This book represents an ambitious multidisciplinary effort by a sociologist, a historian, a political scientist, and a literary scholar. The four set out on a voyage that looks at the entire cycle of political exiles from the military regimes of South America, especially in the 1970s and 1980s: the social–political–economic circumstances that drove thousands of Argentines, Chileans, Paraguayans and Uruguayans out of their home countries; their reception in the host countries and their efforts at social integration; the formation of exile communities and diaspora politics; the personal decision to go back and the policies of return adopted by the new democratic regimes; and the exiles’ contribution to the democratisation of their home countries at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first, especially in Chile and Uruguay.

The volume is the culmination of the scholarly trajectory of its authors, who have published extensively on the topics of Latin American political exiles, displaced persons, politics of exclusion, the legacy of authoritarianism and the violation of human rights. Four countries are the focus of this research, with Paraguay, whose process of territorial displacement had started already in the 1950s, receiving the necessary attention that it seldom receives in the English-language historiography. Not all issues mentioned in the first chapter are discussed as intensely as others, but the end result is a fascinating analysis of the experiences of hundreds of thousands of displaced citizens.

The authors are correct in bringing to our attention the notion that political exile and expatriation should force us to rethink the territorially bounded conceptions of the nation-states in Latin America. After all, the activities of the exiles and expats did imply an ongoing relationship with the home country. Indeed, the authors show convincingly how the authoritarian governments, in their desire to solve the problem of political opposition and protest, merely exported the problem beyond the borders of the national state. Thus they contributed to the creation of trans-national solidarity networks of exiles from different countries and social and political activists in the host countries. Together they exerted heavy external pressure on the dictatorships of their home countries. In the case of Chile, such solidarity was somewhat easier to mobilise than in the case of Uruguay, where the dictatorship had a civilian president as a figurehead, at least until 1981, or in the case of Argentina. Most Europeans and North Americans found it hard to understand the Peronist phenomenon and to place it in the common left–right continuum.

As the authors indicate, return was a personal choice opted for by only a segment of the displaced. The success of return depended on the length of the exile, the kind of policies welcoming back exiles, and the re-encounter between returnees and the home society. While Uruguay adopted policies which facilitated return, the first democratic administration of Argentina, as well as society at large, expressed suspicion towards the exiles and feared the possible implications of the return of former radical Left militants.

The book is full of insights; each chapter deserves to become a monograph on its own, delving more deeply into some of the issues here dealt with only briefly and allowing more voices of exiles and returnees to be heard. The inclusion of more female voices might have contributed to this volume, as well as the inclusion of a chapter devoted to the analysis of literary works by prominent exiles.

Some key examples of transnational organisation are missing from the book too. The 1978 Soccer World Cup games, held in Argentina, served as an opportunity to mobilise support against the dictatorship. The community of Argentine exiles in France started a campaign to boycott the games. The organisation created to orchestrate the boycott was called COBA (the French acronym for the Committee for the Boycott of the World Cup in Argentina). Before long, it had managed to develop a strong base of solidarity and protest against the ‘Nazi-Fascist dictatorship of Argentina’ throughout France; more than 200 local COBA committees were created in the major cities and in the provinces. Press conferences were organised, meetings and public talks were held, posters were erected, leaflets and pamphlets were handed out in neighbourhoods and factories, and short documentaries were produced. COBA's manifestoes were signed by some 150,000 people. This was not a small leftist group with a handful of activists, but a large protest movement of transnational dimension. They demanded that the World Cup games be moved to another country, or that participation in the games held in Argentina be conditional upon the release of all political prisoners and the restoration of all liberties. Surprisingly, there is no mention of this campaign in this volume.

Additionally, the analysis of the internal dynamic within the diaspora communities of exiles/refugees/immigrants in different countries is sometimes schematic and idyllic (Byronic, to use the authors’ language). The authors do refer to political and ideological divisions but at times the reader gains the impression that all members of these communities were actively engaged in anti-dictatorship enterprises, while at least some of them focused their attention on finding a job, making a living and integrating themselves into the host society. The discussion of recent years dealing with the way the repression impacted on the daily lives of Argentines, Chileans, Uruguayans and Paraguayans is very relevant here as well. Not all inhabitants in these countries were either victims or victimisers; not all either actively opposed the dictatorships or openly supported them. Not all belonged to the repressive forces or were political militants in radical organisations.

Finally, the authors have included in their study the recent migration of descendants of early waves of immigrants from Europe to South America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ‘back’ to the country of their ancestors. This movement of individuals motivated by socioeconomic conditions was of a different characterisation and I am not sure whether I would have included them in this book.

Irrespective of these points, Exile, Diaspora, and Return is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in political exile, diaspora politics, trans-nationalism and democratisation processes in Latin America.