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 with a series of in-depth interviews with 26 Chileans who were assisted by WUS. It outlines the history, structure and development-based focus of the WUS scholarship scheme, and 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 especially of women interviewees. It concludes that a focus on women’s individual life stories as emplotted narratives can enrich quantitative understandings of the grassroots experience of exile, helping to avoid the historical decontextualization of discussions of refugee support programmes.

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