This briefing gives details about how many non-European migrants are granted settlement in the UK every year, their demographic characteristics and the various bases for their grants of settlement.
This briefing gives details about how many non-European migrants are granted settlement in the UK every year, their demographic characteristics and the various bases for their grants of settlement.
We have long admired the work and the writing of Eithne Nightingale, whose blog Chirps from around the World is a wonderful record of her travels and her reflections on migration. Here, Eithne takes time off from her research into child migration (as part of a collaborative doctoral award between Queen Mary University of London and V&A Museum of Childhood) to give a brief account of her observations on migration in museums and galleries across the world.
Over the last two years I have been visiting public spaces that explore migration – museums, galleries and others – in Europe, Australasia and South America. Over that same period the present, unfolding migration crisis has invoked in me a sense of paralysis. What possible role can museums and galleries play that is anything other than peripheral in the present context? Where is the evidence that they can contribute to a more tolerant and just society?
It is clear that museums across the world differ in their decision on whose histories of migration to include. The Migration Museum in Melbourne and the Immigration Museum in Adelaide, for example, explore not only the story of immigration to Australia but also its devastating impact on the indigenous communities.
Images from the 1960s in the timeline in the Museum of Migration, Melbourne. The image on the right refers to a referendum in 1967, which voted overwhelmingly for Aboriginal people to be governed by federal legislation and included in the Australian Census.
An impressive number of museums in Italy are dedicated to the country’s long history of emigration. But 1973 was a turning point: in that year more people migrated to Italy than left it. In a laudable attempt to encourage the visitor to see parallels between past emigrants and more recent immigrants, Italian museums have included sections on post-1973 immigration. That raises other questions, though: wasn’t there immigration to Italy before 1973? And wouldn’t a more intertwined approach have been better?
The Museum of Copenhagen recently put on a temporary exhibition, Becoming a Copenhager. They were keen to adopt an inclusive approach and so included people who had migrated from the countryside to the city as well as those who had come from abroad. But, in reality, how parallel or different are these experiences?
What, too, about forced migration? The Museu de Imigração in São Paulo touches on slavery, a small museum in Farum outside Copenhagen on trafficked women, and the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney explores the convict experience.
Rooms where convicts slept in Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney.
The Immigration Museum in Adelaide questions our use of language about who is a ‘settler’ and who is an ‘immigrant’ – a clever cartoon underlines this dilemma: an aborigine looks out at a ship carrying ‘illegal immigrants’.
Cartoon about Aborigines being horrified at the arrival of illegals, Adelaide Museum of Immigration.
And what about the diversity of the immigration experience – of children, of women, of those who can afford to travel first class, or of those who risk their lives on an open boat or under the carriage of a truck? Or of those people (and who cannot be struck by such stories?) struggling to Europe in wheelchairs?
Timelines in museums intrigue me. I have followed them up stairs, on gallery floors, along perspective panels and on inter-actives. The Museu de Imigração, São Paolo refers to pre-history and the very first movements of people to South America. The timeline at the Cité National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration in Paris starts in 1831 and ends in 2007. The occupation of the museum for four months in 2010 to speed up the regularisation of people ‘sans-papiers’ following legislation in June of that year does not feature here.
Time line in Hotel de Immigrantes, Buenos Aires.
A sense of place can be very evocative – to stand under a shower in the same building from which people left Antwerp for the New World between 1873 and 1934; to wait on a railway station in Dudelange, Luxembourg, where Italians arrived to work in the steelworks at the end of the 19th century; to walk between the beds in the dormitories in the Museu de Imigração, São Paolo, where, from the end of the 19th century to well into the 20th century, migrants spent their first few days in Brazil. In Hotel de Immigrantes, Buenos Aires, you can still see the footmarks and the fingerprints of those who arrived from Europe, exhausted after weeks at sea. The FHXB Museum in an old factory in East Kreusberg in Berlin shows how migration to both West and East Berlin has shaped and regenerated the area around the museum.
Photo of original dormitories in the Hotel de Immigrantes, Buenos Aires, and (below) the museum’s recreated bedroom, using mirrors.
Quayside with emigrants waiting to board for the New World in the German Emigration Centre, Bremerhaven.
In several museums I took on the role of immigrant. At the Maritime Museum in Genoa I collected a passport and was quizzed by an interactive immigration officer before I embarked on the boat. When I got to Ellis Island, I was quizzed again – about money, health, political beliefs and disability. In Bremerhaven I followed in the steps of Mai Phuong from Vietnam who migrated to the former East Germany on a work voucher. In Melbourne I was put in the position of being an immigration officer and challenged into thinking what I would do when a man is aggressive towards a migrant on a bus.
