Oxford LibGuides: Refugee and Forced Migration Studies: Archives

Introduction

There are a number of archival collections relevant to refugee and forced migration held in both the Bodleian Social Science Library and the Special Collections housed in the Weston Library (see below). Readers may also wish to search the catalogue for Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts to find additional material for their research.

Definitions

Terms you may encounter in your research

Archive
A collection of documents and records that contain historical information, or a place where these documents and records are kept.

Digital archive
It is similar in purpose to a physical archive, but the historical documents and objects that provide evidence of the past have been digitised (either by scanning or photography, or was created digitally in the first place) and made available online.

Personal Papers

In archives, personal papers are denoted as the private documents and related materials accumulated by an individual in the course of a lifetime (letters, diaries, journals, legal documents, etc.).

Special Collections

A special collection is a group of items, such as rare books or documents, that are either irreplaceable or unusually rare and valuable. For this reason special collections are usually stored separately from regular library collections in a secure location with environmental controls to preserve the items for posterity. The largest concentration of special collections in Oxford can be found in the Weston Library.

Personal papers in the Social Science Library

The Bodleian Social Science Library holds three collections of personal papers:

Betts collection - papers of Tristram Betts, a leading Africanist in the field of refugees during the 1960s and 1970s
Weis archive - papers of Dr. Paul Weis who was a key figure in the drafting of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees
Cooper archive - papers of Major Derek Cooper, covering his time in the Middle East from the 1950s until the late 1990s

The Library also houses the Refugee Health Collection, deposited by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the LIPS (Lebanese Information Processing Service) collection which covers events in Lebanon from 1985-1992 and is owned by the Centre for Lebanese Studies.

To consult the Weis and Cooper archives please contact Sarah Rhodes to arrange an appointment.

The Betts, Refugee Health and LIPS collections can all be searched via SOLO, Oxford Libraries' catalogue, and documents should be requested from the Issue Desk.

Refugee archives in Bodleian Special Collections

Listed below are a number of archival collections relevant to refugee and forced migration held in Special Collections at the Weston Library..

Brookings Internally Displaced Persons Archive
This comprises papers and audio-visual material relating to the Representative of the UN Secretary-General (RSG) on internally displaced persons (IDPs), papers and audio-visual material relating to RSG interactions with individual countries, papers relating to RSG relationship with the United Nations and its affiliated bodies and with non-governmental organisations, papers relating to RSG relationship with regional organisations, papers relating to the guiding principles on internal displacement, and Brookings IDP project publications, papers and programmes. The date range is 1983-2012.
Oxfam Archive
Catalogues covering Appeals and Fundraising, Communications, Campaigns, Programme Policy, Management and Administration, Records of grants made by Oxfam, and Publishing are now online.
Browse by subject area, publication type, country or language. Subjects include: Agriculture, Climate change, Conflict, Disaster preparedness, Food security, Gender, Health, Private sector, Politics, Trade, and many more. Publications available for free download in PDF format. Items should be requested for consultation in the Weston Library
Society for the Protection of Science and Learning
The Society for the Protection of Science and Learning was founded in 1933 as the Academic Assistance Council, by a small group of academics (notably William Beveridge, Leo Szilard and Lord Rutherford). Aware of the potentially large-scale dismissal of university teachers by the Nazi régime in Germany, the council aimed to provide short-term grants for refugee lecturers, and to help them in finding new employment. This operation was funded with money raised by appeals to the academic community and others in Britain. The archive includes papers relating to the 1940 internment crisis; and extensive lists and indexes of refugee scholars, arranged by subject, nationality and religion.

Key refugee archival databases

The Bodleian Libraries subscribe to the databases below which focus on archival materials for refugee and forced migration studies.

Post-War Europe: Refugees, Exile and Resettlement, 1945-1950 (Archives Unbound)

An online archive of primary sources for the study and understanding of the challenges facing the European peoples in the aftermath of World War II, it covers the politics and administration of the refugee crisis in Europe after World War II as well as the day-to-day survival of the refugees themselves. The selection of materials is based on holdings in the National Archives and the Wiener Library, London, and includes documents and letters in the original language. The archive includes the working papers of Rose Henriques from 1945-1950, which comprises perhaps the most complete record of the effort to improve the lives of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and Displaced Persons in the British Zone of Occupation. It also includes papers of the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad (JCRA), the Jewish Relief Units (JRUs) and copious documentation on other aspects of the Jewish refugee situation in the period 1945 to 1950.
This resource is relevant to those studying World War II, Holocaust and Jewish studies, post-war history of Germany, Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy.
Border and Migration Studies Online

Border and Migration Studies Online provides historical context and resources, representing both personal and institutional perspectives, for the growing fields of border(land) studies and migration studies, as well as history, law, politics, diplomacy, area and global studies, anthropology, medicine, the arts, and more. At completion, the collection will include 100,000 pages of text, 175 hours of video, and 1,000 images. In collaboration with an international board of scholars, materials have been selected and organized around fundamental themes such as: Border Identities, enforcement and control; human trafficking; Undocumented migration; and Global Governance of migration. This database covers the 19th to the 21st centuries.

Other archives

In addition to the refugee-related archives held in the Bodleian Libraries there are also a number of finding aids to locate other collections in the UK.