Did Migrants Build the Welfare State? Migration as a Social Policy Driver in Early Twentieth-Century Uruguay

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter analyses the links between transatlantic migration and the social policies that gave Uruguay the fame of being Latin America’s first welfare state in the early twentieth century. Three lines of impact will be examined: (a) how Uruguayan politicians framed health and labour legislation as a means to attract migrant workers and used the reforms in their recruitment of European migrants; (b) how migrants shaped the labour movement, which successfully demanded and negotiated social policies, and organised welfare in mutual societies; and (c) how second- and third-generation migrants formed part of social policy reform circles.