Welcome to the ICMM Maritime Refugee Project Shared Resouces page, a growing resource that highlights refugee and migration related resources which could be useful for our members. This list continues to grow, and we welcome further contributions. To suggest a resource for inclusion, please contact Christina Connett Brophy (ccbrophy@sdmaritime.org) and help expand this important collection. Please note that links were correct at time of sharing but we apologises for any non-active links that may be in this list.
Events
- TMC 2026 BRATISLAVA – THE GLOBAL CONFERENCE ON MIGRATION | 2012-2026)
- London Migration Film Festival
- Cambridge Refugee Week
Past events
- Stories of Migration, (exhibition) SOAS, 2025
- Migrations, Human Odyssey, Musée de l’Homme, (exhibition) 2024-2025
- Es Devlin: Face to Face: 50 Encounters with Strangers, (exhibition) Somerset House, 2024-2025
- Sink Without a Trace, (exhibition) P25 Gallery, London, 2019
- Refugees Forced to Flee (exhibition) Imperial War Museum, 2021
Films
- Chi Thai – short film Lullaby
- Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by boat (Imperial War Museums)
- Liquid Traces: The Left to Die Boat Case from Forensic Oceanography
- PositiveNegatives films – they work with 70 different researchers around the world and make Open Access animated short movies about migration
- PositiveNegatives North Star Fading
- PositiveNegatives Life on the Move
- Human Flow
- Born in Syria
- Lifeboat
- 4.1 Miles
- BOLD MELLON COLLECTIVE – a queer migrant art collective
- Tejiendo nuestro futuro: the stories of Latinx elders – Brixton House
Poetry and Books
Poetry
• Mohamed Hassan – Secrets of the Sea (for Alan Kurdi)
• Wang Ping
Books
• Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer (Vietnamese Boat People)
• Displaced Belongings – Mirja Arnshav
• Silent Books (Lampedusa)
• ‘Boat Refugees’ and Migrants at Sea: A Comprehensive Approach
• What Strange Paradise, Omar El Akkad
• Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation – The Open Boat
Museum Exhibitions, Projects and Case Studies
- RMG webpage on migration-related collections: Migration past and present | National Maritime Museum objects
- Barcelona Maritime Museum installation of refugee boat
- Vabamu | Online exhibition “Free Winds” – Vabamu
- National Museum of the American Latino
- Barcelona Maritime Museum – Undesirable refugees (1919) Photo-Album
On 21 March 1919 the steamship Manuel Calvo (Compañía Transatlántica) sailed from Barcelona to Odessa. On board there were around 200 “undesirable foreigners”, that is, mainly Turkish subjects, and 40 Jewish people from Salonica. They have been expelled by decree for different reasons, including the difficulty to identify them clearly as national subjects, and the suspicion of the involvement of some of them in revolutionary activities. The refugees were escorted by a military guard. Unfortunately, the trip ended dramatically in Turkish waters when the ship hit a mine. 105 people died, most of them deportees (71). The Museu Maritim de Barcelona preserves some documents regarding this fact at the Spanish Shipping line Compañia Trasatlántica Archive.
They also preserve a photo album that documented this tragic trip. It contains 63 photographs taken by an unknown photographer, and has been recently restored. The album was bought in 2022 by the Museu Marítim de Barcelona (Inventory number 102629F MMB). This short video shows the content. The moving images have been generated by AI. - Barcelona Maritime Museum – Contemporary Art work
De l’autre côté. Collage. Tatiana Marie Jeanne Maltaverne. 2007 (Inventory number 19909 MMB) To represent the Mediterranean Sea – an almost enclosed sea –I decided to use coconuts, as palm trees are emblematic of this sea. I filled these coconuts with transparent polyester resin, delicately textured with blue and green pigments. This art work got a price at the II Biennal ART Mar, organized by Museu Marítim de Barcelona and A-FAD (2007). First Piece: on one side (south) are the aspiring emigrants: women, men and children; and on the other side (north) is the “promised land”, the “El Dorado” of our consumer and holiday leisure society. 11 x 20 x 19 cm
Art
- Kim-Anh Nguyen – Sydney-based ceramic artist: Boat People’s Horizon | kanmadeceramics
- Garling Wu – Sonic Arist 皇潮King Tide – immersive audio-visual performance on her father’s ‘Freedom Swim’ from China to Hong Kong
- Maya Ramsay
- Ai WeiWei
- Ai Weiwei, Law of the Journey, 2017, reinforced PVC with aluminium frame, 60 x 6 x 3m
- Ai Weiwei posing on a beach in Lesbos, taken by Rohit Chawla for India Today, 2016
- Ai Weiwei, Crystal Ball, 2017
- Human Flow
- Cuban American artist Luiz Cruz Azaceta’s screenprint depicts a traveller navigating a rolling sea at night. The blue, jagged waves and the man’s downcast expression evoke feelings that might accompany his journey–uncertainty, fatigue, and fear.
- Mimmo Paladino. The “Gateway to Europe” at the point where Europe is closest to Africa in Lampedusa.
- https://www.phillipscollection.org/event/2019-06-21-warmth-other-suns-stories-global-displacement
General Resources
- United Nations Refugee Agency
- US Refugee Processing Center (Refugee admission statistics)
- International Organization for Migration – Europe Displacement Tracking Matrix (Refugee admission statistics)
- Hannah Arendt