Exile communities and their differential institutional dynamics: A comparative analysis of the Chilean and Uruguayan political diasporas

By focusing on the experiences of the Chilean and Uruguayan exile communities settling abroad during the last wave of dictatorship and repression in the 1970s, this article suggests ways to analyze exile communities in the late 20th century. By focusing in the dynamics of exile as the interaction between the expelling country, the person forced into exile and the host country in a changed internationall environment, it elaborates two basic phenomena: first, the fact that the sites of relocation (lieux d'exil) may become communities of exile (milieux d'exil). The article discussed the conditions effecting this transformation for the case of the Chileans, as the exiles managed to galvanize their co-nationals through their actions and be the vectors representing the plight of the displaced, in parallel to personal and communal problems, which develop and are addressed in parallel to public activities related to the condition of political exile. Second, the article discusses the structure of exile, which in this period undergoes a transition from a three-tiered into a four-tiered structure, as the international and global arena became an added major dimension conditioning the options and political activities of the exiles.