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Johan Leman, 11 March 2024

Currently, I have been able to listen to about 15 stories, told by the migrants themselves or by one of their children, of people who left Morocco in the 1960s and are willing to have their story recorded as oral heritage in the Migration Museum.

In a previous message, I shared some initial impressions. I’ll add a few more impressions here. It’s very striking that so far, none of the stories are exactly alike, except that they mostly involve young men and that it wasn’t until the early 1980s that they began to think about ‘settling down’. It’s also the time when the first ones started to establish themselves as independent workers (e.g., butchers). Also interesting to hear is how in those early years, contacts with Jewish butchers were important for more than one of them. And the women? They arrived a little later and focused mainly on their own family, their husband, children, and relationships with the family left behind.

I currently have too few Turkish stories to potentially see similarities and differences. But those stories are coming. In both cases, we hope to gather at least 50 stories each. You can help with that. That would be great.

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