The other europeans: immigration into latin america and the international labour market (1870-1930) *

TL;DR: In this paper, a survey of Latin America's immigration from the late nineteenth century to 1930 is presented, which assesses inferences about European migrants in Latin America derived from the experience of migrants in the United States and questions its validity.

Abstract: Not all Europeans migrated to the United States. Between 1879 and 1930 around 13 million of Europeans went to Latin America; however, Latin America is not fully incorporated into current debates on the cost and benefits from Atlantic migration. This paper surveys Latin America's immigration from the late nineteenth century to 1930. It assesses inferences about European migrants in Latin America derived from the experience of migrants in the United States and questions its validity. The topics covered here include migration trends and chronology, national origin of the flows and the evolution of real wages. New data on the cost of passages for transatlantic migration is also presented. This is followed by an examination of the immigrants' contribution to economic growth in Latin America dealing basically with the issue of human capital brought in by European immigrants. The extent to which immigrants alter the composition of the labour force and the demographic structure, both in the short and the long run is also examined.

Summary

The huge wage gap between sending regions in Southern Europe and Latin

• The contrast between a densely populated Europe and the empty lands in America (a powerful image for potential emigrants) was not possible between Europe and the majority of countries in Latin America.
• Immigrants in Latin America (mainly from Southern Europe) are usually represented as poor, backward and illiterate 5 .
• Censuses provide with some picture of the adjustment of immigrants to host labour markets.
• Population censuses suggest that immigration to Latin America contributed decisively to the urban labour force formation in commerce, industry, building, domestic service and general unskilled labour force.

According to

• Another relevant issue is whether immigrants contributed to raise literacy levels in Latin America.
• Immigrants raised literacy levels in some Latin American countries but other forces mattered more, particularly political commitment and taxes allocated to improve educational levels among their populations.
• They also contributed importantly to the formation of industrial and urban workforces.
• Immigrants in Argentina and Brazil accounted for disproportionately large shares of the workers in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires manufacturing industries.
• Leff (1997) disagrees and argues that immigration was neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition to promote development.

Section III. Was immigration a demographic gift or a demographic burden?

• Immigrants who settled permanently in Latin America contributed to the growth of the population over the long run.
• This was especially true for countries like Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.
• In the short run, immigrants increase participation rates and contribute to the growth of the labour force, but in the long run the age structure of the population changes as the population grows.
• Young permanent immigrants might also have raised birth rates and increased dependency burdens.
• By Even in the 1940s when the demographic transition was on its way in more Latin American countries that in the preceding period, Argentina clearly had the lowest dependency rates of all.

A new research agenda: the role of social capital

• A new research agenda should include new problems and hypotheses.
• There is an abundant literature on the associations and societies created by immigrants in the host countries.
• Since social capital is assumed to be transferable it might be that Latin American countries received not only more literate and skilled Italian immigrants than the United States but also immigrants with the ability to create social capital.
• On balance, Latin America received poorer and potentially less productive immigrants than the United States simply because the dominant stream emigrating from Europe over the years 1880-1914 came from the economically backward areas of Southern and Eastern Europe.
• Migrants raised the dependent age groups in the population, particularly children, in the medium and long run.

Argentina Brazil Cuba Uruguay

• 1 The distinction between free and coerced labour is important here since Latin America was one of the major participants in the Atlantic slave trade.
• Klein (1999) , Eltis (1983) 2 I am grateful to Tim Dore for this reference and to Bruce Sacerdote for allowing me to use his unpublished data.
• It should be bear in mind that Spanish data refers to prices from Galician ports.
• That is why research with nominative data, as Moya (1998) for the city of Buenos Aires, proved so useful.
• The high proportion of Spanish-born bank clerks in Cuba in 1907 (57 percent) reflects the weight of the Spanish banks in the island years before the Independence (Maluquer de Motes 1992).

