Encuentros Nacionales de Líderes Migrantes: espacios de gestación y consolidación de liderazgos africanos en Argentina

Abstract

This article analyzes the leadership construction of three African migrants, one of Congolese origin and two Senegalese, in the National Meetings of Migrant Leaders (ENLM, for its acronym in Spanish) in Argentina from 2014-2020. For this purpose, participant observations and interviews with varying degrees of depth have been used. The research results indicate that the three migrant leaders have had very heterogeneous roles within the meetings. Their leadership trajectories show unique ways of building legitimacy and visibility and are supported by a differential accumulation of social and political capital. Some contributions of this article are: (a) reconstruct the complexity and diversity of their trajectories, (b) make African migrant leaders’ role visible as human rights promoters, and (c) construct a non-criminalizing view of their political forms of organization.