Documenting the untold history of U.S. refugee policy and the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.
PRM History Project
The Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration — known inside the State Department as PRM — is the primary U.S. government office responsible for refugee affairs and humanitarian response. It has existed in various forms since the postwar era, shaping some of the most consequential decisions in American foreign policy. Its history has never been comprehensively told.
The PRM History Project is an independent research initiative to document that history — the people, the decisions, the crises, and the institutional evolution of the U.S. Refugee Bureau. Drawing on archival research, oral histories, and the author's own experience working within the humanitarian system, it aims to produce a record that is both rigorous and accessible.
The work is published as The Refugee Bureau on Substack — a mix of historical essays, primary source analysis, and reflections on what the past reveals about the present.
Historical essays and research on the U.S. Refugee Bureau, published on Substack.
Read on Substack →About the Work
The project covers the history of U.S. refugee policy from the postwar displacement crises through the modern era — tracing the institutional evolution of the Bureau and the major crises it navigated.
Archival research, Freedom of Information Act requests, oral histories with former officials, and close reading of primary sources including internal cables, memos, and congressional testimony.
Long-form essays published on Substack, accessible to general readers while grounded in rigorous historical research. No academic jargon; clear prose.
The author worked within the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration — giving this history the texture of someone who has navigated its corridors as well as its archives.