Migration stories, international oral history and transnational networks: A (very personal) view from 'down under'

Abstract

In historical and cultural studies one of the new buzz words or perspectives is transnationalism with its emphasis on moving beyond the nation-state and seeing links which bind people, events, issues across and, indeed, in spite of national boundaries. In migration studies and in the international oral history movement, it is a concept that, without enunciating it as such, has played an important part in the way we work, think, exchange and meet. It is also a concept that underpins or perhaps extends Alexander von Plato's recent evaluation of one of the key aims of the International Oral History Association when it was formed in 1996, namely that 'it would support international projects and the international exchange of theory and methodology in oral history.' (Plato 2006) So, let me from my vantage point here in a rural town 160 kilometres north of Sydney in Australia and four months after co-hosting the 14th International Oral History Conference in Sydney, pick up on these themes and offer some reflections. They are intentionally fairly personal reflections which draw on my own encounters with various oral history networks, issues and methodologies and which, hopefully, offer a sense of the form and texture of oral history as it has emerged in Australia and the conversations which Australian oral historians have had with their counterparts elsewhere in the world. In this vein it is also hopefully a fitting tribute to the role that Alexander von Plato has played in sustaining and challenging international links and in furthering and deepening the use of oral history.