'En mi condición de apátrida…' Syro-Lebanese Inmigration in Ecuador during the First Half of the 20th Century

Abstract

Faced with restrictive and selective immigration policies put into effect by Ecuador in the first decades of the 20^th century and the impossibility of acquiring formal citizenship, Syro-Lebanese immigrants adopted a dual strategy to integrate into their new destination: negotiating a formal identity within the tutelary action of the French Legation in Ecuador, and generating associative spaces that enabled them to make evident their disposition to be articulated in the receiving nation, without ceasing to make their place of origin visible. This article explores both dimensions as different experiences of a single diaspora, which allowed for the creation of alternative senses of national identity, interrelating the places of origin and destination.