Recent refugee movements not only from the Near and Middle East towards Europe, but also from Central America to Mexico and the USA shed a light on the topic of people, who have to flee their country of residence because they are victims of political, ethnic, religious or gender persecution and organised violence. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, global numbers of refugees and displaced persons increased by fifty percent, from 40 to more than 60 million. In Syria and Iraq, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Somalia and Eritrea, and also in El Salvador and Guatemala, not only people from the poorer or lower classes are affected, but also academics, politicians and intellectuals.
Given the dramatic situation of forced migration, relatively little attention is given to this issue in public opinion and politics. There often prevails a general consternation, but when it comes to considering the need to act, the NIMBY-principle—Not In My Back Yard—is widely predominant. In academia, the topic is handled quite marginally as well. Some solidarity initiatives to safeguard and receive scientists and scholars are running, but only few general initiatives and little specific research is done. Especially for the field of scientists, intellectuals, writers, artists and other persons engaged in the cultural or political sector, the absence of scientific and moral engagement is disconcerting. This reveals a short or even lack of memory, because some eighty years ago, scholars and intellectuals—besides others—had to flee Germany, Austria and other European countries due to political, religious, gender and racial persecution carried out by the Nazi-regime, especially the extermination of the Jews. Likewise, since the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, politicians, unionists, scientists and others were forced to go into exile from Spain. 1
Since the 1930s, there were considerable activities to rescue exiled scholars and intellectuals, not only in the United Kingdom and the USA, but also in Mexico, Turkey and other countries. 2 Scientific foundations offered special programs for exiled scientists, Academic Assistance Councils were organised and universities and other scientific institutions opened specific programs to receive and integrate exiled scientists in their faculties. By these means, thousands of intellectuals could survive physically, economically and socio-psychologically. A lot of research has been done on these historical cases of refuge and exile of these groups of persons, especially related to the case of those fleeing the Nazi regime in Germany or the Franco regime in Spain. 3
Two highly prestigious places of academic research and teaching in social sciences and humanities in general, nowadays, are The New School for Social Research in New York City and El Colegio de México (Colmex) in Mexico City. There already exists a lot of literature on the history of each of these institutions and the role of exiled scholars in their evolution. But no systematic comparison of these cases of the New School and the Colmex from a perspective of more recent historical and social science approaches, namely, that of transnationalism and of travelling theories, has been done. This book compares the development of both institutions in light of the impact of refugee scholars, and the impact that forced migration had on the academic work of renowned scholars. Two approaches help to shed new light on the topic: transnationalism and travelling theories.
The approach of transnationalism and transnationalisation is based on a critical reflection on the so-called methodological nationalism. It could be defined as “the assumption that the nation/the state/the society is the natural social and political form of the modern world” (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002, p. 302). In line with this assumption, national societies have boundaries that are naturally defined by geographic-territorial boundaries and which are controlled by nation-states. This concept of methodological nationalism forged the analysis and understanding of social structures and classes, of social action and identities, of international migration and of social integration. The national society in its nation state-defined territory was considered the prominent unit of analysis in social sciences which could be taken for granted. There was little conceptual margin for social spaces beyond the national societies or for identities and belongings spanning several nation states or specific socio-ethno-cultural spaces. 4
In line with this conceptual frame, migration in general and exile migration in particular were predominantly analysed and explained in terms of either emigration and the process of establishing in a new country of arrival or Diaspora-suffering and return migration to the country of departure. As will be shown in the following section, the transnationalism approach leaves room for a more differentiated analysis and understanding of migration and integration of refugees and exiled persons. It allows to distinguish more types of forced migrants, e.g. by asking, How do they manage their exile and their plans for future living and activities between or beyond the options of decisive emigration or scheduled return migration? Could they develop a transnational professional life of ‘cosmopolitans’ or transnational scholars without taking a clear decision for either the country of departure or the country of arrival?
The second innovative perspective for the topic to deal with is travelling theories . Mainly focusing on social and cultural sciences, it argues that the topics and tools of scientific analysis and reflection are always intertwined with the social, cultural, political and economic context they are developed and working in. If theories—such as those dealing with economic competition, state regimes or social inequality—which originated in one specific societal context, by means of textbooks or international scientific journals, ‘travel’ to another societal context, they will necessarily be changed, adapted and assimilated. And the other way around: If the scientists who produce those theories shift from one socio-cultural space to another, this will probably alter their theory production. Whereas in natural science the societal context may not impact as much on scientific activities (although sponsoring structures, societal interests or socially perceived major societal problems will always exert influence), in the areas of social or cultural sciences and the humanities the specific themes to investigate, the theoretical framing and the methods are strongly determined by societal contexts.
Although this insight is not completely new, the approach of travelling theories makes explicit the problem how theories and theorists are affected by moving from one socio-geographic space to another. When referring to the situation of exiled scientists, specific questions arise: How are social theories of e.g. exiled German economists influenced and changed when these persons have to flee from Germany to the United Kingdom or the USA? How do these theories and theorists, when arriving in their new academic environment, influence on the new colleagues and their corresponding theoretical concepts? For instance, how did the Frankfurt School of Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and others influence the social science approaches and thinking in the USA and how did the Frankfurt School itself change by the new setting’s influence? When the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School travelled back to Germany after some twenty years of exile, mainly at the Columbia University in New York, was it substantially the same as it was in 1933? How was it affected by having travelled from Germany to the USA and back?
The approaches of transnationalism and travelling theories could shed some new light on the already rich literature on German speaking and Spanish scientists in exile in the USA and Mexico. In this broader context, the New School and the Colmex are at the very centre of the following chapters. This allows for a comparison of similarities and differences between the two cases. The New School as well as the Colmex were built up substantially by academic émigrés from Germany, Austria and Spain. In both situations, social sciences and history were the main founding disciplines. Both institutions nevertheless differ in many aspects. Whereas the majority of Spanish academics at the Colmex had to leave Spain due to their political orientations and engagemen...
