Reference Sources

Reference books can be used to read background information on a topic, acquire basic information on an unfamiliar concept, or gather ideas for a paper.

American Immigrant Cultures. Clapp Ref E 184 A1 A63448 1997 2 vols.

Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America. 2000.

Immigration and Asylum: from 1900 to the Present. Clapp Ref JV 6012 .I56 2005 3 vols.

Immigration to the United States: 1789-1930. [Harvard University]

Collection of international instruments and legal texts concerning refugees and others of concern to UNHCR. Clapp Docs U.N. Sales 0 2007 6

International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants. Clapp Docs U.N. Sales XIII 1995 10

Internally Displaced People: A global survey. Clapp Ref HV640 .I516 2002

World Refugee Survey 1983-85,1996- Clapp Ref qHV 640 .W63

Wellesley College Library Online Catalog

You should first see what resources we have here at Wellesley. Start with "Keyword" and then see what "Subject Headings" are associated with the title. The following Subject Headings may prove useful:

• migration internal - also subdivided by country and topic
• emigration and immigration - also subdivided by country and topic
• refugees - also subdivided by country and topic
• [country name] emigration and immigration - subdivided by topic
• forced migration

If you find a useful source, be sure to check the notes and bibliography for additional good cources. To locate books and other materials not at Wellesley, use the WorldCat database, then use the ILL link within WorldCat to request the material through Interlibrary Loan.

The following databases provide either full-text articles or citations (information about when and where the article was published). Once you have a citation for an article, use the Find It! @ Wellesleylink from each citation to search one or more electronic journal sources through the Wellesley College Library Catalog. Use the name of the journal as the title and make sure you look at the dates covered carefully! If Wellesley does not own the article, you can request it via Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

Wellesley owns the journal International Migration Clapp JV 6001 A1I5 1988+ , and online from 1998+.

Best databases to search in:

• PAIS - index to articles about political, social & economic issues, public affairs, 1937+.
• Academic Search Complete and Expanded Academic - great starting points for scholarly & popular articles in every discipline
• CIAO - working papers, book chapters, articles, and policy briefs in political science.
• Gender Watch - full text of women and women’s issues from scholarly journals, magazines, booklets, etc.
• LexisNexis Academic Legal Research or Westlaw Campus - law review articles, laws and court cases
• PolicyFile - public policy topics, linking to reports and papers from think tanks, NGOs, and research organizations, 1990 to present. Watch for bias!
• Web of Science (and Social Science) - 1965+. Interdisciplinary subject searching of scholarly articles in the social, physical, and life sciences. Search for articles that cite known journal articles or books.
• Women's Studies International - Indexes journal articles and books on women's studies, feminism, and gender studies, 1972 to present

Additional databases that might prove useful:

• Alt-Press Watch - full-text articles from newspapers, magazines and journals of the alternative and independent press indexed in the Alternative Press Index, 1995+.
• America History & Life - citations + abstracts of US & Canadian sources, prehistory to present.
• Ethnic Newswatch - full text of newspapers, magazines, journals ofthe ethnic, minority, and native press; ~1985+.
• Historical Abstracts - citations + abstracts covering world history, 1450 to present.
• JSTOR - collection of humanities, social science & natural science journals, from first issues but not latest 5 years. Contains the full text of International Migration Review and Population and Development Review.
• SocINDEX with Full Text - articles on all aspects of sociology from 1963+, selected full text.

• LexisNexis Academic News is the best place to find full text newspaper articles from the 1980s onward. You can search for national or regional news, or world news and limit your sources to specific world areas. Use the "Guided News Search" and note the directions on the screen.
• New York Times online - 1851-1999.
• Times of London - 1785-1985.

Visit our Subject Resources: statistics.

Also try LexisNexis Statistical for national or international statistics. Note where you will be searching, (IIS = Index to International Statistics, ASI = American Statistics Index, SRI = state and local, or you can search all at the same time). Try the "Power Tables" first, then move to searching abstracts if you don't find anything in the power tables.

Use LexisNexis Congressional to find federal laws and associated hearings, reports, etc. and federal rules and regulations.

Use Nations of the World [Library of Congress] to find laws of other countries.

**Remember, you must evaluate web resources the same way you would evaluate print sources.

• Who is the author of the information?
• Can you find information about the author?
• How current is the information? Is there a "last updated" date?
• Who is the intended audience for the information?
• Is the content objective or is it coming from a certain viewpoint?
• Is the information advocating a cause?

