Research (Week 3): Moving away from the 1.5 generation

Marcelo Morales is the Spanish pastor in the trilingual Taiwanese Protestant church. He and his wife Victoria have been working with the Chinese community since 1997. Most of the people who come to their services are young Argentine-born Chinese.

He witnessed the change in the community as living standards improved. "When they first came, they all ran supermarkets," Morales said. "They all drove to church in cargo trucks. Now you look outside - there's only one truck." He saw the children of these first immigrants strive to take different jobs than their parents. "It's still a young community," he said. "Many countries are in the 2nd or 3rd generation, and here they're only in the 1st moving to the 2nd."

He feels that his most important role as pastor is to help these children adapt to Argentine culture without discarding the mother culture. His sermons are usually about relationships - especially parent-children relationships.

Then he had me talk to one of the kids that attend his services. Diana Zhang is a high-school senior, born in Argentina. She is also at a high school senior level at the Chinese school, and can read and write. "I've been going to Chinese school since I was 5," she said. "I've never resisted - it was a natural thing. It's fun."

She goes to school outside of Buenos Aires, and she and her sister are the only Asian students at her school. Most of her friends are Argentines. She speaks Chinese at home, and attends Chinese school on Saturday and church on Sunday. "I feel like my life is in two halves - the Argentine week and the Chinese weekend," she said.

She wants to study International Business in college. "I don't think there's a big problem with our generation integrating into society," she said. "I'm not going to limit myself to Chinese related work, but it is still an advantage that I have."

However, she believes that this advantage will probably disappear by the third generation. When asked about the difficulty many Argentina-raised Chinese have about integrating into society and finding high level jobs, she said: "The difference between the 1.5 generation and us is that they are still outsiders, but I consider myself Argentine," she said.

She does think that Argentines are a initially a bit closed minded when it comes to other cultures. "However, once the first line of defense is removed, they actually are very accepting," she said. "The problem is many Chinese just come here to work and make money and don't want to spend time with Argentines. The problem is that we didn't give them a chance to know us."