making Argentine friends

Americans living in Buenos Aires want more local friends

According to the 27 Americans living in Buenos Aires that I interviewed, it’s hard making porteño friends. In fact, most have very few (if any!). Read more about why that is here: BA expat predicament: I have no porteño friends.

The grand majority of the Americans interviewed admitted to having more foreign friends than local ones, and they believe that a large contributing factor to this situation is that there are simply more ways to meet “expats” than there are to meet locals. If you compare this post on meeting locals to my post on the top 5 ways to meet expats in Buenos Aires you’ll notice one glaring factor that makes all the difference: the internet. While this is the preferred method of many for meeting other foreigners in Buenos Aires, very few mentioned this as the way they met their local friends.

So how did they meet their few precious porteño friends? Here are the top 5 ways these Americans made local amigos in Buenos Aires.

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Why don’t I have any porteño friends? You’re not alone.

Americans living in Buenos Aires don’t have many local porteño friends. Why?

During the interviews I conducted for my research on Americans living in Buenos Aires, I asked the participants about their social lives in BA. First of all, while the majority have an Argentine partner, the majority also claimed to have more foreign friends (primarily English-speaking) than local ones.