Brown University, UMass-Boston Collaborates with MotM in Launch of Migration Story Archive in French.

The collaboration brings the Humanitarian Storytelling NGO's archive of migration stories to the French-speaking public, scholars and policymakers on the cusp of the anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration, and amidst anti-immigration rhetoric proliferating globally.

PHOENIX, ARIZONA. 13 December 2024 — Migrants of the Mediterranean (MotM), the global Humanitarian Storytelling organization, launches the Journey Story Archive in French, created in collaboration with the Brown University department of French and Francophone Studies and University of Massachusetts, Boston department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, which gives direct access to the organization’s collection of migration testimonies to the French-speaking public.

The first wave of the launch includes roughly 30 out of the more than 100 Journey Stories recorded in the MotM archives, detailing the harrowing journeys of survivors of human smuggling and trafficking, and human rights violations, primarily in Libya and the Central Mediterranean region, with further translations being released in the months ahead on a rolling basis, including those from the US-Mexico border zone.

The collaboration expands MotM’s impact in migrant rights advocacy in the academic sector, with new students and scholars having exposure to its primary source document collection and setting the foundation for humanizing the migration narrative.

It is a timely release, on the brink of the extreme-right Trump regime promising mass deportations; and a figure elected and fueled by a rush of fears and damaging stereotypes about the migrant community in the US and abroad.

“There is no question that by engaging with the sources, students are able to see beyond reductive news headlines to the migration stories hidden behind them,” said professors Claudia Esposito, Ph.D., of UMass-Boston and Stéphanie Ravillon, Ph.D., of Brown University.

Students’ direct engagement with the stories in the course of their translation work, guided and overseen by Esposito and Ravillon, means they have a corrected lens through which to understand the global migration phenomenon, through the words of the people who have made the journeys themselves.

“Students gained real-life insight into the psychological, physical and logistical challenges faced by migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa crossing the Mediterranean to Europe,” said Esposito. An advantage soon to be explored in the US-Mexico context, as MotM’s inaugural Journey Story reports from the Arizona-Mexico border zone are released in 2025.

The impact doesn’t end with linguistic studies alone.

“Going forward we envision using the Archive in courses about Contemporary Europe, Contemporary France as well as in language courses,” Esposito and Ravillon continued. “In all cases we believe students will benefit from the historical, social and linguistic content with which they are coming into contact.”

Driving scholarship is in fact one of the key areas of impact MotM is after.

“From the beginning our work caught the attention of scholars first,” said MotM Founder and CEO, Pamela Kerpius, “they just got it.”

The response was across the spectrum.

“Whether migration studies proper, or an Italian or French course where students and scholars needed new ways to connect with what was happening on the ground in Italy and the EU, and also now as we expand to US-Mexico” continued Kerpius, “MotM has been able to create positive, human-first connections that give the migration narrative true texture. And that influences how the next generation understands migration too."

“That’s what we’re after,” Kerpius said, “Humanizing the migration phenomenon. And living without fear of people who are in an exceptionally vulnerable state.”

Preying on fears has been the defining characteristic of political rhetoric in the 2024 US election, and worldwide, particularly on the extreme-right.

“The French election in 2024 has served as a clear reminder that migrant communities continue to be instrumentalized,” said Esposito and Ravillon, something MotM works to combat.

“Despite their hardships, people in the migrant community are often depicted in the news and seen as a generic, faceless and dehumanized entity, mostly to be feared and avoided," Esposito and Ravillon continued. "MotM contributes to making visible the real-life challenges faced by migrants, a profound and moving effort that can only serve to inform public discourse, which in turn may impact the political arena.”

The French Archive allows the organization to more completely represent the voices of its community, as well. It helps return the migration discourse back to the individual stories and insights of the people who understand it most—the people who originate from French-speaking countries, including Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Algeria and others.

“For the migrants whose stories have been translated,” said Ravillon, “it is an opportunity for their testimonies to be heard in one of their mother tongues, since many of them in fact come from countries where French is widely spoken.”

The presence of MotM in academia is not the first. It received a $15,000 community partnership in 2023 with Occidental College, as well as numerous engagements with other higher learning institutions, including the University of Toronto, Dartmouth College, Brandeis University, University of Washington, among many others, and creates a pathway for scholars to broaden the academic discourse in migration at a human level.

Additional impact in 2024 includes the citation of longtime MotM community member, Abraham (Nigeria), by UNHCR, IOM, and Mixed Migration Centre in their combined report on the risks of travel along the Central Mediterranean route. Its inclusion showcases the MotM value and impact when applied to the areas of policy, research and institutional advocacy.

Visit the Journey Story Archive in French, and read more about Migrants of the Mediterranean, now in the midst of its 6th Annual Holiday Fundraiser, on the website.