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Français en Argentine
Franceses en Argentina
The French immigration in Argentina was one of the most numerous of all the European immigrants who came to Argentina from mid-nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century. Although far below the two main streams of immigration at that time (Spanish and Italian), French immigration was comfortably placed in a second category along with other communities that also had a significant number.
Thus, It formed one of the most prominent communities of French descendants on the continent and in the world outside of Europe. Between 1857 and 1946 , 261,020 French emigrated to Argentina. Of this number, imore than 100,000 settled permanently in the country. Today, more than 6 million Argentines have some degree of French ancestry(up to 17% of the total population).
While Argentines of French descent make up a substantial percentage of the Argentine population, they are less visible than that of other origins of similar size. This is due to the high degree of cultural assimilation, mixed with other European immigrants, in the case of the French Basque immigrants who had a different cultural background from the rest of the French, and in the case of areas such as the northwest and Cuyo a la lack of important French colonies where French immigrants settled to work in crops or livestock.
French Embassy in Argentina.
Regions of origin
The first wave of French to arrive in the country came mainly from the southern regions of Aquitaine, Midi-Pyrenees. The French-Basque along with the late immigration of Pied Noirs were also a numerically important group.
Half of French immigrants until the second half of the 20th century came from Southwestern France, especially from the Basque Country, Béarn (Basses-Pyrénées accounted for more than 20% of immigrants), Bigorre and Rouergue. Other important groups came from Savoy and the Paris region. It was estimated that at least 70% of French immigrants in Tandil were coming from the Southwestern part of the country and that half of them were of Basque stock. Until the 1880s, the great majority of French immigrants to Argentina were from the Pyrenees.
The flow decreased dramatically during WWI. After 1918, French immigrants to Argentina numbered 1,500 per year and had a slightly positive net migration rate. The flow of French immigrants then gradually dried up. In the 1960s, around 4,000 Pieds-Noirs immigrated to Argentina from the newly independent Algeria, they constituted the last large migration from France to Argentina.
Rue D'Argentine, Paris.
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