigration, received several immigrant contingents, most
19
Introduction
In the current globalized context, 258 million people
currently live outside their country of origin (UN, 2017) while
it can be said that the phenomenon of the mobility of people
impacts in diff erent ways in the domestic and international
sphere.
The emigrated collectives, under the denomination of
diaspora, thus form part of the non-state actors, which are
considered as “those units of the international system (entity,
group, individual) that enjoy the ability to mobilize resources
that allow them to achieve their objectives, that have the
capacity to exert infl uence on other actors of the system and
that enjoy a certain autonomy “(Barbé, 2008, p.153), which
develop diverse infl uences at a local and global level.
The dynamics of such human groups, based in diff erent
countries of the world, implies the consideration of culture
(understood as the symbolic-expressive dimension of social
practices) (Geertz 1973/2003) and identity (which implies
the incorporation of culture on the part of the subjects,
having a non-essential character but intersubjective and
relational, allowing delimit what they consider “own” of what
is not, translating not only diff erence but also inequalities)
(Giménez, 2007).
Thus, while Vertovec considers that the term diaspora
is used to refer to any de-territorialized or transnational
population (Vertovec and Cohen, 1999), referring to the
“Indian diaspora”, the Indian government understands it
as “a generic term that describes people emigrated from
territories that are currently within the boundaries of the
Republic of India. It also refers to his descendants” and points
out that these people “living in distant lands” “retained their
emotional, cultural and spiritual ties with their country of