Recovering Refugee Stories: Chilean Refugees and World University Service

Alison Ribeiro De Menezes

doi:10.1093/jrs/feaa097

Abstract

Abstract Within the context of a special section of the Journal of Refugee Studies, this article charts and evaluates the work of the UK-based NGO, World University Service (WUS), in assisting Chileans who fled their country in the wake of the 1973 coup and subsequent Pinochet dictatorship. The article combines documentary research in the WUS archive, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, and a series of in-depth interviews with 26 Chileans who were assisted by WUS. It begins by outlining the history, structure and development-based focus of the WUS scholarship scheme, which was an important step in the establishment of formal refugee support structures in the UK. It also explores quantitative data of the scheme’s academic success, before enriching this with qualitative research focused on analysis of refugees’ individual life stories. The research findings reveal tensions between what Chanfrault-Duchet calls the ‘inner self’ and the ‘social self’ in the case of women interviewees. The article concludes that a focus on individual life stories as emplotted narratives can enrich quantitative understandings of the effectiveness of formal refugee support programmes and provide important insights into the grassroots experience of exile, helping to avoid the historical decontextualization of discussions of refugee support programmes.

Highlights

Studies of humanitarian action to support refugees have tended to privilege elite perspectives, focusing on political figures, diplomats and negotiators; large international organizations; high-profile moments of crisis, or international legal structures shaping action and response (Barnett 2011)
Recovering Refugee Stories 3 over a decade (WUS 1986: 4). While this number is small in comparison to the Chileans who fled elsewhere, the World University Service (WUS) Chile scholarship programme is significant for its success in extracting Chileans who had suffered or were in danger of suffering political repression and torture, and who had often been imprisoned
Working with the Ministry of Overseas Development, and dealing with the ups and downs of varied political commitment and views at the Foreign Office and Home Office, WUS developed a markedly new approach: The scheme’s character, with its emphasis on developmental criteria was fundamentally determined by the fact that it was not the Home Office nor the Department of Education and Science that played the key official role: rather it was the Ministry of Overseas Development (ODM) which is responsible for British overseas aid policy and programmes

Summary

Introduction

Studies of humanitarian action to support refugees have tended to privilege elite perspectives, focusing on political figures, diplomats and negotiators; large international organizations (such as the UNHCR, ICRC, Save the Children, Oxfam); high-profile moments of crisis (notably Vietnam, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kosovo), or international legal structures shaping action and response (Barnett 2011). Recovering Refugee Stories 3 over a decade (WUS 1986: 4) While this number is small in comparison to the Chileans who fled elsewhere (notably other countries of Latin America, Canada, Sweden, France, and Spain after the death of Franco), the WUS Chile scholarship programme is significant for its success in extracting Chileans who had suffered or were in danger of suffering political repression and torture, and who had often been imprisoned. It supported a number of Chileans who were studying in the UK at the time of the coup, or who had made their way there subsequently. The WUS story is one of an unprecedented collaboration between a national government and an NGO, which makes it a significant moment in the history of organized refugee policy in the UK

Methodology

Alison Ribeiro de Menezes

Findings

Conclusion