ABSTRACT
In the post–World War II period, the Greek state envisaged South American countries as potential destinations for Greek immigrants. The most important postwar Greek migration flow to Argentina took place spontaneously in the period 1948–1952, motivated by social networks and the presence of Greek communities in several Argentinean cities. On the other hand, Argentina’s participation in the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) since February 1953 had a limited impact on Greek migration flows to the country. Any efforts for agricultural settlement failed, and a few hundred skilled workers moved to Argentina, through ICEM’s mechanism, only during the presidency of Arturo Frondizi (1958–1962) who had adopted developmentalism as his basic government policy.
In relation to Brazil, most Greeks settled there after World War II and migrated through organized ICEM schemes. The results of these assisted flows were numerically superior when compared to Argentina’s. Nevertheless, Greek urban workers complained that the conditions they faced in Brazil did not meet their expectations, and the plans for the settlement of Greek farmers did not materialize. Matching the needs and priorities of Southern European countries like Greece with those of developing South American countries, through regulated migration flows, was a difficult task in the 1950s and 1960s. The post–World War II international migration schemes “from South to South” generated undoubtedly interesting debates and policy designs but had limited practical results, as they could not compete with the capacity of industrialized countries to attract and absorb labor force from peripheral areas.
