Migration: Places to Visit

'The Landscape of Migration', considers migration into and within the region. Migrants are frequently enterprising individuals, who choose to move rather than being forced to do so. Voluntary migration is usually for economic reasons, whereas forced migration involves refugees leaving their original home because of discrimination or persecution. Since the beginning of history, migration has shaped the West Midlands region, as the Timeline reveals. For most of human history, however, migrants have left few records, so exploring their experiences and impact is not easy.

Industrialisation and urbanisation from the eighteenth century onwards increased the scale and pace of migration, but we still need to know more about many people, including the Welsh and Huguenots (French Protestant refugees), who moved into the West Midlands before the Industrial Revolution and the growth of towns. HWM explores how we can understand migration through historical evidence, community and local histories and the reception of migrants when they arrive as strangers in a new locality. As the Places to Visit section indicates, we can go back to prehistoric times to explore ‘Moving into the West Midlands’. 

Migrants are a recurring influence: they have shaped the landscape, industry, politics, religion, food, art and music of the West Midlands.

Featured places to visit are:

• Birmingham History Galleries
• Bordesley Abbey and the Forge Mill Needle Museum
• Croft Ambrey Iron Age Hill Fort and Croft Castle
• Derby Museum and Art Gallery
• Henley-in-Arden and Beaudesert
• Stourport
• The Darby Houses Ironbridge
• The Pugin Trail
• The Staffordshire Hoard
• Wroxeter Roman City

To read more about these places to visit please download the pdf below.

KEYWORDS:  Places to Visit, Migration, Museums

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