What is your migration story?
California quickly became a mound of string and pins as patrons mapped their migration stories.
Prompt
South Asia: 75 Years of Partition-Independence calls attention to the mass migration that occurred because of the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan.
We invite you to mark the migration story of you and/or your family on this map. Use the string and push pins to trace the physical path and then, if you feel comfortable, write a description or reflection on a slip of paper and attach it to your string.
This interactive is inspired by the 1947 Partition Archive’s work.
We acknowledge that not everyone’s history of migration and/or their relationship to land has a traceable path and we want to provide the opportunity for everyone to make their story visible on this map. Please use the pin(s) that you feel best represent your story.
- Traceable Stories: These pins trace the physical migration story of individuals and/or their families.
- Indigenous Lands: These pins identify members of Indigenous groups who live on or near their ancestral lands but have been marginalized by the governments and societies that occupy and claim ownership of those lands.
- Unknown Roots: These pins highlight the stories of people with unknown roots. Knowing the physical migration routes of your ancestors is a privilege that not everyone shares.
Please use the string color(s) that you feel best represents the reason(s) for you and/or your family’s migration.
Green: 1947 Partition witness or descendent of witness(es)
Red: Force displacement (war, persecution, enslavement)
Orange: Environmental displacement (natural disasters, climate change)
Light blue: Economic migration (work, career, economic opportunity)
Dark blue: Social migration (family, friends, better quality of life)
White: Other
Independence – Partition – Nightmare – each of these words accurately describes the events of 1947 in South Asia as the modern nation states of India and Pakistan were formed and independence from the British was achieved. To commemorate the approximately 2 million lives lost and the journeys of Partition witnesses 75 years after the 1947 Partition, Stanford Libraries created an exhibit and interactive map on which 463 library visitors marked their family’s migration journeys.
The high level of student engagement speaks to the ways in which migration, both forced and opportunistic, have not only shaped the world in which we live, but the student body as well. As a locus of global knowledge in hundreds of languages produced over centuries the library is a microcosm of this history.
The 1947 Partition Archive
In collaboration with The 1947 Partition Archive, many of the personal stories of Partition witnesses are available for streaming.
Migration Map
For those who were not able to make it in person, feel free to explore its digital surrogate that has been preserved on Google Maps.
