As an introduction to our year 13 project, we visited the Jersey Museum, specifically to look at the exhibition that was on there at the time- this exhibition was all about migration within jersey- for example which groups arrived, when they arrived and why they arrived. The exhibition stated ‘Every Jersey resident has an immigration story – whether their family came here 500 years or five years ago. This exhibition explores some of these stories and the ways in which immigration has shaped and influenced the Island we know today.’ 

To me personally, what stood out the most were the Aliens registration cards. Aliens Cards were introduced following the Aliens Restriction Act which was passed in 1920. Under this law all aliens over the age of 16 resident in Jersey and of non-British birth had to register with the Office of Immigration. In the exhibition, some were on display- these specific cards had families today that are still in Jersey.

Although I am half polish, my mother was the first in her side of the family to migrate to Jersey- and it wasn’t on purpose so I personally don’t have family that would have migrated in the time of the Aliens cards, but I was still interested to find the registration cards of polish immigrants and found a woman called Wanda Casimir Mrowezynska, born 23/04/1860 in Warseouvie [?], Poland. Nationality: Polish. | Jersey Heritage 

Aside from the museum, we went out on a 30-minute walk around St Helier with Stuart Fell to look at architecture- I already knew that certain architecture can say so much about a specific time period however he explained how. When on this walk, many things were pointed out that I would have never thought twice about- for example one building that was built with traditional Jersey red brick (altered to create a mixture of grey and red) had another floor built onto it and if you looked closely you could see the difference in the bricks. This was only something that I distinctly remembered however he showed us many other buildings and the history behind their architecture.