Abstract: How might it be possible to write histories of multicultural Europe that go beyond a nationalist, Eurocentric focus. Is it even possible to provincialize Europe from within? In this paper I reflect on my own recent attempt to address these questions in Migrant Representations: life story, investigation, picture. The study begins from the idea of using alternative archival sources mentioned in my subtitle. It proceeds through twelve chapters, each of which compares two case studies. In addition to describing this comparative methodology and what I see as its merits, I will focus on one comparison—between Dagmawi Yimer, an Ethiopian who travelled to Lampedusa in 2006, and Vesna Maric, who arrived in London as child refugee from Bosnia in 1992. What I want to concentrate on in this reflective paper is my own position in relation to these migrant subjects, and the ways in which life stories in their full complexity and diversity may allow a different kind of migration history to be written.