Summary

ICEM (Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration) Migrants Loan Fund repayment book. The repayment book was made out to a Golfo Kapetanou who migrated to Australia with ICEM loan assistance from Greece on flight Miqan 15/545 circa 1966.

The instalment butts indicate that Golfo made the required 14 x $6 loan repayments (totalling $84), although most seem to have been made as a single repayment on 1 September 1967. The early repayments were stamped as made in Northcote; the later large repayment in Clayton.

Physical Description

ICEM Migrants Loan Fund repayment book. Long thin cheque book format with stapled end. Inside cover and first page contain payment instructions in English and Greek. the front cover lists details of the lender and instalment details, 14 monthly payments of $6 to Commonwealth Bank of Australia, from 1 June 1966 to 1 July 1967. The book contains 14 payment butts indicating amount paid ($6) and date of payment stamped. Butts 4-14 were all paid on 1 September 1967.

Significance

These documents are an unusual find and there is nothing currently in the collection which represents one of the international migration loan processes for people migrating to Australia. The documents reveal that the ICEM were continuing to provide monetary loan support to European migrants well into the 1960s, and that there was a standard system of processing people and the loan repayments. The documents show how people repaid the loan, how much the loans were and the loan recipients (in this case Greece). While nothing specific is known about this particular migrant, Golfo Kapetanou, the documents reveal that she was young, Greek, possibly migrated alone with nothing indicating accompanying family, and that she came to Melbourne.

The ICEM was a key outcome of the post war European migration movement, and these documents assist in the representation of the ICEM's activities. In 1951 an International Migration Conference in Brussels resulted in the establishment of the Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Migrants form Europe (PICMME) which then became the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM). It organised the processing and resettlement of over 400,000 post war refugees, displaced persons and economic European migrants to countries such as Australia. The ICEM continued with assistance and relief programs with a broader international reach and changed its name in 1980 to the Intergovernmental Committee for Migration (ICM); the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in 1989.

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