Expatriate Archive Centre

The Expatriate Archive Centre (EAC), based in the Paramaribostraat 20 in The Hague gathers information on expatriates (or expats for short), people who temporarily live and work outside their base country and who have the intention to return to their base country, where they were born or grew up. The EAC also encourages research into expatriate issues.
1990-2008 Introduction: pre-EAC developments
In 1990 a meeting took place between Judy Moody-Stuart from Britain and Tasoula Hadjitofi from Cyprus. During this meeting the idea took shape to collect and publish the memories of Shell expatriate families. The main emphasis would be on the role and importance of the dependent spouse. The Shell Ladies Project took this project on. The response from Shell spouses was overwhelming and in 1993 the book Life on the Move was published. In 1996 it was followed by the publication of Life Now.
In early 2000, Judy Moody-Stuart met up with Australian Glenda Lewin and American Dewey White, both Shell spouses. Dewey White, a social historian, drew attention to the historical importance for researchers of the underlying documentation of the published books
Since 1995 Shell had established the network of Outpost - centres around the world to support expatriate Shell families on the move. In these centres a lot of documentation was collected, which would be worth archiving. This resulted in 2003 in the setting up of the Outpost Family Archive Centre (OFAC). A lot of the documentation from the Outpost Centres was sent to this new archive centre and the documents for the books Life on the Move and Life Now were also laid down in the OFAC
Judy Moody-Stuart was worried about the dependency of the OFAC on Shell. The documentation for the books did not belong to Shell, so it was decided that OFAC would become a separate foundation within Shell and with Shell as its main financial sponsor. However it was felt that the connection between Shell and OFAC had to be loosened more. Judy Moody-Stuart started talks with the then chief executive and chairman of Shell International Ltd, Jeroen van der Veer. At the same time the Moody-Stuart family donated the house Paramaribostraat 20-22 to the foundation and in 2005 OFAC physically left Shell to set up offices in the newly renovated Paramaribostraat 22. In conjunction, Shell agreed to a more independent OFAC . In support of research into expatriate issues and to the realization of an independent archive centre it donated € 3,000,000.00 to the foundation. The donation was made conditional to Shell having at least half of the seats minus one on the OFAC Board.
It was agreed that in future the research centre would no longer focus exclusively on research of Shell expatriate families’ collections, but also on expatriates and their families from other companies and organizations, irrespective of their nationality and employment backgrounds. The ] also opened its doors for researchers, looking for information sources on expatriate issues. The official launch of what was now to be called the Expatriate Archive Centre (EAC) took place on 10 April 2008. Its first director was Elske van Holk-van Eysinga.
2008 - The EAC today: Research centre for expatriate issues
By today the EAC has grown from a volunteers’ organisation into a research centre for expatriate issues.
As an institute the EAC is unique. It is the only place where one can find not only archival sources (e.g. written-, audiovisual- and digital sources) on expatriate issues and links to other institutions that hold and research sources on the life and work of expatriates, but it also supports and encourages active research into these sources on a global scale.
Historical and general importance of archival sources about and from expatriates
Expat life nowadays differs vastly from life twenty, fifty years or even longer ago. Travel is much faster, it does not take weeks or months to travel from one place to another in the world. Within Europe borders disappear rapidly. Easier communication via telephone and internet has lessened the distance between expats and their country of origin. All these changes in lifestyle can be found in archival collections from expatriates and/or expatriate organizations.
Expatriates often write about their life and work experiences abroad. As outsiders to another unknown culture they observe the new environment and relate these observations through individual letters, diaries and nowadays also weblogs. Visual records are made in photographs and films. All these sources give us an insight in a way of life and a perspective on receiving societies, that can hardly be found elsewhere. Older expatriate documents are sometimes the only information we have about certain regions. Many expats like to learn from other expatriates’ experiences, a need that is also addressed in the EAC.

Externe link
* Website of the Expatriate Archive Centre

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