Emotions and migration in Argentina at the turn of the 20th century

Abstract

At the dawn of the twentieth century, on the platform of a southern Italian train station, amidst the bustle, women and children in tears crowd together to say goodbye to travelers. The travelers are young men who are undertaking the first leg of the journey to South America, husbands who have promised their wives that the separation will be temporary. Some intend to return and plan to meet their families again when they too cross the Atlantic. Both those who leave and those who stay behind will have to get accustomed to a transnational life that involves new roles and responsibilities, as well as the challenge of preventing migration from dissolving their affective bonds. When men leave, their real presence becomes an imaginary closeness, and the daily and oral dynamics of the marital relationship turn into fixed words on a piece of paper where expressions of love, recriminations, and suspicions, as well as news, advice, and information, converge, creating a “singular transnational space.” The man’s fear of his wife’s infidelity, the woman’s fear of being abandoned by her husband, the need for money, the administration of remittances, the advice on the household management, and children’s upbringing were common topics in the epistolary exchange through which the marriage relationships transformed by the migration were sustained. Letters certainly had the capacity for shaping a sense of imaginary co-presence by transporting thoughts, objects (a photograph, money, a dried flower), and emotions. Nevertheless, it is also true that the migratory experience was disruptive, as distance weakened the bonds, and the passing of time eroded the longing for reunion. If thousands of married couples separated by migration managed to reunite because husbands returned to Europe or wives and children crossed the Atlantic to join them, thousands more were unable to fulfill the promise of family reunification made upon departure. On some occasions, women refused to emigrate when they were called by their husbands. In others, it was the men who, attracted by the novelty of the big cities or immersed in the intense mobility of internal migrations—which used to follow overseas ones—discontinued contact with their families, broke the promise of returning, formed new couples, and even got married again.