A Theoretical-Methodological Proposal for the Analysis of Representations of Migrants and Nationals

Publication Date: 2020
Author(s): Kleidermacher, G. & González, A. 

The goal of this paper is to analyze the social representations of people who were born and live in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. This focus is the national identity of Argentina and the social representations of the Paraguayan and Bolivian population in said city. Three open-ended questions from a structured questionnaire applied to 400 cases were used to inform the research. The author focuses on the closure of those questions, which consists of a construction process of conceptual categories, formed from the open and axial coding process in accordance with the Grounded Theory. The main findings suggest that Paraguayan and Bolivian migrants are represented in terms of an economic and instrumental logic while the national identity, which was built in opposition to the migrant "otherness," consists of elements of the past and the future, which act as binders of a symbolic identity.