Migrating and being a migrant: Notions of cities of current foreign migrants settled in four cities of southern Chile

This article presents the results of a qualitative study which explored the notions of migrating and being a migrant that foreigners settled in four cities of southern Chile (Valdivia, Osorno, Puerto Montt and Castro) have regarding their own migration process. In order to construct a substantive theory derived from the data, the methodology was developed based on the procedural guidelines of Grounded Theory (Strauss and Corbin, 2002) using semi-structured of 21 participants from Europe, Latin American, the Caribbean, Asia and the Middle East. The main results reveal that migration concepts associated with cultural identification processes are related to the voluntary or involuntary obliteration of relational practices of origin in the place of settlement and reproduction as a form of resistance to not lose such practices. Moreover, conceptions of being a migrant built on what participants believe that Chileans think about them reveal that Europeans are valued positively and Latin Americans are valued negatively, nested around physical appearance, skin color and prejudices about trades and/or expected work performance. Likewise, non-migrants and migrants identify themselves as ordinary people in a desire to subvert the dominant classifications that reproduce relations of economic inequality and cultural exclusion. Finally, we conclude that, for the migrants themselves, migration is primarily a process of growth and personal enrichment regardless of the reasons for departure and the material or emotional conditions experienced in the place of settlement.