Interactive of emigration officer in the port of Genoa in the Maritime Museum, Genoa.
Some objects have a particular power. Perhaps most powerful of all are the objects collected by Askavusa Collettivo (Barefoot Collective) in Lampedusa – weather-beaten wooden planks taken from abandoned boats, and migrants’ personal belongings displayed in an old fishing storage area without labels: “We can’t speak for the migrants.”
Migrants’ objects retrieved from the Wasteland in Lampedusa.
Letters too – such as personal pleas from Afghani refugees in one of the detention camps in Australia – can be powerful. Newspapers are useful in showing how debates over immigration have changed little over the decades. Personal stories can be very compelling, too, whether it is the story of the £10 English Pom or the child soldier to Australia, of the first migrant from Morocco to Antwerp or the child who was turned away from Ellis Island because of trachoma. Alongside the many stories of migrants who have been successful and contributed to the countries they have adopted there are difficult histories, too – like the stories of those at the Ballinstadt Emigration Museum in Hamburg who entered crime or who were turned away from the New World for pimping.
I have seen some impressive works of contemporary art – in Buenos Aires a piano that the owner brought from Europe creaks and groans, evoking the rough sea. In Mother Tongue by Zineb Sedira I watch the artist’s daughter, who speaks English, struggle to communicate with her grandmother, who speaks only Arabic.
Contemporary art, Migraciones en el Arte Contemporaneo in Buenos Aires.
I have been impressed by some genuine examples of co-production with refugee and migrant communities. Young refugees at Te Papa in New Zealand developed an exhibition based on their experiences in the Mixing Room – a flexible community space. At MAS in Antwerp, local volunteers or ‘trackers’ were given freedom to research stories about local communities. The research led to the exhibition 50 Years of Migration from Morocco and Turkey.
Exhibition co-curated with young refugees in the Mixing Room gallery in Te Papa Museum, Wellington, New Zealand.
The lessons I learnt from this whistle-stop tour are too many and too difficult to summarise within a blog such as this so I will attempt to do so, instead, in a future blog. Two things occur to me immediately, though. I believe that in any museum discussion or recreation of migration it is important to be clear about objectives and to measure progress and performance against these. And, further, we need to be brave, take risks, be creative, open up space for genuine dialogue with all sectors of the population, collaborate closely and equitably with migrant communities and, like the Askavusa Collettivo on Lampedusa, engage in whatever way we can with the present crisis.
For more information on the museums Eithne has visited, please visit her website.
And read more about her research into child migration as part of her Collaborative Doctoral Award between Queen Mary University of London and V&A Museum of Childhood here.
We have long admired the work and the writing of Eithne Nightingale, whose blog Chirps from around the World is a wonderful record of her travels and her reflections on migration. Here, Eithne takes time off from her research into child migration (as part of a collaborative doctoral award between Queen Mary University of London and V&A Museum of Childhood) to give a brief account of her observations on migration in museums and galleries across the world.
Over the last two years I have been visiting public spaces that explore migration – museums, galleries and others – in Europe, Australasia and South America. Over that same period the present, unfolding migration crisis has invoked in me a sense of paralysis. What possible role can museums and galleries play that is anything other than peripheral in the present context? Where is the evidence that they can contribute to a more tolerant and just society?
It is clear that museums across the world differ in their decision on whose histories of migration to include. The Migration Museum in Melbourne and the Immigration Museum in Adelaide, for example, explore not only the story of immigration to Australia but also its devastating impact on the indigenous communities.
Images from the 1960s in the timeline in the Museum of Migration, Melbourne. The image on the right refers to a referendum in 1967, which voted overwhelmingly for Aboriginal people to be governed by federal legislation and included in the Australian Census.
An impressive number of museums in Italy are dedicated to the country’s long history of emigration. But 1973 was a turning point: in that year more people migrated to Italy than left it. In a laudable attempt to encourage the visitor to see parallels between past emigrants and more recent immigrants, Italian museums have included sections on post-1973 immigration. That raises other questions, though: wasn’t there immigration to Italy before 1973? And wouldn’t a more intertwined approach have been better?
The Museum of Copenhagen recently put on a temporary exhibition, Becoming a Copenhager. They were keen to adopt an inclusive approach and so included people who had migrated from the countryside to the city as well as those who had come from abroad. But, in reality, how parallel or different are these experiences?
