(via the Arts Community Yahoo! Group)
Dear friends,
Migrant Voices is building Singapore’s first oral history archive for foreign workers.
Oral history is a special type of in-depth interview. Interviewees are simply asked to tell us their ‘life story’ with minimum intervention and questioning. They need to take stock of their lives in the course of telling their stories. In this way, the individual’s perspective can be revealed holistically, and in indirect and revealing ways.
We believe that a public archive of interviews with migrant workers can benefit both workers and Singaporeans. Telling one’s own life stories to interested listeners can be a tremendously healing and empowering experience. The archive will be used to:
- educate the public,
- help policy researchers and activists, and
- instigate change in the working and living conditions of the workers.
Without this “body of evidence” on the modern phenomenon of migrant labor, the voices of the very people at the heart of the process will simply vanish from public record and public memory.Would you be interested in taking part as an interpreter in these interviews, or as a translator behind the scenes? Drop me an email and I’ll send you more information.
Best wishes,
Shengpei
Project Co-ordinator
Migrant Voices Oral History Archive