How might a history of the Canada-US border, as recounted by people crossing it to seek refuge, change the ways we see and understand migration and borders today
Remembering Refuge: Between Sanctuary and Solidarity is a counter-archive that centres the experiences of people seeking refuge and advocacy groups as narrators of key periods of the history of the Canada-US border. The project situates the life histories of those who have crossed this border as foundational rather than peripheral to the histories of this border.
Counter-archives are political, resistant, and centered on lived experiences. They have the “explicit intention to historicize differently, to disrupt conventional national narratives, and to write difference into public accounts of history” (Chew, Lord and Marchessault 2018, 9). This counter-archive activates the oral histories of people originally from El Salvador and Guatemala who sought refuge in Canada and the advocates they encountered near the Canada-US border. People displaced from all three countries challenge how Canada and the US have tried to frame who counts as a refugee.
We encourage you to critically engage with individuals’ stories of migration across borders.
There are three key elements of the counter-archive: the oral histories; a series of provocations; and a set of education resources.
Oral Histories
By making recordings of the oral histories accessible online, we hope that hearing the voices and the perspectives of people who have had to make this journey across borders will shed light on histories of the countries they came from, of the US and Canada, and about how borders work. We also hope to inspire others who have made the same journey across borders to make new lives to include their experiences and perspectives in the counter-archive.
In this section, you are invited into fourteen stories of people who either crossed multiple borders or work as advocates in border communities. You have access to the full audio and/or text-based histories (in English and/or Spanish). Within each Oral History, you can follow your own curiosity by engaging with additional materials such as news footage, images, videos, and other archives as you interact with the story. The counter-archive is also organized around themes (Tags) and highlights Key Moments in each history. They are also linked to overarching questions that we call Provocations designed to emphasize the interconnections across stories.
Provocations
Provocations are the questions that lie at the heart of conversations about migration and borders but that often are not made explicit. The provocations emerged from the overarching themes that developed out of the team’s engagement with the oral histories. They are points of entry that both inform and are informed by the oral histories and are meant to provoke critical thinking and engagement.
Why do borders exist?
What are the relationships between borders in North America?
Whose stories are told and by whom?
Are we only moved by questions of innocence?
What does refuge look like?
Why do we frame migration as a crisis?
How do people navigate their migration journeys
Education Resources
The counter-archive also aims to design learning experiences and materials that teach border histories as political, constructed, and unfinished. Counter-archives push against teaching history as an artifact rather than as alive. The education resources activate the counter-archive by allowing learners to engage with the stories and find ways to apply the knowledge beyond the classroom.
Copyright
The open access archive was officially launched in 2024. All content shared through this site, including resources, documents, and audio clips, is open access under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license and meant for use by instructors, students, and the general public. Please do not record, reproduce, or remix the material without the permission of the Remembering Refuge team.
Some of the multimedia materials, including podcasts, videos, and photographs, may have copyright restrictions placed upon them and this will be clearly indicated in regard to the materials concerned.