What, too, about forced migration? The Museu de Imigração in São Paulo touches on slavery, a small museum in Farum outside Copenhagen on trafficked women, and the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney explores the convict experience.
Rooms where convicts slept in Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney.
The Immigration Museum in Adelaide questions our use of language about who is a ‘settler’ and who is an ‘immigrant’ – a clever cartoon underlines this dilemma: an aborigine looks out at a ship carrying ‘illegal immigrants’.
Cartoon about Aborigines being horrified at the arrival of illegals, Adelaide Museum of Immigration.
And what about the diversity of the immigration experience – of children, of women, of those who can afford to travel first class, or of those who risk their lives on an open boat or under the carriage of a truck? Or of those people (and who cannot be struck by such stories?) struggling to Europe in wheelchairs?
Timelines in museums intrigue me. I have followed them up stairs, on gallery floors, along perspective panels and on inter-actives. The Museu de Imigração, São Paolo refers to pre-history and the very first movements of people to South America. The timeline at the Cité National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration in Paris starts in 1831 and ends in 2007. The occupation of the museum for four months in 2010 to speed up the regularisation of people ‘sans-papiers’ following legislation in June of that year does not feature here.
Time line in Hotel de Immigrantes, Buenos Aires.
A sense of place can be very evocative – to stand under a shower in the same building from which people left Antwerp for the New World between 1873 and 1934; to wait on a railway station in Dudelange, Luxembourg, where Italians arrived to work in the steelworks at the end of the 19th century; to walk between the beds in the dormitories in the Museu de Imigração, São Paolo, where, from the end of the 19th century to well into the 20th century, migrants spent their first few days in Brazil. In Hotel de Immigrantes, Buenos Aires, you can still see the footmarks and the fingerprints of those who arrived from Europe, exhausted after weeks at sea. The FHXB Museum in an old factory in East Kreusberg in Berlin shows how migration to both West and East Berlin has shaped and regenerated the area around the museum.
Photo of original dormitories in the Hotel de Immigrantes, Buenos Aires, and (below) the museum’s recreated bedroom, using mirrors.
Quayside with emigrants waiting to board for the New World in the German Emigration Centre, Bremerhaven.
In several museums I took on the role of immigrant. At the Maritime Museum in Genoa I collected a passport and was quizzed by an interactive immigration officer before I embarked on the boat. When I got to Ellis Island, I was quizzed again – about money, health, political beliefs and disability. In Bremerhaven I followed in the steps of Mai Phuong from Vietnam who migrated to the former East Germany on a work voucher. In Melbourne I was put in the position of being an immigration officer and challenged into thinking what I would do when a man is aggressive towards a migrant on a bus.
Interactive of emigration officer in the port of Genoa in the Maritime Museum, Genoa.
Some objects have a particular power. Perhaps most powerful of all are the objects collected by Askavusa Collettivo (Barefoot Collective) in Lampedusa – weather-beaten wooden planks taken from abandoned boats, and migrants’ personal belongings displayed in an old fishing storage area without labels: “We can’t speak for the migrants.”
Migrants’ objects retrieved from the Wasteland in Lampedusa.
Letters too – such as personal pleas from Afghani refugees in one of the detention camps in Australia – can be powerful. Newspapers are useful in showing how debates over immigration have changed little over the decades. Personal stories can be very compelling, too, whether it is the story of the £10 English Pom or the child soldier to Australia, of the first migrant from Morocco to Antwerp or the child who was turned away from Ellis Island because of trachoma. Alongside the many stories of migrants who have been successful and contributed to the countries they have adopted there are difficult histories, too – like the stories of those at the Ballinstadt Emigration Museum in Hamburg who entered crime or who were turned away from the New World for pimping.
I have seen some impressive works of contemporary art – in Buenos Aires a piano that the owner brought from Europe creaks and groans, evoking the rough sea. In Mother Tongue by Zineb Sedira I watch the artist’s daughter, who speaks English, struggle to communicate with her grandmother, who speaks only Arabic.
Contemporary art, Migraciones en el Arte Contemporaneo in Buenos Aires.
I have been impressed by some genuine examples of co-production with refugee and migrant communities. Young refugees at Te Papa in New Zealand developed an exhibition based on their experiences in the Mixing Room – a flexible community space. At MAS in Antwerp, local volunteers or ‘trackers’ were given freedom to research stories about local communities. The research led to the exhibition 50 Years of Migration from Morocco and Turkey.