Figures

Figure 1

Table 4 Dependency Rates: Latin America and other New World Countries (1872-1947)

Table 2 Real Wage Performance by Decade relative to the Mediterranean Countries (Weighted average of Italy, Portugal and Spain)

Table 1 Transatlantic Passage Fares, 1850-1914 (in current $)

Table 3 Argentina 1895. Literacy Rates (%) Population older than 7 years old

Full text

UNIVERSIDAD CARLOS III DE MADRID
Working Papers in Economic History
UNIVERSIDAD CARLOS III DE MADRID c/ Madrid 126 28903 Getafe (Spain)Tel: (34) 91 624 96 37
Site: http://www.uc3m.es/uc3m/dpto/HISEC/working_papers/working_papers_general.html
DEPARTAMENTO DE
HISTORIA ECONÓMICA
E INSTITUCIONES
November 2007 WP 07-17
The Other Europeans: Immigration into Latin
America and the International Labour Market
(1870-1930)
Blanca Sánchez-Alonso
Abstract
Not all Europeans migrated to the United States. Between 1879 and 1930 13
million of Europeans went to Latin America; however, Latin America is not fully
incorporated into current debates on the cost and benefits from Atlantic
migration. This paper surveys Latin America immigration experience since the
late nineteenth century to 1930. It assesses inferences about European
migrants in Latin America derived from the experience of migrants in the United
States and questions its validity. The topics covered here include migration
trends and chronology, national origin of the flows and the evolution of real
wages. New data on the cost of passages for transatlantic migration is also
presented. This is followed by an examination of the immigrants’ contribution to
economic growth in Latin America dealing basically with the issue of human
capital brought in by European immigrants. The extent to which immigrants
alter the composition of the labour force and the demographic structure, both in
the short and the long run is also examined. A final section concludes with
some new avenues for future research.
Keywords: Immigration, Latin America, Demography, Economic Development,
International Comparisons
JEL Classification: N01 N36
Blanca Sánchez-Alonso: Universidad San Pablo-Ceu e Insituto Figuerola de Historia
Económica. Dpto. de Economía, Julián Romea 23, 28003 Madrid (Spain).
Email: blanca@ceu.es
http://www.uc3m.es/uc3m/inst/LF/subpages/personal/blanca_sanchez.html

THE OTHER EUROPEANS: IMMIGRATION INTO LATIN AMERICA AND
THE INTERNATIONAL LABOUR MARKET (1870-1930)*
Blanca Sánchez-Alonso
Universidad San Pablo-Ceu
Dpto. de Economía
Julián Romea 23
28003 Madrid (Spain)
blanca@ceu.es
Abstract
Not all Europeans migrated to the United States. Between 1879 and 1930 13 million of
Europeans went to Latin America; however, Latin America is not fully incorporated
into current debates on the cost and benefits from Atlantic migration. This paper
surveys Latin America immigration experience since the late nineteenth century to
1930. It assesses inferences about European migrants in Latin America derived from the
experience of migrants in the United States and questions its validity. The topics
covered here include migration trends and chronology, national origin of the flows and
the evolution of real wages. New data on the cost of passages for transatlantic migration
is also presented. This is followed by an examination of the immigrants’ contribution to
economic growth in Latin America dealing basically with the issue of human capital
brought in by European immigrants. The extent to which immigrants alter the
composition of the labour force and the demographic structure, both in the short and the
long run is also examined. A final section concludes with some new avenues for future
research.
* I am grateful to Alejandro Vázquez and Bruce Sacerdote for their data on passage
fares. Roberto Cortés Conde and Carlos Marichal made many insightful comments
while Patrick K. O’Brien contributed with extremely useful suggestions. All remaining
errors are mine.

