Migration History

The history of migrants and their organizations and the history of labor migration have recently become a major research theme at the IISH. Collections at the Institute, including those from long ago, offer many directions for further research, which can be found in the specific archives of migrants and their organizations, as well as in more general archives such as the Labour and Socialist International and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), which also include files about migrants of various nationalities. The oldest collection that is completely devoted to the migration theme is the archive of the Duchobory, Russian peace activists who emigrated to Canada at the end of the 19th century.

The majority of the migrant organization archives deals with the Netherlands, and the text materials are mainly in Dutch. The archives of Turkish organizations in the Netherlands are the largest, which accord with the large and impressive Turkish and Kurdish collections acquired by the Turkey Department.

In addition to this, the IISH houses various initiatives in the field of Dutch migration history: - The Historisch Beeldarchief Migranten [Historical Image Archive of Migrants] collects and digitizes images from private collections belonging to immigrants who have come to the Netherlands in the past hundred years.
- The Centrum voor de Geschiedenis van Migranten [Center for the History of Migrants] stimulates research on the arrival and settlement of immigrants by tracing sources related to their history and making them accessible via a portal website www.vijfeeuwenmigratie.nl.
- The database Postkoloniale Migrantenorganisaties in Nederland [Organizations of Post-colonial Migrants in the Netherlands] includes 2600 organizations established by immigrants from the former colonies of the Netherlands. They can be searched on line.