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, return-migration 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.