Mobile Professionals and Metropolitan Models: The German Roots of Vocational Education in Latin America

Abstract

AbstractThe Latin American model of vocational education has been widely portrayed as a homegrown success story, particularly by scholars and stakeholders who are aware of the region’s skill deficits, wary of alien solutions, and suspicious of institutional transfers more generally. Is the Latin American model really homegrown? I use a combination of qualitative and quantitative data to trace the model’s mores and methods not to the New World but to Central Europe and go on to identify three different transmission paths in the 20th century:imitationby Latin Americans of German origin, descent, and/or training in the run-up to World War II;propagationby West Germanattachésand advisors in an effort to rehabilitate their country’s image in the wake of the war; andadaptationby local employers and policymakers—who received additional support from Germany—at the turn of the last century. The results suggest that institutional importation is less a discreteeventoroutcometo be avoided than an ongoingprocessthat, first, entails translation, adaptation, and at times obfuscation by importers as well as exporters; and, second, is facilitated by immigrants, their descendants, and diplomats in transnational contact zones.