Entre passé et présent, entre migration et exil : les Espagnols et leurs descendants au Venezuela

Abstract

Can political, economic and religious migrants be studied together ? Is it possible to jointly analyze the Spanish migrants and their descendants in Venezuela ? Historiography responds negatively and the sources may corroborate this idea of a separate approach. Nevertheless, the fact of isolating the migrants, the exiles and the missionaries does not seem consistent with the reality of the Spanish migration in Venezuela during the years 1940-1950. Therefore, the aim of this article is to study the Spanish and their descendants as a whole, which may possess its own internal logic - despite its heterogeneity. We realized 20 interviews of Spanish migrants and exiles in Venezuela and Spain, moved by the desire to assess the reality of migration patterns. Paying a great attention in the way the respondents restituted and recontextualized the story of their migration, we were able to compare the life trajectories and memories of these different kinds of migrants.