Immigrant occupations in 1900s Uruguay: new evidence from birth records

Were economic migrants to Latin America able to access the same occupations as locals? We examine 1900s Uruguay, where immigrants accounted for approximately one-fifth of the total population. Historical censuses in Uruguay are very limited, so we rely on random sampling to mine a new individual-level source: Uruguayan civil birth records. We find that the occupations of foreign-born fathers were in general like that of their Uruguayan counterparts, with the important exception of non-manual high-status occupations (especially “rancher,” hacendado ), for which being born in Uruguay remained a statistically significant advantage. This reflects both the success and the limits of Uruguay’s relatively egalitarian economy: migrants were readily integrated into a wide range of occupational paths but were less likely to reach the top of the occupational structure, where key resources (notably land) remained concentrated in the hands of a local elite.