French Argentines (; ) refers to Argentine citizens of full or partial French ancestry or persons born in France who reside in Argentina. French Argentines form one of the largest ancestry groups after Italian Argentines and Spanish Argentines. Between 1857 and 1946, 261,020 French people immigrated to Argentina. Besides immigration from continental France, Argentina also received, as early as the 1840s, immigrants with French background from neighboring countries, notably Uruguay, which expanded the French Argentine community. In 2006, it was estimated that around 6 million Argentines had some degree of French ancestry, up to 17% of the total population.
Argentines of French descent make up a substantial proportion of the Argentine population, but they are less visible than other similarly-sized ethnic group because of the high degree of assimilation and the lack of substantial French colonies throughout the country.
French immigration to Argentina
During the first half of the 19th century, most of French immigrants to the New World settled in the United States and in Uruguay. While the United States received 195,971 French immigrants between 1820 and 1855, only 13,922 Frenchmen, most of them from the Basque Country and Béarn, left for Uruguay between 1833 and 1842. During this period of time, Uruguay received most of French immigrants to South America as the conflictual relationship between Rosas and the French government had created a xenophobic climate against French immigrants in the Buenos Aires province. After the fall of Rosas in 1852, Argentina overtook Uruguay and became the main pole of attraction for French immigrants in Latin America.
From the second half of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, Argentina received the second largest group of French immigrants worldwide, second only to the United States. Between 1857 and 1946 Argentina received 239,503 French immigrants - out of which 105,537 permanently settled in the country. By 1976, 116,032 had settled in Argentina. French immigration to Argentina can be divided in three main periods, as follows: France was the third source of immigration to Argentina before 1890, constituting over 10% of immigrants, only surpassed by Italians and Spaniards; from 1890 to 1914, immigration from France, although reduced, was still significant; lastly, after WWI, the flow of French immigrants was minimal and only grew again after WWII to finally stop in the 1950s.
In 1810, Buenos Aires had a population of 28,528 inhabitants, including 13 French citizens. At the beginning of the 19th century, French immigration to Argentina was not substantial. Mainly constituted of political exiles and former officers from the imperial army, it became more considerable from the year 1825, reaching up to 1,500-2,000 French immigrants some years. In 1839, it was estimated that 4,000 Frenchmen were living in the province of Buenos Aires, this figure increased to 12,000 in 1842. From the next decade, French people started to migrate to Argentina in large numbers.
During the first period (1852–1890), French immigration was similar, in numbers and in features, to that of Italians and Spaniards. It belonged to a larger movement of emigration of Basque people, from both sides of the Pyrenees. French formed the largest group of immigrants to Argentina until 1854. The country received 1,484 French immigrants in 1856, Frenchmen still were the second most important immigrant group after Italians. The number of French immigrants present in the Buenos Aires Province reached 25,000 in 1859. In 1861, 29,196 Frenchmen were registered in Argentina, including 14,180 living in the city of Buenos Aires where they represented the third largest foreign community and made up 7.5% of the population. In 1869, at the time of the first national census, 32,383 Frenchmen lived in the country, or about 1.7% of the total population. Immigration from France increased dramatically in the first half of the 1870s (with a peak in 1873) and in the second half of the 1890s (61,382 immigrants in a three-year period). The last rise in figures is due to a policy conducted by the Argentine government in order to reduce the increasing importance of Italian immigration, for that purpose 132,000 free travel tickets were distributed in Europe between 1888 and 1890, 45,000 out of them were given in France. In 1887, there were 20,031 Frenchmen living in Buenos Aires, 4.6% of the 433,421 inhabitants.