This project examines how the Arabic-speaking immigrant community in northwestern Argentina integrated into local society while still preserving ties to their homelands. Emigration from Greater Syria (contemporary Syria and Lebanon, historical Palestine, and parts of Turkey and Iraq) was part of a global process from 1846 to 1940 in which more than 150 million people migrated to the Americas, Southeast and Central Asia, Manchuria and Siberia. Indeed, mass migration of diverse ethnic and religious groups was a signature feature of this near century of movement as 51 million people migrated from Europe (equivalent to twenty percent of its population) to the Americas, as did two million people from Asia and the Levant. After the United States, Argentina was the most popular destination for those heading west and possessed one of the fastest growing economies during the same era. By 1914, the Arabic-speaking immigrant community, comprising more than 100,000 Christians, Jews, and Muslims, became the third largest immigrant group in Argentina, trailing only Italians and Spaniards.
I seek to understand how immigrants survived in a foreign and at times hostile society while maintaining links with the old country. In Argentina, the Arabic-speaking population emerged as an economic powerhouse and a maligned immigrant group. This community became the preeminent ethno-national commercial force in Tucumán, a northwestern province, by 1920, surpassing even Argentine merchants. As this immigrant group grew in commercial strength, members began to penetrate local Argentine social institutions despite limited avenues to political participation and power. Conversely, men from Greater Syria also had the highest arrest rates of any national group in Tucumán for disorderly conduct, aggravated assault and larceny between 1908 and 1941, suggestive of local prejudice and weak social networks for poorer immigrants. Arabic-speaking women worked as domestic servants, owned shops, formed charity organizations, and raised families passing on cultural heritage. Furthermore, as issues of social class intersected with political transformations in the homeland (Greater Syria), immigrants contested rights of association and leadership in organized immigrant groups in Argentina. My dissertation demonstrates that the composition of the Arabic-speaking community changed over time in response to a whole host of issues, including transnational politics, competing notions of gender and family roles, and economic opportunities and limitations. While some may have run afoul of the law, the community did not break down into religious divisions that might have threatened either their general identities or their connections to their new place of residence. Thus, like Arabic-speaking communities in the United States and elsewhere in the world, immigrants from Greater Syria residing in Argentina experienced years of religious coexistence and cooperation, rather than conflict.