Chile: Heterogeneity and Complexity of a Country in Motion. Peruvian Community in Santiago

Chilean migratory history as an immigration country is quite recent as it has until the more recent past mainly been a country of emigration, affected by the alternation of a complex and intermittent incoming and outgoing mobility.The adoption of an interdisciplinary, historical, socio-politicalcultural perspective appears to be the most appropriate to outline with the greatest degree of possible relevance the complex peculiarity and circumstantiality' (Geertz, 1973) of the alterations that have concerned and still concern the dynamics of displacement and settlement in Chile.An exploration and verification has been undertaken of such local dynamics and how they are connected to regional and global contexts and whether and how the aspiration and right to individual mobility have found opportunities or symbolic and material barriers supporting or hindering their realisation inside the cultural and social environment of the various historical periods.In this way, the history of the host country will not be separated from that of the people it receives (Cohen, 1987).An holistic vision allows an exploration of the wide range of social and cultural phenomena induced by migration and the repercussions that have at the same time occurred (Brettell, 2008) and welcomes the idea of movement' connected to the condition of being a migrant', thereby making clear that culture is not located in a naturally and historically delimited territory.Rather, it is anchored to the movement of its own bearers and transported elsewhere to give rise to new and unprecedented configurations.Observed from such a perspective, mobility becomes an innovation bearer and, as such, an unpredictable tool for cultural change/enrichment (Bhabha, 2001;Schaffhauser Mizzi, 2016).The recent Chilean migratory transition is not an isolated phenomenon.It is part of a broader interregional mobility that is traceable since pre-Hispanic times, a mobility that has mainly concerned neighbouring countries, although in different forms and with different characteristics.As part of this culture of mobility' that has its roots in time, some countries have historically been privileged destinations for migratory movements, such as Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica and Venezuela, while others are countries of origin, such as Mexico, Cuba, Colombia and Chile.The distinguishing feature of such interregional movements has always been that migrants, who have mainly limited their movements to border areas or have moved towards the city, have primarily been regarded as serving a complementary function to internal migration, which is to work in ethnicised' sectors, such as that of Abstract: Since the 1990s, Chile has found itself handling a complex migratory transition and, therefore, is governing the reception and integration of a growing and heterogeneous incoming population.The aim of the first part of this work is to reconstruct the dynamics of interregional mobility, thus placing Chilean immigration in the broader context of geographical and cultural belonging.Next, the migration policies adopted by the democratic states after the end of dictatorship will be examined through a critical analysis of institutional documents and the reference literature to raise the idea of an emigrant subject sustained on the basis of the power that has "ordered" individual lives as functional to societal organisation.Finally, prominence will be given to an analysis of the case study on the Peruvian community that has settled in the capital, focusing on the dynamics of the community"s relations with the Chilean and on the mutual representations that mark the encounter and cohabitation in the barrios [neighbourhood] of Santiago.