Abstract
In this article, we address the Bolivian work in the clothing industry in the cities of São Paulo (Brazil) and Buenos Aires (Argentina) through an analysis of the social networks that allow the entry and circulation of migrants in this activity. In the light of urban sociology debate on immigrant economies, we wonder whether these activities produce ethnic economies or circulatory territories. Based on multi-site participant observation and 50 interviews with Bolivian workers, we propose the hypothesis of a hybrid economy, with a strong ethnic component associated to high mobility of workers in multiethnic contexts. We argue that this hybridity is due to the formation of two contracting network types with different logics of operation: one, from the migrant’s place of origin in Bolivia and, the other, in the migrant’s destination cities. Circumstances that allow us to see the emergence of new cosmopolitanisms in these sewing territories. However, these new cosmopolitanisms are ambivalently associated with the appeals of ethnicity, outlining a new field of political clashes, internal to the Bolivian community, around their identity belonging in the destination cities.
Keywords
clothing industry; international migrations; Bolivian diaspora; ethnic economies; circulatory territories