Our priority at Migrants of the Mediterranean is to ensure the experiences of people in the migrant community are heard and that they have agency over the stories they share. Humanitarian Archiving is the next step in pursuing just that. It is a process that combines ongoing connection with our subjects, community building, interactivity, and accessibility.
What are the Humanitarian Archives?
The Migrants of the Mediterranean (MotM) Journey Story Archive, is a growing database of over 100 written Journey Stories, follow-up testimonies of life as it is lived post-rescue and reception, audio interviews, and photos of participating people in the MotM migrant community. It is an ongoing initiative that is crucial to the preservation and dissemination of our work.
As a Humanitarian Storytelling organization, it is our priority to ensure that the experiences of people in the migrant community are heard and that they have agency over their stories. Humanitarian Archiving is our next step to ensure that. This is the process of archiving in a way that combines ongoing connection with subjects, community building, interactivity, and accessibility.
Humanitarian Archiving will:
Continue to preserve documented Journey Stories and additional storytelling
Offer a point of access for archive participants to keep us up to date
Be accessible – depending on the consent of the subject – to academics, policy makers, students, and the general public
Our hope for the Humanitarian Archives is to encourage academic research; advance legal efforts addressing migrant rights with activists and politicians; and foster empathy and action among the general public for all people in the migrant community.
Who manages the archives.
Current members of our Executive and Archive Development team are working to create a framework for identifying best practices for digital preservation. This includes proper keywording, and physical and digital file storage that is managed in ways that cannot be either corrupted, or confused by AI content.
We envision a diverse team of specialists that is made up of public and oral historians, cultural studies and language scholars, journalists, and others, allowing us to approach the archives from a variety of perspectives.
Working with previous participants from the migrant community is also important to the development of these archives as an ethical approach based on trust and respect. Our established relationships with profiles are paramount, and fundamental to the life and mission of Migrants of the Mediterranean.
Where the archives live.
The archives will have two access points:
A large scale digital database, which includes all raw audio, video, or image files from each person profiled
We will develop an app to maintain seamless contact with participants in the migrant community in real time:
Though we do multiple follow-up visits via assigned regional correspondents on the ground, the app will allow participants to share up-to-date information by uploading audio, video, or photos of their choice through their unique, encrypted accounts. Anything uploaded will be stored thereafter in our large scale database, while providing our regional correspondents current information in their evolving stories of migration, movement, and integration.
In keeping ethical approaches to storytelling, archiving, and journalism, finding solutions for access, privacy, and consent are our top priorities.
How our archives are different.
When engaging with archives, many immediately link them to the past, as their collections hold evidence used to craft historical narratives. However, archives are also very much rooted in the present moment: they represent more than what is simply over and done.
That is why our approach in the collection of information is proactive and ongoing. The work needs to be done immediately and continuously in order to document the current situation and advocate for change alongside the migrant community in the years to come. These stories are not only personally meaningful and worthy of mindful conservation, but are also significant for the historical record.
Especially since we are dedicated to preserving participants’ stories in their own words. We hope that each story can be passed down to their families through the generations, while we continue to build connections with every member of the MotM migrant community that could last, potentially, a lifetime.
Launch + timeline.
Once a dedicated team is assembled to plan and develop the formal Humanitarian Archives, a timeline for execution will be proposed, with both executive finance and management insights that will inform the viability of its scope.
Our future + impact.
The MotM Humanitarian Archives is a living archive that prioritizes the agency of its community of participants, which is always growing. Their Journey Stories are part of a long history of human movement. Migration has been contested and politicized, but also celebrated and desired. By sharing these experiences, members of the MotM migrant community invite listeners into intimate, often traumatic, but always deeply-felt moments in the lives of this vulnerable community that are otherwise left unheard.
Our Humanitarian Storytelling and Archiving is about shedding light on who has access to movement, in which places and under what circumstances. Storytelling and listening builds connection beyond borders. In identifying social and political barriers to movement, we can take steps towards making migration safer, physically and psychologically, for all.
Join the Humanitarian Archives.
Migrants of the Mediterranean is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in the United States, currently developing a team of archivists to bring the managed Journey Story Archive to life. If you are an established archivist, preservationist, historian or other relevant scholar and would like to apply your knowledge, creativity and expertise to this endeavor, please contact us to learn more.
This is a role that can make you an active part of the global cause of human rights in migration that will define a generation. It will offer you a chance to give dignity to the unseen people who deserve our attention, thus leaving a positive mark on both humanity and history. We look forward to welcoming you.
