How migrants are creating spaces to fight for justice
These depictions make us seem passive, lacking self-determination and agency.
Just as migrants’ agency is often forgotten, migrant activism can be invisible too. Yet we play an essential role promoting justice and improving working conditions for all.
Migrant Justice Edinburgh (MJE) is a project which aims to flip the picture people have of migrants. We are not at the mercy of the waves, but committed to making society better not only for the people in our communities and neighbourhoods, but for everyone in our society.
In November, residents of Craigmillar and Niddrie from Greece, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Malawi, Malaysia, Poland, Hungary and Gambia came together in a workshop organised by MJE, and developed with the Dundee-based educational organisation Cats Cradle, to generate a vision for the neighbourhood, for better working conditions, and for a richer cultural and community life.
Conversation ranged far and wide across issues folk care about in Craigmillar and Niddrie: the traffic in the mornings, the difficulty of cycling, the lack of spaces for kids to hang out, the failure of landlords to maintain their properties. The issue that came most clearly to the surface was the lack of space: to gather, plan, support each other, and build power together.
As well as sharing what they care about, workshop attendees explored their sense of collective action and cultures of social change.
They explored many questions like:
- Who are our role models for making positive change?
- What stories of strength do we take from our family and community?
- What campaigns or changes in our own countries or here do we remember most?
Migrants bring rich personal histories of activism, courage and political imagination – whether through digital organising during times of repression in the countries where they grew up, or workplace organising in the towns where they have made their homes.
The conversation flowed between sharing negative experiences and positive ones. While some described how trade unions failed to fight their corner, others talked about their efforts to expose working conditions and win strikes. While some talked about the growing prevalence of anti-migrant views, others said that they always felt safe, despite being told how dangerous their neighbourhood was.
Sharing negative experiences matters, but it comes with risks of discouraging each other. If conversations only emphasise difficulties without offering hope and solidarity, they can shut us down rather than carry us along – and that is not the path to justice.
When people thought about role models for making positive change, they gave a wide range of answers, from their parents, to public figures like Martin Luther King and artist-activists like Fela Kuti. Some mentioned people from their own countries or communities who inspired them. They talked about courage, selflessness and truth.
One resonant contribution came from a participant who said that we can be our own best role models. That we can understand our own stories, struggles, experiences as sources of strength. That wherever we go, each of us carries with us examples of resilience and action, and these can be as powerful as emulating any famous figure.
The people who attended this workshop are part of MJE’s journey to create spaces in the city where people can develop their sense of power in pursuit of justice. The workshop was a cornerstone of our capacity-building project supported by the Regenerative Futures Fund, to demonstrate that creating spaces for migrants in the city will take us far along the road to justice.
Migrant Justice Edinburgh is a project of the Workers’ Observatory, Citizens Rights Project, and Empowering Multicultural Alliance. To find out more, follow @migrantjusticeedinburgh on Instagram.
This article first appeared in the National.