Primeras iniciativas de regulación global de las migraciones: Estanislao Zeballos y la doctrina argentina del “derecho privado humano” (1873-1923)

Following the career of Estanislao Zeballos, an important but forgotten Argentine internationalist who aspired to crown his career with the Nobel Prize, the work seeks to show how national migration policies are articulated with international scientific networks and with transnational institutions from which came the first initiatives for a global regulation of migrations. These initiatives, scarcely studied, correspond, however, to the period of the greatest transatlantic migratory flow and are based on a legal regulation of mobility through the establishment of “universal” principles designed to regulate the crossing of an international border (emigration), the installation in the territory ruled by another sovereignty (immigration) and the crossing of a legal border (naturalization). The study of the participation of Argentine jurists and in particular that of Estanislao Zeballos in the Institut de Droit International and the International Law Association enables us to account for the mechanisms through which national migrations policies are negotiated as “universal” principles. The work also highlights how national political careers are articulated with participation in these international areas. The research is supported by a vast corpus of handwritten sources available in the Zeballos Archive and texts published by transnational legal institutions as well as by internationalists. Keywords: International Private Law, Estanislao Zeballos, Argentine migratory policies, transnational history, global regulation of migrations.