In the paper, I compare some arguments about the social change developed by Florestan Fernandes and Gino Germani, protagonists of the renewal of sociology at the universities of Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires, respectively. Through empirical research, both sought to investigate how the modernization process differentially affected social groups, restoring durable patterns of inequality. Fernandes and Germani considered, moreover, the "immigrant" the main agent of the social changes underway, due to his successful insertion, in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires, in the most dynamic positions of the capitalist order in expansion, despite his low impact on the democratization of the system of domination in both contexts.
Florestan Fernandes; Gino Germani; Immigrant; Sociology of modernization