This paper examines the repercussion of Emilio Willems' life as an immigrant on the conceptual and thematic perspective given to his intellectual work. Being an outsider, a feature inherent to those who move between different creeds, cultures and values, was the human experience that directed this researcher of German origin. He focused on cultural change, conflict of values and the rationalization of ambiguities. Differently from the work of other foreign visitors, Willems' does not present a nostalgia for the `other' or for the `one far away', and it echoes the improvised character of the adventure of his journey from Berlin to Brazil in 1931.
Immigration; sociology; reception of ideas; culture; exclusion; Emílio Willems; Germans in Brazil