United States Government Agencies     

• U.S. Census Bureau Migration - Includes migration data from the Census, Current Population Survey Reports, and the Bureau's Population Estimates and Projections.
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement
• U.S. Department of Homeland Security
  • U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
  • U.S. Immigration Statistics - The Library has previous years in print and microfiche (1978+).
• U.S. Department of Justice
  • Trafficking in Persons
  • Office for Immigration Review - interprets and administers federal immigration laws.
• U.S. Department of State
  • Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration - full text reports on refugee admissions, refugee assistance and official statements on refugee policy.
  • Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons - formed in response to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (P.L.106-386), adopted in October 2000.
  • Visa statistics [U.S. Dept. of State]

Migration within, from, and to the United States

• Center for Immigration Studies - A "non-partisan, non-profit organization founded in 1985. It is the nation's only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States."
• Federation for American Immigration Reform - "national, nonprofit, public-interest, membership organization of concerned citizens who share a common belief that our nation's immigration policies must be reformed to serve the national interest. FAIR seeks to improve border security, to stop illegal immigration, and to promote immigration levels consistent with the national interest—more traditional rates of about 300,000 a year." Links to current and recent legislation.
• Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930 (Open Collections Program, Harvard University Library) -
  Digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library, museum, and archive collections that explore immigration to the United States between 1789 and 1930.
• Immigration policy for states [National Conference of State Legislatures] - also links to state and local immigration offices.
• Mexican Migration Project - From the University of Pennsylvania, studies migration by means of surveys conducted of households in both countries since 1982. Data consists of "high quality social and demographic data on the lives and characteristics of documented and undocumented Mexican immigrants to the United States". You must register to use the data files. Data is in compressed form. Uncompressed files may be downloaded for use with SPSS or as ascii (.dat).
• National Immigration Law Center - mission is to protect and promote the rights and opportunities of low-income immigrants and their family members.
• U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform - Online archive of the Commission's research reports and policy studies, 1994-1997. The Commission dissolved in 1997.

     Migration between Countries

• HumanTrafficking.org [purpose...bring Government and NGOs in the East Asia and Pacific region together to cooperate and learn from each other’s experiences in their efforts to combat human trafficking] has country laws and action plans.
• International Committee of the Red Cross - note refugees and internally displaced persons and war and displacement.
• International Organization for Migration - has been assisting refugees worldwide since 1951.
• International Rescue Committee (IRC) - nonprofit organization that "helps people fleeing racial, religious and ethnic persecution, as well as those uprooted by war and violence."
• European Committee on Migration - official documents, conference reports, and policy guidelines.
• Migration Dialogue (from UC Davis) - "promotes an informed discussion of the issues associated with international migration".
• The Migration Information Source "provides fresh thought, authoritative data from numerous global organizations and governments, and global analysis of international migration and refugee trends". Lots of data, country profiles and articles.
• Migration Policy Institute is an "independent, non-partisan, non-profit think-ank dedicated to the study of the movement of people worldwide." They have full-text online of some of their publications.
• Push and Pull Factors in International Migration - collaboration between the EU and the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute to study the factors that cause people to migrate to the European Union.
• Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford University. Note Research Reports and articles (under Research) and Working Papers (under Publications).
• Refugees International - non-governmental organization serving refugees, displaced persons, and other dispossessed people around the world. This site provides a good view of the role an international organization plays through full text documentation describing their individual missions throughout the world.
• Southern Africa Migration Project - formulates policy and new initiatives on migration between countries in South Africa.
• Trends in International Migration and in Migration Policies [OECD] - includes statistics and information by country.
• UN High Commission on Refugees - Contains images, maps, current news and links to official documents and reference materials. Also has statistics, Refugees Magazine (within "Publications"), legal information, and country information.
• U.S. Committee on Refugees - links to country reports, refugee voices in real audio, and reports on issues and topics
• such as landmines, religious persecution, and asylum law. Has a list of country "hot spots".

  United Nations Documents

• Access UN - Index of United Nations documents and reports, 1945 to present
• UNBISnet - U.N. documents and publications indexed by the UN Dag Hammarskjöld Library and the Library of the UN Office at Geneva, 1979+. Also has an Index to Speeches, 1983+.
• Wellesley has a complete microfiche set of United Nations documents (General Assembly, Economic and Social Council, Security Council, etc.), if you don't find what you need online. Ask at the Clapp reference desk for assistance.

  Working Papers

• Working Papers from the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UC San Diego.
• Institute for the Study of International Migration

   Special Topics/Reports

• International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour - note links to regions and countries and statistics.
• Forced Labour [ILO]
• Forced Migration Online - a wonderfully rich site from the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford.
• Global IDP Project (Internally Displaced Persons) - Contains detailed country profiles on the causes, background, and patterns of displacement and issues of family, education, and physical security. Includes maps.
• Human Trafficking and Florida [FSU Center for the Advancement of Human Rights, 2003]
• International Labour Migration Database. Information on national labor laws, labor standards, and labor migration statistics, maintained by the International Labour Organization.
• Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S. [Pew Hispanic Center] 2005.
• Trafficking in Women and Children in the Americas [Inter-American Commission on Women]
• Trafficking of Women in Turkey [ILO, 2003]

See also the Human Rights section of the Resources by subject: International Relations.

How to Cite Sources

The Chicago Manual of Style website has useful information for citing electronic information. You may also use our link to the MLA's manual (Click on MLA Style and then Frequently asked Questions).

See also the Resources by Subject pages for Political Science and Legal Studies for more law and legislative information.