Archives are traditionally the backbone of a nation’s history but how has the legacy of migration been documented within these collections? How can archives respond positively and effectively to preserve the voices and testimonies of marginalised communities and how can we ensure that archives enable the story of the current migration crisis be told?
Archives can hold the power to enable hidden voices and material culture to be reinterpreted, forgotten, or rediscovered by later generations and have the power to influence how history is written? Indeed, there is also a significant question in terms of how the discipline of history itself has failed to engage with these invaluable narratives of migration and how this has endeavoured to silence these voices from the traditional historical discourse.
As argued by Professor Philip Marfleet, “Why have historians ignored most refugee movements and `silenced’ those involved? Can refugees be re-installed on the historical record.” (Marfleet, 2007, p. 136)*.
Does this failure of history also represent a failure of the archival profession to engage and preserve the voices and narratives of these often marginalised communities? For over a decade, the University of East London has been host to the Refugee Council Archive, an invaluable source of materials dating from 1950 through to the present.
The Archive documents both the history of the Refugee Council as an organisation from its inception in 1951 through to the present but our role is also to attempt to document, preserve and make accessible the narratives of those who seek to build a new life in a foreign land. Our challenge is therefore to attempt to make The Refugee Council Archive responsive to documenting the genuine voices and narratives of migrants and refugees, especially in light of current migration crisis.
One of the questions that we keep returning to as part of this process was to consider whether the traditional archival materials that we collect for the Archive, e.g. minutes of meetings, administration files, policy documentation, government reports, academic papers and the like actually tell us the whole story of the migration experience.
One of the questions I was conscious of as an archivist was that even within a collection dedicated to refugee issues, it is often incredibly hard to actually drill down in these materials to find the actual testimonies of the refugees, migrants and asylum seekers. It seemed all too easy to be able to access and preserve materials that talked about or for these groups, but a lot harder to finds their own testimonies in their own words.
We were considering these issues when, in January 2015, UEL launched its new civic engagement agenda and encouraged colleagues to apply for small amounts of funding from a newly formed Civic Engagement Fund. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to begin trying to engage with communities beyond the University and our subsequent application was accepted for the project: “Democratic Access or Privileged Exclusion?
Civic Engagement through the Preservation and Access to Refugee Archives.”In conjunction with a colleague, Dr. Rumana Hashem, from the UEL Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB), the project sought use existing Archives held within the UEL Library as a basis to forge new partnerships between students, academics, archivists and a community groups. Our aim was to begin a pilot project of collection oral history recordings from both refugees, migrants and asylum seekers and to eventually make these accessible through our new project website, the Living Refugee Archive.
This we hoped would enable us to utilise existing archival collections at UEL as a basis to forge new partnerships between students, academics, activists and community groups and the foundation of the Living Refugee Archive on which we could then develop more intensive projects in the future. From the start, this project benefited from being a collaborative outreach project between the UEL Archives and CMRB. Rumana, as CMRB post-doctoral associate member, was able to under the collection of the oral history recordings documenting the narratives of refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants in London.
Between January and June 2015, we have collected five oral histories of refugees and undocumented migrants, conducted significant consultations with communities and experts in the field, held a workshop with academics, archivists students, and third sector activists working – both nationally and internationally- in the field, and created a Living Refugee Archive (http://www.uel.ac.uk/livingrefugeearchive/about/).
The project has raised important questions, such as, who accesses refugee archives? Are refugee archives well-represented in relation to the preservation of lived experience of refugees and migrants? If not, why is this? Who get excluded from refugee-archives, and in what ways? How could we improve access to refugee research archives? On 13 July 2015, in the half –day workshop at the launch event of the project, Paul and Rumana have presented their research outcome in which they discussed how Archives can be useful to the preservation of “memories” of migrants and refugees.
They and other speakers argued that oral recording and preservation of lived experience of refugees and migrants are best ways in which social and political history of under-documented and unheard communities could be constructed. This has generated a discussion on how to make archives as accessible, inclusive, representative and democratic which was followed by breakout sessions and a stimulating roundtable and open-discussion between activists, academics, and archivists and refugee participants.
The workshop has addressed ethical concerns to the preservation of oral histories and the showcasing of refugee narratives. How can archives document, preserve and make accessible the material culture and first-hand testimonies of refugees? We feel the work we have undertaken so far highlights the need for greater usage of an oral history style methodology combined with greater outreach and engagement work to work with refugee and migrant communities to develop an ethical relationship to facilitate the preservation of their often invaluable life histories and narratives.
To help with this, we have also received an IASFM Seed Fund, from the International Association for Forced Migration Studies, to establish a Working Group which seeks to document and preserve original history of forced migration at both national and international levels. Our aim for this Working Group, therefore, will be to bring together researcher, academics, librarians, archivists, activists, advocates (i.e. NGOs, charities and community groups) who are either interested in the history of forced migration and related fields, or are interested in the care and preservation of the archival and library collections that help to preserve the often hidden voices of the migration journey.
We would welcome feedback and questions on this article atlibrary-articles@uel.ac.uk.
* (2007) “Refugees and history: why we must address the past”, in Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol 26, No 3, pages 136-148.
Biography: Paul Dudman is the Archivist based at the University of East London and has over a decade’s experience working within higher education archives including the Refugee Council Archive; British Olympic Association Archive and the Hackney Empire Theatre Archive. Paul has been involved with the Campaign for Voluntary Sector Archives and is a co-convenor of the IASFM (International Association for the Study of Forced Migration) Working Group on for the Archiving and Documentation of the History of Forced Migration and Refugees.
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