Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the City of Buenos Aires (Argentina) had a significant demographic growth due to the strong weight of the migratory component. This article focuses on describing the theoretical frameworks deployed by criminologists and related experts to “racialize” the links between immigration and crime in Archivos de Criminología, Medicina Legal, Psiquiatría y Ciencias Afines, a journal published between 1902 and 1913. In so doing, and inspired by the Southern criminology proposals and reflections, I propose to analyze the criminological travels related to the Italian Positive School, to detail the grounds the thematic links between immigration and crime were based on and, in turn, to empirically illustrate different arguments around criminology as a Northern discipline.
The rhetoric of closed borders: Quotas, lax enforcement and illegal immigration
