Tour: Refugee Histories of Glasgow

SCOTLAND AND POLAND

• Shelter & Community: Polish Post-War Resettlement Camps in the United Kingdom by Juliette Bretan
• Polish exchange students in Scotland in the 1970s built a giant topographical map of the country, The Great Polish Map of Scotland, near Eddleston in the Borders. The map was the brainchild of Jan Tomasik, a Sergeant who had been stationed at Galashiels during WWII and who ended up marrying a Scottish nurse.
• The hidden history of the UK’s post war Polish refugees
• The Polish Resettlement Corp in Scotland

ASYLUM DISPERSAL

• A View From Here film (2014). The Red Road Flats became an icon of asylum seeker housing in Glasgow – life in these blocks was documented by the community and filmmaker Basharat Khan in a multidisciplinary arts and heritage project prior to the demolition of many of these flats.

ANTI APARTHEID MOVEMENT

• Scotland’s Sounds project, brief clips from interviews with Isabella Porte 1994-96 (halfway down the page)
• Glasgow Women’s Library, Nelson Mandela – Apartheid, Women and Glasgow
• Nelson Mandela Scottish Memorial Foundation
• History of the British Anti-Apartheid movement, extensive online archive of interviews, campaign materials, writing, pamphlets

JEWISH REFUGEES IN GLASGOW

• Garnethill Refugee Trail by the Scottish Jewish Heritage Centre and the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre
• ‘A fabric of distant life’: Jewish artists in Scotland by Ben Reiss

LA PASIONARIA & INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY           

• Ethel MacDonald Collection @ The Mitchell Library, personal papers and Spanish Civil War archive materials
• Article on Helen Biggar’s documentary film ‘Challenge to Fascism: Glasgow’s May Day (1938)’ by Jenny Brownrigg and Shona Main
• La Pasionaria – Mitchell Library/Michael Gallagher

CHILEANS IN SCOTLAND

• Carlos Arredondo, Chilean exiliopedia in Scotland
•  ‘The Scotland vs. Chile friendly labelled “The Match of Shame”’, The Scotsman 2018 
• Nae Pasaran film (2018)

BLOCKADE RUNNERS AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

• Concert in support of Basque refugees, featuring Paul Robeson
• Fleeing Franco: Spain’s Civil War Refugees by Nick Mead
• Child refugees from the Spanish Civil War: a scrapbook tells a story – Marx Memorial Library
• Basque Child Refugee Archives, University of Southampton
• 549: Scots of the Spanish Civil War
• Island Brigaders: Arran, Millport and the fight against Fascism in 1930s Spain by Liam Turbett

1919 RACE RIOT, JAMES WATT ST

• Jacqueline Jenkinson – Friendly Aliens on the Home Front: Migrants, Refugees and Colonial Workers in Scotland During and After the First World War (Scottish Archives Vol. 22, 2016)
• Jacqueline Jenkinson – 1919 Race Riots in Britain: their background and consequences (PhD thesis)
• ‘New’ Scots? (Re)Writing Somali Histories in Scotland by Mohamed Omar and Emma Hill

BELGIAN REFUGEES IN GLASGOW

• Belgian Refugees in Glasgow: Local Faith Communities, Hosting and the Great War by Kieran Taylor
• Refugee Voices Scotland – The Hidden story of Belgian refugees living in Glasgow during the Great War 
• Belgian refugee culture in Glasgow, Stirling Centre for Scottish Studies  
• Belgian refugee records can be accessed via Family History at the Mitchell Library

PRESENT DAY MIGRATION & REFUGEE ORGANISATIONS

• Glasgow Girls campaign, an educational resource for teachers
• Scottish Refugee Council
• Maryhill Integration Network
• Govan Community Project
• Ubuntu Glasgow
• Unity Sisters
• Milk Cafe Glasgow
• Soul Food Sisters
• Common Ground
• Refuweegee
• Migrant Voice

OTHER LINKS & RESOURCES

• Who Belongs to Glasgow? by Mary Edward, 2016 Luath Press. All books listed here are available to borrow from Glasgow Libraries.
• New Scots: Scotland’s Immigrant Communities since 1945. Ed. Tom Devine and Angela McCarthy, 2018 Edinburgh University Press.   
• Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats by Maya Goodfellow. 2019 Verso Books. Highly recommended if you’re interested in the history of immigration policy in the UK from the 1960s onwards
• Refugee History
• Our Migration History   
• Scottish Refugee Council’s arts and culture work 
• Glasgow Refugee Asylum and Migration Network
• Escape to Freedom, documentary (1981) by Lanark Cine Club on Vietnamese refugees in Scotland
• Welcome to Britain, BBC documentary (1973) about the Ugandan Asian Panchal family’s experiences of arrival and life in Loanhead. NOTE as of 2024 this video has been taken down, illustrating how precarious digital sources can be. We’ve left the listing up here for reference and hope the video returns elsewhere.

All photos by Michael Mackinnon

Read about this tour on the Refugee Festival Scotland website: Walking in the Footsteps of Refugee Histories by Shona McCallum.

This page collects links and resources from our Refugee Histories tour, developed for Refugee Festival Scotland 2023. We will keep updating these pages – if you have any suggestions please get in touch: