A Migrant Archive: Chronicling Religious and Spiritual Experiences during the Pandemic 2020–23*

This article focuses on a digital platform which invited forced migrants to document their experiences during the Covid pandemic, resulting in an archive of digital materials, much of it relating to religion and spirituality: around 1000 contributions by around 800 asylum-seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants. Using smartphones, they shared audio and video recordings, photos, texts, artworks, etc. The Covid Chronicles project, funded by the Open University, ran from March 2020 to June 2023. It was initiated by a group of academic researchers and forced migrants connected through volunteering with support organisations in UK cities and the Netherlands. Via personal networks and social media, the project extended its reach, snowball-fashion. The bulk of contributions are from the UK and mainland Europe but eventually the project connected forced migrant individuals and groups worldwide. The content is hugely varied, but many contributors refer to religious and spiritual practices, frequently bearing witness to the solidarities created by care-giving community actions and invoking ethical principles rooted in faith traditions. Many hoped that a better future might emerge from the crisis: this archive is as much about imagining viable futures as it is about documenting history.