News

Migration, population ageing, and labour force participation

When people express anxieties about immigration, they tend to do so in terms of its economic, social or cultural effect on the country – and occasionally all three. Of these, the social effect of immigration continues to be the most divisive, with strident voices expressing bitterly opposing views. As far as the other two are… Read more

Migration Museum campaign highlights diversity of England World Cup team

The Migration Museum highlighted the diversity of the England team in a campaign to coincide with England’s first World Cup game against Tunisia on 18 June 2018 asking what the starting XI would look like without the impact of first and second-generation immigrants. Read more

The Migration Museums Network

Our pilot Migration Museums Network ran from November 2016–November 2017, with participants expressing strong demand for an information-sharing network on migration themes and giving positive feedback on the two events held to date. Read more

Dr Nadia Valman wins Hawking Award for Migrant Literature Walks

Dr Nadia Valman has been awarded the Hawking Award for Developed Understanding of Public Engagement for her collaboration with the Migration Museum Project on ‘Migrant Literature Walks’ in 2017 and 2018. Read more

- July (1)
  - Migration, population ageing, and labour force participation
    When people express anxieties about immigration, they tend to do so in terms of its economic, social or cultural effect on the country – and occasionally all three. Of these, the social effect of immigration continues to be the most divisive, with strident voices expressing bitterly opposing views. As far as the other two are… Read more
- June (3)
  - Island to Island
    This is a guest blog by photographer Tim Smith, a long-standing friend of the Migration Museum Project and contributor to our 100 Images of Migration exhibition. He describes the background to Island to Island – Journeys Through the Caribbean, a new exhibition at Leeds Central Library which runs from 27 June until 27 July 2018. A… Read more
  - A Polaroid for a Refugee
    A guest blog by Giovanna Del Sarto, creator of A Polaroid for a Refugee, a photographic project depicting points of transition in the lives of individual refugees, a selection of images from which we are displaying at the Migration Museum at The Workshop in June 2018. Read more
  - A new brochure and a cloud’s silver lining
    We’re putting the finishing touches to our new brochure (our sixth, by my reckoning), which we hope to have ready in paper form and as a pdf on our website in the next few weeks. It’s always an interesting process: taking stock of how far we have travelled and how much we have done, re-examining… Read more
- May (1)
  - Moving Stories – a competition that has moved us all
    A guest blog by Asher Goodenough, Subject Advisor for History at OCR, on the Moving Stories competition, which the Migration Museum Project ran in partnership with OCR. Read more
- April (2)
  - River deep, mountain high – two weeks in April 1968
    The title is a reference to the song made famous by Ike and Tina Turner in 1966, lavishly and operatically (some might say bombastically) produced by Phil Spector. Fortunately for this blog, Eric Burdon and the Animals (themselves not averse to musical pyrotechnics) reprised the song in 1968, the year that is the focus of… Read more
  - Cultural diversity in London, 1821
    For many people, there was a golden age when Britain was truly British, populated by the British, with shared cultural and religious values. This golden age is variously identified as that of King Arthur, or Elizabeth I or Victoria, or Churchill, among others. As is the case with most golden ages, all too often the… Read more
- March (2)
  - Grade I status conferred on British mosque with extraordinary history
    On Tuesday 13 March, Historic England conferred Grade I listed status on the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, Surrey, which thereby became the first mosque to receive this status in the country. There had been other registered mosques in the UK before the Woking mosque, the earliest on record being the Liverpool Muslim Institute, which… Read more
  - The public’s engagement with migration debates
    In a second blog for us, Assunta Nicolini, one of our regular volunteers, talks about how two of the seven moments in our current exhibition, No Turning Back, have caused visitors to raise questions about the complex relationship between race, migration and racism. Assunta is writing here in a private capacity. A year and… Read more
- January (2)
  - What does migration mean in the UK today? – Poster project by University of Hertfordshire students
    Second-year graphic design and illustration students at the University of Hertforshire were tasked with designing a poster in response to the question: ‘What does migration mean in the UK today?’ Kerry William Purcell, Senior Lecturer in Design History at the University of Hertfordshire, explains the background to the project as well as presenting some of the posters produced by his students. Read more
  - Gujarati Yatra – “We came with empty hands; we left with empty hearts”
    If you find yourself anywhere near Croydon between now and April 2018, go and visit the Gujarati Yatra exhibition, which is nestled away in the Museum of Croydon and occupies the stairwell, corridor and café of the Clocktower building in which it is housed.1 This exhibition tells the story of the double diaspora of the… Read more
