Between the 1870s, when the great influx of European immigrants began, and the start of World War I, Argentina underwent a radical alteration of its social composition and patterns of economic productivity. Mark Szuchman, in this groundbreaking study, examines the occupational, residential, educational, and economic patterns of mobility of some four thousand men, women, and children who resided in Cordoba, Argentina's most important interior city, during this changeful era.

Through several kinds of samples, Szuchman provides a widely encompassing social picture of Cordoba,...