Summary

Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) promissory note signed by Golfo Karpetanou in Nemea in the Peloponnese, Greece, circa 1966. It is for a loan of $84 for Golfo to migrate to Australia in 1966. The note provides instructions regarding the requirement to pay the full amount upon demand if a monthly instalment is missed.

Physical Description

Single sheet promissory note, headed 'Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration'. Text in English and Greek. Form has been completed for Golfo Karpetanou, for loan amount of $84, to be paid in $6 monthly instalments from 1 June 1966.

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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