Abstract

NAVARRO-CONTICELLO, JOSE  and  ALONSO-MENESES, GUILLERMO. "I missed nothing but affections": Argentine migrants, memory, national identity, and exotic contributions to the cultural landscape of the Mexico-United States border. memorias [online]. 2023, n.49, pp.148-173.  Epub Nov 14, 2023. ISSN 1794-8886.  https://doi.org/10.14482/memor.49.302.851.

Seeking to make visible a these minority community of migrants and their contributions to the border cultural landscape, this article analyzes qualitatively the discourses of Argentines living in Tijuana and San Diego on their migratory experience, to identify how memory and national identity operate in them as mechanisms through which they give meaning to their trajectories. Through a qualitative and cross-sectional method, a non-probabilistic sample of 20 people of legal age -12 men and 8 women-, of Argentine nationality, 11 of them residents in San Diego and 9 in Tijuana for at least one year, was selected. Semi-structured interviews of the 'life story' type were applied to them, whose contents were interpreted based on the Foucauldian paradigm of discourse and considering postulates from the school of Critical Discourse Analysis. The results show that the relationships between memory, national identity and migratory experience come out linked to two significant nodes: i) the memories and symbolizations of the beginning of the migratory journey and ii) identity and nostalgic ties with the country of origin, especially through the idea of return. Around these two nodes, migrants reveal in their discourses diverse ways of connecting with the border cultural landscape through negotiations between their national identity and features of the local culture. Furthermore, it is concluded that memory and national identity could have an articulating role in migrant communities that, like this one, lack solid migratory networks and routes and are characterized by the dispersion of their members.

Keywords : international migration; memory; national identity; migratory experience; Mexico-United States border.

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