Social division of residential space and migrations. The San Carlos de Bariloche case, Argentina

Abstract

The intra-urban space in Latin American contemporary cities shows deep social divisions, given the type of development they have undergone under neoliberal models. In this article the city, as part of a particular political and historical evolution, is analyzed from a multidimensional approach with special emphasis on the relation established between internal territorial divisions and the migratory component of the population. San Carlos de Bariloche (Argentinean Patagonia) has an important heterogeneous composition of ethnic and cultural diversity, as a result of different internal and international migrations. There are deep and complex material and symbolic distances which divide the tourism city (the Í€œArgentinean SwitzerlandÍ€) associated with an elite integrated by urban internal and European migrants, from the Í€œEl AltoÍ€ city, where Chilean and rural internal migrants have settled in working-class districts. The class-origin relationship is woven into a social division of residential space which deepens and strengthens urban segregation and builds up tensions.