2
The role of Latin America in the international economy has changed in many
ways since the late nineteenth century particularly in relation to the international labour
market. Around 1900, Latin America was an area of destination for millions of
immigrants, mainly Europeans. By the end of the twentieth century, Latin America had
experienced a “population explosion” and the region is no longer an area of
immigration. On the contrary, one of the main features of almost all Latin American
countries nowadays is the high volume of emigration to the United States and Europe.
This paper concentrates on the so called “age of mass migration”, 1870-1930,
and will attempt to bring LatinAmerica histories of migration in the Atlantic economy,
a history still biased clearly in favour of the United States Immigration history has been
guilty of an “American bias” even though since the 1960s historians like Frank
Thistlethwaite (1960) and John D. Gould (1979, 1980) praised for a comparative
approach in immigration research. The revival of migration studies in the 1990s showed
and effort to integrate countries other than the US, Argentina being the case in point,
(Hatton and Williamson 1998) but the core of the analysis is still the American
experience.
Text books on economic growth in the long run or economic history in Latin
America concentrate on trade and capital and devote only a few pages to the
relationship of Latin American countries with the international labour markets.
Particularly British historians such as Platt or Ferns focused their research on trade and
capital since those were the basic links of the British economy with Latin America
during the modern period. Since the British were not a major immigrant groups in Latin
America, they hardly considered the role of foreign labour. For the colonial period the
preferential attention of social scientist is given to native populations and coerced
migration from Africa, and to a much lesser degree to free immigration. African slaves
were part of the world supply of labour force to Latin America. In terms of immigration
alone, America was an extension of Africa rather than Europe until late in the
nineteenth century.
Research on immigration in Latin America since the Industrial Revolution is a
comparatively neglected field constrained by a narrow conception of the “Atlantic
Economy” and some over-simplifications of the Latin experience during the age of mass
migration. The experiences of Latin American countries are not fully incorporated into
current debates on the cost and benefits from Atlantic migration despite the fact that 13
million of Europeans migrated to that region between 1870 and 1930 (a higher number

3
than to Australia and Canada). Even the most favoured country by researchers,
Argentina, still lags behind research done for the United States, Australia and Canada.
This paper draws together, in the form of an analytical survey, a number of
different aspects of the Latin America immigration experience since the late nineteenth
century to 1930. Its main objective is to rethink the role of European migration to Latin
America and to clarify some over-simplifications of the Latin experience during the age
of mass migration.
Section I discusses to what extent Latin America mimics the experience of the
USA focusing on migration trends, national origins of immigrants, the evolution of real
wages and the costs of passage across the Atlantic. Did migrants contribute to growth is
the question addressed in section II by analysing how much human capital was brought
in by immigrants and how did they adjust to the labour market. Then, the extent to
which immigrants alter the composition of the labour force and the demographic
structure, both in the short and the long run is examined in section III. As a conclusion,
the paper includes some new avenues for future research.
Section I. The international labour market: why immigration into Latin
America lagged behind the United States?
Improvements in transport and communication over the nineteenth century and
the progressive elimination of institutional barriers to commerce induced an impressive
increase in commodity and factor mobility. About 60 million Europeans migrated to
economies of the New World characterized by scarcities of capital and labour and by
cheap and abundant land. Not all countries in Latin America suffered from labour
scarcity. Mexico had a relatively large native population and Brazil had both a large
slave and free labour force. Resource abundance with labour scarcity certainly
characterized the River Plate area and the Brazilian hinterland. Nevertheless, almost all
Latin American governments tried to attract foreign labour to prevent labour shortages
in specific sectors of the national economies and some governments thought that
immigration of culturally “superior” Europeans could contribute to economic and social
modernization.
Ferenczi and Willcox, (1929, 1931) document the main trends in international
migration and show that the majority of European immigrants went to the United States.

