Abstract

MORALES, Orlando Gabriel  and  KLEIDERMACHER, Gisele. Representations of Senegalese migrants in Buenos Aires: notes on exoticism and exoticization. Etnográfica [online]. 2015, vol.19, n.1, pp.29-50. ISSN 0873-6561.

The paper presents some field registers and considerations resulting from two studies of the recent Senegalese migration in Argentina and the social relationships in the local context, particularly in the cities of Buenos Aires and La Plata. Specifically, based on ethnographic data, exoticism and exoticization are considered as ways of perception, relation to and representation of these “black” migrants’ otherness. Two phenomena are interpreted as being associated with these ways of producing otherness, namely a hyper-visibility of “black” people and the social ignorance about Africa, African people and afro-descendents in the local context. Exoticism and the exoticization of recent Senegalese migrants are shown in connection or in a complementary relationship with the invisibilization process that historically affects the black African people and afro-descendents in Argentina. While focussing on current representations, they are contextualized in the historical national social processes of “othering” regarding the “black” population of African background.

Keywords : alterity; African migration; afro-descendants; blackness; whiteness; exoticism.

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