Monuments to Contemporary Migration

Though migration is a on going phenomena and not an event of the past that needs to be memorialised, the author, instigated by the probing talk of Lubaina Himid : “What are monuments for?”, attempts to justify a musealization of migration and presents her ideas on how a monument to migration would make the host society more aware of the hardships of  contemporary migrants. A monument to migration can also be a reminder of those who perish in the process of migration. Drawing on Pierre Nora’s notion of “Lieux de Memoire”, the author argues that the memory of migration and that of migrants contributes to the enrichment of collective memory of the host nation. The questions that arise are: Who holds the claim to a monument of migration? How to best convey the memories of migration without being insensitive to the suffering of migrants? The author comments on a few migration-monuments constructed so far and shares her idea on what aspects should a monument to migration include.