Patterns of Jewish mobility between Rhodes and Buenos Aires (1905-1948)

Abstract

In this article I investigate the migration flux of Jews between Rhodes and Buenos Aires in a period marked by the political transition from the Ottoman imperial to Italian (semi)colonial rule. Migration overseas, a phenomenon that sees no clear rupture before and after the occupation of the island by Italian troops in 1912, is treated here as a strategy broadly implemented by individuals and families from the main island of the Dodecanese, putting the experience of the migrants in the foreground, in order to better understand the practice of migration as a negotiation of their position in an interconnected social space between two continents, and avoid to subsume the features of this movement under cultural or religious categories. Using the approach of a translocal history of migration, the article is an attempt to cross-read the developing sociopolitical context of Rhodes through the pattern of movement of humans and capital.