Professionals, amateurs and rural associations' leaders. Trajectories and entries to politics of the "agro-deputies" in the Argentine Congress

Abstract

This article is framed into a political sociology of elites and looks into political entries in nowadays Argentina through the social, unionist and political trajectories of the Argentine national congressmen elected in 2009 who came from the agricultural entrepreneurs unions, known as “agrodiputados”. It achieves it from a qualitative perspective and using in-depth interviews and secondary sources. We show how these congressmen, who had been studied since their common features, are in fact a heterogeneous group where we can find three different profiles. We analyse their entrances into politics and the conversion of their resources into political capital. We show how coming “from outside” only counted as a resource at the beginning of their career. Then, professional politics logic prevailed.

Keywords

• diputados
• entradas a la política
• capitales políticos
• carreras políticas
• argentina