During the 1930s, thousands of social scientists fled the Nazi regime or other totalitarian European regimes, mainly towards the Americas. The New School for Social Research (NSSR) in New York City and El Colegio de México (Colmex) in Mexico City both were built based on receiving exiled academics from Europe.

Comparing the first twenty years of these organizations, this book offers a deeper understanding of the corresponding institutional contexts and impacts of emigrated, exiled and refugeed academics. It analyses the ambiguities of scientists situations between emigration, returnmigration and transnational life projects and examines the corresponding dynamics of application, adaptation or amalgamation of (travelling) theories and methods these academics brought. Despite its institutional focus, it also deals with the broader context of forced migration of intellectuals and scientists in the second half of the last century in Europe and Latin America. In so doing, the book invites a deeper understanding of the challenges of forced migration for scholars in the 21st century. 

Ludger Pries is Chair for Sociology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. His recent books includeRefugees, Civil Society and the State. European Experiences and Global Challenges (2018), Refugee Protection and Civil Society in Europe (2018, Cross-border Staff Mobility. German and Mexican Profit- and Non-Profit-Organisations between Centre-Periphery and Transnationalization (2015), Shifting Boundaries of Belonging and New Migration Dynamics in Europe and China (2013).

Pablo Yankelevich is Professor at the Centro de Estudios Históricos of El Colegio de México, México. He is the editor of the JournalHistoria Mexicana; the author of more than a hundred journal articles and book chapters; and author, coauthor, or editor of more than twenty books in English and Spanish. 

Chapter 1. Exile Dynamics and Impacts of European Social Scientists since the 1930s: Transnational Lives and Travelling Theories at El Colegio de México and the New School for Social Research in New York.- Chapter 2. Crossroads: US and Mexican Reactions to Repression in Europe 1930-1939.- Chapter 3. Reflections on the New Schools Founding Moments, 1919 and 1933.- Chapter 4. Refugee Scholars and the New School for Social Research in New York after 1933: Intellectual Transfer and Impact.- Chapter 5. Agents of Westernization?: The Impact of German Refugees of the   Nazi  Regime.- Chapter 6. The Holocaust and German-Jewish Culture in Exile.- Chapter 7. Waves of Exile: The Reception of Émigrés in Mexico, 1920-1980.- Chapter 8. International Rescue of Academics, Intellectuals and Artists from Nazism during the Second World War: The Experience of Mexico.- Chapter 9.The Institutional Reception of Spanish Émigré Intellectuals in Mexico: The Pioneering Role of La Casa de España, 1938-1940.- Chapter 10. Two Aspects of Exile.- Chapter 11. José Gaos and José Medina Echavarría: The Intellectual Vocation.- Chapter 12. The Constitution of Sociology at El Colegio de México: Two Key Intellectual Cohorts of Refugees and the Legacies They Left for Mexico and Latin America.- Chapter 13. Comparing Contexts, Institutions and Periods of the Émigrés Arrival and Possible Return.