- December (3)
  - Winning the argument or listening?
    The festive season is upon us. According to experts commenting on the subject in magazines and newspapers, it could equally be called the arguing season. A friend in an early Christmas party bemoaned the arrival of her in-laws, bringing with them different opinions on Brexit and other political issues that, sooner or later, led to… Read more
  - Talking about Roman migration in 2017
    The past is not only a different country; it’s a contested one, too, and nowhere more so than in the extent to which Britain may or may not have been a ‘multi-racial’ society in earlier centuries. As with all debates of this kind, positions quickly become polarised and evidence exaggerated, with each end of the… Read more
  - Economic migrants or refugees? A core issue at the heart of migration past and present
    The Migration Museum Project is blessed with a large team of fantastic volunteers, without whom we would find it hard to function and impossible to run our events and exhibitions. Assunta Nicolini is one such volunteer, and her discussions with visitors to our current exhibition, No Turning Back, have got her thinking about a number of issues that she… Read more
- November (1)
  - Partition, 70 years on – the MMP’s annual lecture at the LSE, 22 November 2017
    Ahead of Kishwar Desai’s MMP–LSE lecture on the Partition of India, our projects manager, Andrew Steeds, explores the theme of collective remembering and the differences it can make to those who lived through traumatic events. Read more
- October (3)
  - Being a young interpreter
    In the third of our series reflecting on the experience of running workshops with young people and schoolchildren, Sarah Crafter (The Open University) and Humera Iqbal (University College London) talk about a project that has as its focus young people and children who act as interpreters for their parents and families – and how this focus… Read more
  - How can we convey the complex issues of migration and welfare to school students?
    In the second of three blogs on holding workshops with school pupils on the issues of migration, Umut Erel and Elizabeth Newcombe discuss an attempt to introduce pupils to the complexities of the language and the policy issues surrounding immigration, at a time of great global inequality and economic recession. When holding a workshop for… Read more
  - Hands-on multiculturalism: learning about everyday diversity in urban England
    As Britain’s cities, towns and countryside become more ethnically diverse, it is important that issues of diversity and multiculture are taught in relevant and sensitive ways. In this blog, Katy Bennett and Giles Mohan reflect on their teaching workshop at the Migration Museum Project’s Call Me By My Name exhibition last year and on the… Read more
- September (1)
  - How did we get to here from there?
    The last day of our previous exhibition, Call Me By My Name: Stories from Calais and beyond, was Sunday 20 August; the dismantling and de-installing of the exhibition started the next day and was completed in a matter of days. Exactly one calendar month later our new exhibition, No Turning Back: Seven migration moments that… Read more
- August (1)
  - Home, 2010 and 2017
    In 2010, Simon James took a series of photographs for an exhibition which he called Home, 2010. This was a series of portraits with handwritten answers to a questionnaire alongside the photos. The questionnaire asked the subjects of their photos a series of factual questions –name, home town, nationality, part of London they lived in,… Read more
- July (1)
  - How long, o Lord, how long?
    How long do you have to live somewhere before you are accepted as belonging there? A friend moved to a village in Devon 30 years ago and is now leader of the parish council. But she regularly finds her proposals or decisions challenged by another council member, who invariably begins his sarcastic intervention, ‘Well, as… Read more
- June (1)
  - The new “respectable racism” needs to be challenged more
    A new exhibition has opened in Roast restaurant in London’s Borough Market, founded by a distinguished friend – and generous supporter – of the Migration Museum Project, Iqbal Wahhab. Here Iqbal talks about the circumstances that provided the unfortunate inspiration for the exhibition. No one really knows what’s going to happen post-Brexit. But we do… Read more
- May (1)
  - No Turning Back – diverging paths in Britain’s migration history
    Standing at a crossroads What have been the pivotal moments, the forks in the road, the lines in the sand in the history of migration in this country? And was the referendum on 23 June 2016 one of those moments? The pivotal moments in a person’s, or a country’s, life are always compelling hooks to… Read more
- April (1)
  - ‘Evil May Day’: a 500th anniversary
    One of the clear highlights of our ‘Imprints’ walk last October (to judge from the feedback of walkers) was Bill Bingham’s rendition of the ‘Strangers’ speech from Sir Thomas More. Bill, a tireless friend of the Migration Museum Project and the mastermind behind the video tent in our current exhibition of Call Me By My… Read more
- March (1)
  - Stories from the Soho Road
