Nearly half a million of German and Austrian nationals,fleeing persecution at the hand of the national‑socialist regime, were forced into exile in Europe and overseas. A few thousands of them found refuge in Bolivia, then the poorest country in South America. In our study, this dissertaition will analyse the identity crisis caused by the rupture of exile as well as the identity strategies those who were affected developed to overcome this crisis. We chose to focus on the specific difficulties of the Germann speaking exile who in Bolivia had to face a sociocultural environment widely different from what they had known in Europe and in which they couldn’t find any references to relate to. Since fast acculturation was nearly impossible, the exiles had to recreate transnational in-between spaces that would enable them to activate defensive mechanisms to (re)build their identities.
Our study aims to analyse the nature of these spaces as well as the different - or even divergent - processes of identity reconstruction the German–speaking exiles established in Bolivia. Our work relies on the sociology of identity in a migratory context with a specific focus on collective sociocultural and political spaces and on the redefining of identities for people who were the victims of a discriminating label
