Refugee Voices: Exploring the Life Stories of 1956 Hungarian Refugees in Britain.

The 1956 Hungarian refugee crisis was pivotal to the emergence of new regimes of migrant management and the architecture of international aid. Following the Soviet invasion in autumn 1956, an estimated 200,000 Hungarian nationals fled their country. Of these, approximately 21,000 had arrived in the UK by the summer of 1957, of whom 14,312 remained permanently. By listening to the voices of the Hungarian refugees who were resettled in Britain the project will contribute to a better understanding of the lived experiences of contemporary asylum-seekers and immigrants: how they understand loss of homeland, mobility and displacement, and how they imagine and create new forms of belonging, identity and community in their host societies.

Within the field of refugee studies there has been increased interest in relocating refugee voices to the centre of historical analysis, highlighting how their life stories are shaped by wider social, cultural and administrative contexts. Building on this trend, and by applying oral history methodologies combined with analysis of archival material, the project will explore how the Hungarian refugees navigated, interpreted and communicated their experiences of flight and resettlement in a new country. In particular, it will consider the experiences of child refugees, of whom it is estimated that 2,000 arrived unaccompanied in Austria by late 1957, giving rise to intensive debates about child repatriation. Tracing their subsequent life histories through oral histories will reveal how these children negotiated their 'Hungarian-ness' in the context of separation from family and home and growing up in a foreign society. By utilising oral histories in particular the project will offer the first close analysis of the Hungarian refugees' life stories, revealing nuances of experience which emerged among varied gender, religious and occupational subgroups. Coinciding with the use of oral history methodologies the project will engage also with archival materials as a means to demonstrate the administrative feat behind the 1956 Hungarian refugee programme. As such, extensive travel to archives such as that of the ICRC in Geneva, and Budapest's VERITAS archive will be necessary.

Focussing on the 1956 Hungarian refugee crisis as a case study, the project proposes to demonstrate that the "Hungarian exodus" can serve as an important aid to our understanding of more recent refugee crises, considering parallels between the large-scale governmental and non-governmental humanitarian efforts, as well as states' utilisation of similar quota systems and resettlement schemes. Thus, by offering historical insights into refugee experiences, stories and claims, based on oral history and first-person testimonies that shift refugee voices to the centre of attention, this project will provide a relevant new contribution to current UK debates on asylum.