    After Khalid Masood’s attack on Westminster last week, both Birmingham and Islam were singled out for critical comment in some of the nation’s press – Birmingham being once again branded the UK’s prime jihadist recruitment centre, and Islam criticised for its callousness, as evidenced by the photograph of a young Muslim woman walking past one… Read more
- February (2)
  - Nations divided: how to teach the history of partition
    Waiting for the midnight hour This year marks the 70th anniversary of Indian Independence. On 15 August 1947, ‘At the stroke of the midnight hour,’ as India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, sonorously proclaimed, ‘when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.’ And so it did, but it awoke too to the… Read more
  - At last, a larger slice of the cake
    Martin Spafford, who sits on the Migration Museum Project’s education committee, writes here about developments to public examination at GCSE which, for the first time, enshrine migration education on the school curriculum. Emily Miller, the Migration Museum Project’s education manager, is working with Martin to promote migration education in schools. Migration and the new GCSE… Read more
- November (2)
  - A Nepali in Victorian England
    Gurkhas occupy an interesting place in British folklore. Universally recognised as ferociously loyal, heroic and determined fighters in the British army, they were only recently given right to settle in this country, and then only after a high-profile media campaign. In this guest blog, Krishna P Adhikari recounts what is known of one of the first Nepali visitors… Read more
  - The Wiener Library’s timely exhibition
    ‘The sympathy and freedom and liberty of England’ With wonderful timing, the Wiener Library opened its new exhibition, ‘A Bitter Road’, on the reception of Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s, on Thursday 27 October, the day that the Calais ‘Jungle’ was dismantled and its residents dispersed. The coincidence didn’t escape the speakers at… Read more
- October (2)
  - Imprints: our first London Migration Walk
    We went on a walk last Sunday, along with about 130 others. It started in the cold, grey and wet, at a time when many of us would still be, if not in bed, certainly doing nothing much more energetic than turning the pages of a Sunday paper and slurping coffee. It ended in glorious… Read more
  - The poetry of migration
    One of the first events we held in the course of our three-week residency at Londonewcastle this summer (where more than 4,000 people visited our exhibition Call Me By My Name: Stories from Calais and Beyond) was the ‘Poetry of Migration’ on Tuesday 6 June. Michael Rosen (distinguished poet, writer, entertainer – and distinguished friend… Read more
- August (1)
  - Exploring the migrant history of Victorian East London
    What was the attitude of the Victorians to immigration, particularly Jewish immigration? What was the mood of the country leading up to the passing of the Aliens Act in 1905? And what parallels are there between the experience of immigrants then and now, one hundred years later? The focus of this guest blog is Israel Zangwill and… Read more
- July (2)
  - Human Cargo
    One of our core ambitions has always been to tell the long story of migration into and out of this country – partly because every immigrant into one country is an emigrant from another, and partly because people forget that, until the 1970s, the United Kingdom was a net exporter of people: more people left the… Read more
  - Brexit Ground Zero
    One of the more unpleasant effects of the referendum result has been a spike in anti-immigrant activity, with abuse hurled at Poles in the street and graffiti daubed on cultural centres run for and by EU migrants. This change in atmosphere, allied to the uncertainty of their future status in a UK divorced from the EU, has led… Read more
- June (2)
  - Photography in the ‘Jungle’
    This guest blog is written by Rob Pinney, one of the photographers who submitted photos for our exhibition, Call Me By My Name: Stories from Calais and Beyond, which is at 28 Redchurch Road, London, until 22 June (details here). Rob’s book, The Jungle, is on sale at the exhibition and from his website (see… Read more
  - Calais in our hearts
    As a way of setting the scene to our newest exhibition, Call Me By My Name: Stories from Calais and Beyond, Professor Robert Tombs has written this historical account of the city and its enduring importance on both sides of the Channel. Burghers and roast beef The bit of the continent closest to England has… Read more
- May (3)
  - Kajal Nisha Patel – photographer in flight
    Kajal Nisha Patel’s photographs have long been favourites of ours and of visitors to our exhibitions. There’s a richness to their colour and a vibrancy in their composition that people love, whether in the slyly provocative ‘Nagar Kitan’ (which Kajal previously called ‘No, this is England’) or ‘The Patriot’ or her shot of a pair of… Read more
  - Racist politics and human rights
    A guest blog by Anthony Lester, distinguished friend of the Migration Museum Project, Liberal Democrat peer and author of a new book on the threat to our freedom. Politicians are all too easily tempted to exploit racism in their pursuit of power. It is a dangerously divisive tactic that plays on religion, nationalism and xenophobia, as… Read more
  - Syrian drought: have its effects washed up in Calais?
    Adam Woodhall visited the migrant camp in Calais in November 2015. In the conversations that followed (particularly one with the MMP’s Sue McAlpine, who is curating Call Me By My Name: Stories from Calais and beyond, shortly to open in Shoreditch, London), he realised that his personal interest in environmental issues, especially drought caused by… Read more
- March (2)
  - A whistle-stop tour of migration in museums and galleries across the world
    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… Read more
  - Connecting past and present
    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… Read more
- February (2)
  - We all belong – portraits from Northern Ireland
    Last year we were fortunate to contribute to a major exhibition, Adopting Britain, at the Southbank Centre, exploring 70 years of migration to the UK. Among the wonderfully varied projects featured in the exhibition, a set of photographs from Northern Ireland caught our eye. Beautifully composed against a simple dark backdrop, highlighting the diversity of people… Read more
  - Journeys – the Migration Experience
    The journey is an essential part of the migration experience, but where does it begin and where does it end? Long before a person steps on a plane or boat, a set of cultural cues, laws and regulations have already influenced that journey. And arrival in a new place is hardly the end, for gaining… Read more
- January (2)
  - Brits abroad
    Photographer Charlie Clift tells us about his project Brits Abroad, featuring portraits of British emigrants living in Europe. Read more
  - The last great exodus from Britain?
    Our position has always been that the Migration Museum we are working to develop will be a museum about emigration as much as about immigration, and for two main reasons. The first is that, until the 1980s, Great Britain was a net exporter of people – more people left the country than came into it – and… Read more
- December (3)
  - Doors onto lives
    The portraits of Dharmendra Patel It’s only about 10 metres’ walk from the door of the Heritage Gallery in the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich to the lecture room at its far end but, in the spring of this year, for the time it took you to cross the floor you would have been… Read more
  - The first mass migration from outside Europe
    Mihir Bose, one of our distinguished friends, argues in this guest blog that Europe will need to think outside the box if it is to cope with the most unique migrant crisis in its history – and he looks back to 1971 and the painful birth of Bangladesh for a telling point of comparison. The migrant… Read more
  - City of London: Migrant Haven
    What contribution have migrants made to the City of London, the financial powerhouse of the United Kingdom? And what role do they continue to play in shaping London’s financial institutions? These questions were the focus of our latest Great Minds event, City of London: Migrant Haven, hosted by Schroders on 16 November 2015. The event chaired… Read more
- November (1)
  - Colin O’Brien – humanist street chronicler
    A weird coincidence occurs shortly after Colin O’Brien and I sit down for a coffee in Hackney PictureHouse, just across the road from where his photos formed part of the Migration Museum Museum’s first exhibition of 100 Images of Migration at Hackney Museum. A young man, George Nelson, sits down at our table and, spying… Read more
- October (2)
  - Between dark and light – the photography of Guy Corbishley
    In the third of our features on photographers who have contributed to our 100 Images of Migration exhibition, we feature the work of Guy Corbishley, who submitted the photos of ‘Speaker’s Corner’ and ‘EDL protest’, two images that form part of what Guy calls his ‘continuing work exploring protest, politics, diverse cultures, human rights and… Read more
  - Arrivals – humanising immigration
    On Monday 12 and Tuesday 13 October, at the University of Sheffield’s ‘Migrants in the City’ conference at Cutler’s Hall, there’s a sneak preview of a project by Jeremy Abrahams that is going to be shown in full in 2016. In this guest blog, Jeremy explains the background to his project and what he was hoping… Read more
- September (3)
  - A forgotten First World War anniversary
    War has always been one of the major causes of migration, with refugees fleeing countries torn apart by conflict. Most of these refugees hope to return to their country once peace is restored, although obviously (as, for example, our blog on the Polish Government in exile showed) this may turn out to be impossible. In… Read more
  - Humpty Dumpty words on migration
    When Alice meets Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, illustrated here by John Tenniel, they have a famous exchange of views about the meaning of words. ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’… Read more
  - Sir Edgar Speyer: ‘A minor tragedy of the war’
    For every exhibition that is put on, there is always another: the exhibition that could have been put on had there been world enough and time. When you’re trying to condense more than six hundred years of German–British history into 17 panels of information, there are bound to be omissions that haunt you. For Cathy… Read more
- August (4)
  - Regrets? He’s had a few …
    A profile of Charlie Phillips, photographer and contributor to 100 Images of Migration Charlie Phillips had never planned to be a photographer. When, in the standard career interview towards the end of his time at school, the youth employment officer asked him what he wanted to be, Charlie answered ‘A naval architect’. Even now, his… Read more