Exhibition co-curated with young refugees in the Mixing Room gallery in Te Papa Museum, Wellington, New Zealand.
The lessons I learnt from this whistle-stop tour are too many and too difficult to summarise within a blog such as this so I will attempt to do so, instead, in a future blog. Two things occur to me immediately, though. I believe that in any museum discussion or recreation of migration it is important to be clear about objectives and to measure progress and performance against these. And, further, we need to be brave, take risks, be creative, open up space for genuine dialogue with all sectors of the population, collaborate closely and equitably with migrant communities and, like the Askavusa Collettivo on Lampedusa, engage in whatever way we can with the present crisis.
For more information on the museums Eithne has visited, please visit her website.
And read more about her research into child migration as part of her Collaborative Doctoral Award between Queen Mary University of London and V&A Museum of Childhood here.
This briefing describes remittance flows both to and from the UK. Remittances are transfers of money from residents of one country to residents of another country and are often associated with migrants sending money to families and communities.
This briefing examines labour migration to the UK among people who are not from the European Economic Area (EEA). Labour migrants are those whose primary reason for migrating or whose legal permission to enter the UK is for employment.
We are excited to announce our partnership with the OCR exam board on an exhibition design competition.
The OCR exam board have identified us as an innovative heritage partner to work with on their new history GCSE, which contains units about Britain’s migration history. Teams of students will focus on one or more aspects of the migration topic, and enter exhibition design plans for how this could be displayed in a national migration museum to engage youth audiences. A high-profile panel convened by MMP will judge the most inspiring and creative entries and announce the winners and the prize at a final event in London.
More details coming soon. For more information, please contact our Education Manager, Emily Miller at emily@migrationmuseum.org
This briefing examines data on non-EU/EEA migration to the UK of people whose basis for entry to the UK is through ties to a family member. Family migration includes what we identify as ‘family unification’ migration (those coming to join family members already living in Britain as citizens or settled residents) and ‘dependents’ who accompany or join a migrant with only temporary leave to remain in the UK.
Last autumn, at a time when we were working with the National Maritime Museum on a residency exploring the theme of migration, the Museums Journal contacted us for our thoughts on the migration crisis for a piece that eventually appeared in its October edition.
Most museums plan their activity years in advance, so it can often be challenging for them to react when the focus of either their museum or their exhibition suddenly becomes front-page news. But the Migration Museum Project is a museum in search of a home and therefore able to react more nimbly than this. Our position is complicated, however, by the fact that we’re a heritage museum, with an ambition to tell the long story of migration into and out of this country; we are not a campaigning political organisation.
How then should we react to the stories of hundreds of thousands of people forced to leave their countries in search of safety and a better life?
One of a series of photographs taken by Chris Barrett, who visited the migrant camp in Calais twice on behalf of the Migration Museum Project. © Chris Barrett
How we do this in the physical space we hope to inhabit in the not-too-distant future will doubtless give our curators and designers a long line of sleepless nights. In the interim, though, we have run a number of blogs that have clearly been influenced by the current migrant crisis, even if that hasn’t been their main focus. Our principle here, as elsewhere, has been that how we understand the past affects the way we behave in the present, and that we think differently about current crises – and act differently, too – when we see them as part of a general pattern of human movement into and out of countries in search of safety, stability and better prospects.
© Chris Barrett
But talk is talk, and we have also planned a programme of activities that focuses centrally on current migration developments. We are planning an exhibition in June – a momentous month that sees both the referendum and Refugee Week – exploring the complexity and human stories behind the current refugee ‘crisis’ with a particular focus on the refugee camp in Calais. The exhibition will take place in the Londonewcastle Project Space in Shoreditch, London, and will be an immersive storytelling experience with work across visual art, photography, film, sound and performance. A significant group of established and emerging artists, some refugees and migrants themselves, some even camp residents, will show their artistic response to the Calais camp.
The exhibition will provide a backdrop for a wider programme of performances, talks, workshops and skills and shared learning sessions – as well as an education programme that will include workshops co-delivered with a young person who has experienced forced migration, and performances by students participating in our theatre-in-education programme.
© Chris Barrett
Anyone interested in working with us on this venture, or wanting to contribute funds to it, should get in touch with Sue McAlpine or Aditi Anand, who are curating our residency. We will keep you updated with developments, particularly in the area of funding, and give you full details of the dates and the programme of activities nearer the time.
The photographs featured on this post were taken by Chris Barrett in Calais. Chris’s photos, as well as those of many other photographers we have worked with, will be part of the display in June.
