Back Home: the World University Service UK return programme for Chilean academic exiles

BAYLE, PAOLA ADRIANA

The politics of academic autonomy in Latin America

Ashgate

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2011;

As a result of the repressive policies enforced by the military regime (1973–90) led by Augusto Pinochet, thousands of Chileans left their homeland in exile. The destinations and life experiences of this shunned community varied. Their departures from Chile came as a result of several factors that marked both their itineraries and their returns to Chile. This chapter focuses on a systematic exile and academic relocation experience organised by an NGO called World University Service – United Kingdom (WUS UK) that provided scholarships for 900 Chilean exiles to pursue undergraduate and graduate studies in the United Kingdom. This Chilean Refugee Scholarship Programme was funded by the British Overseas Development Ministry (ODM) and emerged at the intersection of the United Kingdom’s political world and academic field to respond to Chile’s academic and humanitarian emergency. Our doctoral thesis (Bayle 2010a) delved into the analysis of this programme, working with archives in Chile, Argentina and the United Kingdom as well as interviews with organisation members and beneficiaries. In that document, a transnational approach to the exile phenomenon was posited, underscoring the impact of this political migration in the British world. Our goal now is to focus on the return process orchestrated by this programme when political conditions in Chile were still unfavourable for the return of most exiles –that is, during the dictatorship.