  - Migration is about people, not numbers
    This guest blog by Mihir Bose, a distinguished friend of the Migration Museum Project, was written shortly after his visit to Adopting Britain, the exhibition at the Southbank Centre to which the Migration Museum Project has been a proud contributor. Read more
  - Boughton House, the Huguenot Summer … and a contemporary resentment
    MMP Projects Manager Andrew explores the fascinating history and Huguenot heritage of Boughton House near Kettering in Northamptonshire, whose current Huguenots Exhibition includes a contribution from MMP. Read more
  - A gift from France
    The contribution of the Huguenots to the economy and culture of this country has been immense, and it is being celebrated this year in the Huguenot Summer. In this blog, MMP Projects Manager Andrew explores aspects of Huguenot history. Read more
- June (2)
  - Boat people over history
    This blog on the subject of boat people, written by Migration Museum Project trustee Jill Rutter, is timely for a number of reasons. First, it is published in Refugee Week, when the UK’s attention is focused on the predicament of refugees. This year, Refugee Week is celebrating the contribution of refugees to the UK. (For… Read more
  - “A keepsake is a very special thing”
    In this Guest Blog, Sue McAlpine, freelance curator with the Migration Museum Project, gives us an insight into her Keepsakes experience. When the Migration Museum Project asked me earlier this year to curate their Keepsakes exhibition – I had previously curated 100 Images of Migration at Hackney Museum in 2013, the first time that particular exhibition had… Read more
- May (1)
  - Access all areas
    'Photo man' Tim Smith – a contributor to 100 Images of Migration – looks back on 30 years of looking in on other people's lives... Read more
- April (2)
  - Keeping the spirit of Poland alive
    2015 marks 75 years since the Polish government in exile moved to London from Angers following the Nazi occupation of France, and 25 years since it handed back its regalia and constitution to Lech Walesa, the newly elected president of a newly democratic Poland. Read more
  - Small Islands
    Illness, dying and bereavement can bring up and intensify profound questions about belonging and loss for migrants. Yet, as the writer John Berger has pointed out, the dying or infirm migrant is peripheral to Western imagination because of the unrelenting demand for healthy and young migrant labour. Read more
- March (1)
  - The New British/The New Londoners
    The world in a city “We are 35 in and have about 165 to go – I am committed to this project long term … but I think Nauru might prove a challenge!” exclaims Chris Steele-Perkins, explaining his project ‘The New Londoners’ to us from his base at Magnum Photos in Old Street, London. Chris… Read more
- February (1)
  - Between East and West
    Guest blog by photographer Mike Tsang about his exhibition Between East and West. Details of when and where you can see it are at the base of the post. Between East and West began its life in my teenage years in high school. I went to school in north-west London where there are large communities of… Read more
- December (2)
  - Peas and queues
    If she has kids, they will adopt not her speech but the speech of their British school friends. If you come from an immigrant family, you’ll know how that works. Read more
  - The Languages of Migration
    Emily Miller, Education Officer at the Migration Museum Project How does the language we use to talk about migration and migrants affect our views on migration? This is the question that Michael Rosen dug into in the Migration Museum Project’s inaugural annual lecture at the London School of Economics and Political Science last week. … Read more
- November (1)
  - Making Histories
    Emily Miller, Education Officer at the Migration Museum Project ‘To start, I am going to tell you a load of lies,’ states dynamic, young Channel 4 presenter Nel Hedayat to the 70 young historians gathered in the House of Commons to share the results of their involvement in the Runnymede Trust’s ‘Making Histories’ project, with… Read more
- October (1)
  - The price of emancipation
    Emily Miller, Education Officer at the Migration Museum Project Recent films and the media storm around them prove that the horrors of slavery continue to loom in our collective consciousness. A chapter in our history, at least in its transatlantic form, we are glad to have closed. Or have we? What if we discovered that… Read more
- September (1)
  - Connections of time and place – 18 September
    By a happy coincidence, our new exhibition, Germans in Britain, opens at the German Historical Institute on Thursday 18 September, the day on which George 1 arrived in England from Germany three hundred years ago. George hadn’t been the obvious successor to Queen Anne, when she died in August 1714: there had been more than… Read more
- August (1)
  - Russian . . . ish
    ‘Here I feel myself free!’ yelled Rasputin. I spat out his hair as it streamed behind him from under his helmet. Roaring through deserted streets in the dead chill before dawn, I felt free, too, but free in a terrified kind of way: he was way over the limit. Read more
- July (1)
  - The Lion of Milan
    At breakfast at a Mumbai hotel a young man glances up when the World Cup is mentioned on television. I do too. Our common interest in Read more