Migration Stories NW

Migration Stories NW is a National Lottery Heritage Fund project (2021-24) documenting histories of migration in and out of the North West of England from the Roman period to the present day.

The project is coordinated by Global Link in partnership with four other North West partners: Cheshire Global Learning, Crossing Footprints in Manchester, Cumbria Development Education Centre and Liverpool World Centre. We are supported by historians, archives, museums and libraries from across the region. Each partner has worked with groups of adult research volunteers to research individual stories of migration in and out of the North West.

These stories feature on an interactive digital migration map, which has been used as a stimulus for workshops with young people and as the focus of a new educational resource exploring the connections between historical and contemporary migration.

Young people have gathered oral histories of recent migrants to the North West and added these to the map. We are also producing films and a touring pop-up exhibition that will visit each of the partner locations in 2024 to share our stories with the wider public.

In this time of increasingly negative attitudes towards asylum seekers and ‘illegal’ entrants to the UK, Migration Stories NW shows how migration is a normal part of human existence that has shaped the social landscape of our region for centuries.