In-between motivations and effects. Residential mobility in contemporary Argentina

Abstract This research study explores the tensions that “residential movements” coming from big cities generate on small and medium-sized cities in contemporary Argentina. In the light of two ethnographic cases, the study presents a bi-dimensional model to retrieve the motivations of metropolitan flows and to take into account the effects that mobility produces on specific territories, sociability patterns, temporal perceptions and identity processes. Moreover, through this study we challenge some of the concepts most deeply rooted in the history of the social sciences.