Migration and Border History

African Migration in Primary Sources

This is a short introduction to scholarly and primary sources research in migration and border history at Boston College.

This is a table of contents for the page. The links below will take you down to the associated boxes.

Border and Migration Studies Online
Includes a segment on the Congo and on the EU.
BC access required.
Immigrations, Migrations and Refugees: Global Perspectives, 1941-1996
Includes information on:
1960-1965 Congo Crisis
1960-1972 Refugee Crisis in East Africa
1967-1971 Biafran War
1974-1996 Refugee Flows in Zaire
1975-1996 Mozambicans in Malawi
1984-1996 Famine in Ethiopia
1994-1996 Hutu-Tutsi Violence
BC access required.
HathiTrust
A digital repository for the nation's research libraries, HathiTrust brings together the digitized book and serial collections of major universities and other partner institutions, a significant portion of which is in the public domain and available full text. Boston College's status as a partner makes it possible for members of the Boston College community to download any of the out-of-copyright items as PDFs.
World Digital Library
The World Digital Library is a Library of Congress project sponsored by UNESCO. Items in this digital library, including books, manuscripts, photographs, maps and sound recordings, are individually described and searchable in seven languages. Most countries and regions around the world are represented.

Consider exploring these different collections for specific countries/people groups with date limitations.

DAG Repository (UN)
DAG repository is a repository of digital materials published by the United Nations. Includes UN official documents of the main policy-making bodies, UN publications,
UN maps, UN Archival collections, UN Multimedia collections.
OECD iLibrary
Includes key OECD publications such as: Financial Market Trends, Higher Education Management and Policy, Nuclear Law Bulletin, OECD Economic Outlook, OECD Economic Studies, OECD Economic Surveys, OECD Journal of Competition Law & Policy, and OECD Papers. Cover from 1990s onward.
United Nations Documents
ODS is the UN's Official Document System. You can search for UN documents by keywords, then narrow your search.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS)
1941-1996. Transcribed and translated foreign broadcasts and news. The original mission was to monitor, record, transcribe, and translate intercepted radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broadcasts from occupied territories. Now offers the opportunity for students to expand their research into primary sources that originated in languages they do not have.

Nexis Uni
Nexis Uni includes thousands of U.S. and non-U.S. news sources; legal materials: case law, statutes and law reviews; and company/business information. Excellent coverage from 1990 onward, some back coverage.

World News Connection
Full text news (1995-2013) compiled from thousands of non-U.S. media sources translated into English, the information in WNC covers significant socioeconomic, political, scientific, technical, and environmental issues and events. Coverage is by region and includes: East Asia, Near East and South Asia, China, East Europe, West Europe, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Amnesty International Library
Interface and content in English (and other languages).
Access to AI's more recent country and research reports beginning in 1961 and moving to the present.
Open Access.

Human Rights Studies Online
Human Rights Studies Online provides documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide. The collection includes text and video that give voice to the countless victims of human rights crimes in the 20th and early 21st centuries committed during the Holocaust, and in Armenia, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and other locations.

Human Rights Watch Reports
Interface and content in English (and other languages).
HRW's reports from 1987 forward. Can search by country, year, keyword, and topic.
Open Access.

Black Abolitionist Papers
This collection documents the efforts of African American activists in their international effort to abolish slavery in the United States. Covering the period 1830-1865, the 15,000-item collection records the full impact of African American efforts to oppose slavery by displaying the writings and publications of the activists themselves.
Slavery and the Law
Includes petitions related to race and slavery to state legislatures and to southern county courts, as well as state slavery statutes from 1789-1865.

For additional primary source collections related to Abolition and Slavery in the U.S., see the corresponding BC Libraries' Research Guide.