4
Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century Latin America remained marginal to
international market in free labour
1
. Political instability in several new Republics; the
low demand for free labour in the majority of Latin American countries who possessed
either large native populations (Mexico) or used slaves (Brazil and Cuba); the high cost
of the passage; unfavourable geographies and climates in the hinterland; unattractive
political and cultural characteristics; all help to explain why Latin America lagged well
behind the United States as a destination for immigrants.
After 1870 the situation changed. Political stability and the emergence of
policies design to attract foreign immigrants that had been growing since the 1850s and
1860s including religious freedom, rights of private ownership and respect for civil
rights, friendlier attitudes towards foreigners, all helped. The story is well known:
exports rose, capital flows from Europe came on stream and investment in railways
altered prospects for the exploitation of the regions abundant in natural resources
(Bethell 1986, Bulmer-Thomas 1994).
Argentina, Brazil after the abolition of slavery, Uruguay and Cuba were the
main destination for foreign labour. More than 90 percent of the 13 million European
immigrants who travelled to Latin America between 1870 and 1930 chose these four
countries although modest immigration flows to countries such as Chile, Venezuela or
Mexico occurred. Others like Paraguay or Peru failed almost completely to attract
European immigrants.
Gross figures differ considerably from net immigration supposedly because one
of the main features of European immigration to Latin America was an exceptional rate
of return migration (Gould 1980). Sánchez-Albornoz (1986) estimates that between
1892 and 1930 only 46 percent of immigrants remained permanently in the state of Sao
Paulo and the same rate is found in Cuba (47 percent) between 1902 and 1930. For
Argentina it has been calculated that the rate of return was around 53 percent (Rechini
de Lattes and Lattes 1975). But return migration increased all over the world from the
1880s onwards. For example an increasing fraction of those who migrated to the United
States after 1890 never intended to remain permanently and returned to their home
country. Temporary movements in search of higher wages often over long distances and
across frontiers, was an established tradition in many of the regions from which the
“new” immigrants were drawn.
Net immigration in Argentina over the period 1881-1930 reached 3.8 million.
Uruguay attracted nearly 600,000 immigrants during the same period. More or less the

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What is the dominant feature of the international economy in the nineteenth century?

Per capita income divergence between rich (core) and poor (periphery) countries is the dominant feature of the international economy in the nineteenth century. 

Q2. What contributions have the authors mentioned in the paper "The other europeans: immigration into latin america and the international labour market (1870-1930)" ?

This paper surveys Latin America immigration experience since the late nineteenth century to 1930. This is followed by an examination of the immigrants ’ contribution to economic growth in Latin America dealing basically with the issue of human capital brought in by European immigrants. The extent to which immigrants alter the composition of the labour force and the demographic structure, both in the short and the long run is also examined. 

Q3. How many native workers did they bring to Brazil?

From 1914 through 1929 a quarter of a million native internal migrants passed through the labour system regulated by the Sao Paulo government and many others entered the region without official assistance. 

Q4. How many immigrants were illiterate in argentina in 1914?

According to Argentinean population census only 26 percent of Spaniards overthe age of seven living in Argentina were illiterate in 1914 compared to 50 percent of the total Spanish population in 1910. 

Q5. What are the main reasons why Brazilians chose to subsidize the slave trade?

According to Klein (1999) high transport costs, increasingly severe export taxes and other provincial government restrictions seem to have curtailed seriously this internal slave trade by the late 1870s and early 1880s. 

Q6. What does Leff think of the situation in Sao Paulo?

Leff believes that if overseas immigrants had not been available, that supply of labour to fill the growing demand of industrial workers in Sao Paulo could have come from domestic sources. 

Q7. What is the main reason why Hatton and Williamson (2005) say that the increasing importance?

In spite of that, Hatton and Williamson (2005) stress that the increasing importance of less industrial Eastern and Southern Europe as an emigrant source served to raise the immigrant proportions rural and to lower their average skills and literacy. 

Q8. What is the main reason for the lack of information on immigrants on arrival?

since immigrants often change country and occupation at the same time, especially when they are young, it is not clear whether the occupational information of immigrants on arrival is a useful indicator of their subsequent contribution to economic growth. 

Q9. What are the qualifications about the prevailing representation of immigrants in Latin America?

Furthermore qualifications can be made about the prevailing representation of immigrants in Latin America as unskilled, illiterate and low productive labour. 

Q10. What is the case that the Italians received a preferential attention to education in different countries?

It could be the case that public commitment to education in different countries was also influenced by the stock of social capital.