1 This is the Author’s Accepted Manuscript, draft pre-print, post peer-review version of the following article, which was published in Urban Studies. You can access the final version here http://usj.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/07/02/0042098014540346.abstract Transnational migration and urban informality: Ethnicity in Buenos Aires’ informal settlements Tanja Bastia 1 University of Manchester Contact details: Tanja Bastia, University of Manchester, 1.064 Arthur Lewis Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. Email: Tanja.Bastia@Manchester.ac.uk ABSTRACT Ethnicity is playing an increasingly important role in the ways in which informality is governed and regulated across cities in the global south. This raises concerns regarding the ensuing exclusion experienced by some groups of people living in informal settlements. In this paper I use the example of Buenos Aires, Argentina, to explore the extent to which ethnicity plays a role in the informal settlement. There is significant evidence that Argentina has gone through a process of de-ethnicisation, particularly at the national level. However, it is unclear whether this process is also evident at the level of the informal settlement. Drawing on a range of interviews, the paper finds that while grassroots organisations are de-ethnicising, the formal leadership of the informal settlement and to some extent also migrants reproduce ethnic divisions. The de- ethnicisation led by the state has therefore unequally percolated to the micro level. Keywords: ethnicity; migration; cities; informality; exclusion; Buenos Aires. 1 I would like to acknowledge the support of the British Academy for the Post-Doctoral Fellowship (PDF/2007/182) as well as a doctoral scholarship provided by the University of Wales Swansea for funding this research. A number of people read previous drafts and provided comments, for which I would like to thank Jorge Ginieniewicz, Nina Glick-Schiller, Michael Hebbert, Huraera Jabeen, Melanie Lombard, James Scorer, the international conference on Conflict, Fragmentation and Hope in the Neoliberal City: Urban Space in Latin America, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 6-7 November 2008; the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Manchester; and anonymous Urban Studies referees for their useful and constructive comments. I would also like to thank Lucia Vera Groisman for stimulating discussions in Buenos Aires. All errors are obviously mine. The research would not have been possible without the participation of the interviewees, some of whom provided extensive contacts, practical support in often difficult contexts and opened their homes and personal experiences to me. I gratefully acknowledge their very kind participation in this research project.