POLISH MIGRATORY GROUPS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS IN THE PROVINCE OF BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA.

Abstract

The aim of this report is to characterise Polish immigration in the province of Buenos Aires, specially in the localities of La Plata, Berisso and Ensenada, by analysing bibliographic and documental information about the group, and the applicability of a socio-cultural enquiry which results are loaded into a data base created as a part of the project called “socio-cultural mapping of immigrants and their descendants settled in the province of Buenos Aires (with the exception of Spaniards and Italians) ” which is being developed at the La Plata National University.

The majority of the large countries of the world has accepted and still accepts a high percentage of immigrants and foreign residents: the heterogeneity is an integrand and interactive part of each society. The "personal identity" has ceased being simple. Everyone can compose it combining heterogeneous elements of different areas of the culture. Since their cultural contact, migratory movements have promoted in our country a new form to generate and to express the identity.

In Argentina, research about immigration has traditionally been made fundamentally upon two majorities: Spanish and Italian. There were few specific anthropological studies concerning small and medium groups of immigrants (Capeverdeans, Polish, Greek, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, etc.).

As a result of our experience in the field of anthropology, working with some of these groups and their descendants, we became aware of the need of a tool which allows, in a flexible way, to recognise the profile which characterises the studied communities and those which will be studied in the future. Without such a tool, it would be difficult to characterise the modifications which were produced and still take place as a consequence of the cultural change and the intercultural contact.