Migration Storytelling Project

Migration storytelling, a new data science

We have questions:

  • Is migration a new or old normal?
  • If migration is normal, is absorption of migrants also normal?
  • What factors prompt migration?
  • Does quality of life improve or decline during and after migrants’ journeys resettle them?
  • Are migrants a threat or a gift to the places where they resettle, and what factors account for the outcome?

History can reveal answers to such questions, because, in a real sense each migration journey is a human and social experiment in imagination, compulsion, hope, plans, risks and surprises.

The Migration Storytelling Project at Stanford University seeks to uncover the variety of migration journeys throughout the past 5,000 years, and to learn the key factors in successful and unsuccessful journeys, for the migrants, their families, the places they left behind, the new places they called home, and the places in between.

human migration, stories with common elements, through history