Migrant We acknowledge the different oppressions and privileges that can be hidden by the term ‘migrant’, from the division between good and bad immigrants to the racialisation and othering of Black and Global Majority citizens. When we say ‘migrant’ we include people who have lived experiences of migration or are being profiled as migrants because of the colour of their skin, their accent or other characteristics, regardless of their legal status. Migrants can have a variety of legal statuses, including as visa nationals, temporary or permanent residents, refugees or asylum seekers, traveller communities, undocumented or citizens. There are migrants who have been residing in the UK for a long time, those born of migrant parents, and those here for a shorter while. What allows us to build coalitions (without erasing difference) is our collective opposition to borders. Expats, economic migrant, asylum seeker, refugee, citizen, immigrant are terms that indicate different immigration statuses and claims to belonging and hierarchies based on racist and colonial logics.
Migrant culture worker We work in economically and legally precarious workplaces, where we are invisible (as there is little understanding or care of how immigration regimes impact our lives) or hypervisible (co-opted as tokens of internationalism and diversity) in a monoculture. We live, work and pay taxes in the UK, but have no, or limited, political representation and access to healthcare and social services. We recognise that the forces of systemic racism and the legacies and continuation of empire, colonisation and extractive capitalism have created a culture sector characterised by borders, oppression, discrimination, and exploitation for migrant and racialised populations. We reject the instrumentalisation of culture for social power, social cleansing and nationalist agendas. We reject the false binary of the good / bad migrant. We question the ways in which the professionalisation of cultural work has led to systemic oppression of racialised and migrant workers
Hostile Environment The JCWI describes the “Hostile Environment” as “a set of policies introduced in 2012 by then-Home Secretary Theresa May, with the aim of making life unbearably difficult in the UK for those who cannot show the right paperwork. Or, as she said at the time; “The aim is to create, here in Britain, a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants.” To achieve this, the Government set about trying to cut undocumented migrants off from using fundamental services including the NHS and the police, and make it illegal to work, or for a landlord to rent them a property. The Home Office also accesses the data that public sector organisations use – so whether you are a patient speaking to a GP, a victim reporting a crime or an exploited worker reporting your boss to the authorities, your data can be checked by immigration officials.”
In recent years, there has been an expansion of the Hostile Environment through the introduction of a points-based system, the Nationality and Borders Act of 2021, a new Policing Act in 2022 and The Illegal Immigration Act of 2023, to name a few. These changes have seen increasing government interference and crackdown on the right to protest, as well as eroding the ability of migrants and asylum seekers to ‘challenge state decisions and entrench exclusionary policies at great human cost’ (Liberty Briefing, 2021).
The Hostile Environment is a manifestation of systemic racism and the legacies and continuation of empire, colonisation and extractive capitalism. The Hostile Environment is also embedded in a culture sector characterised by borders, oppression, discrimination, and exploitation for migrant and racialised populations.
‘Migrant methodologies’ This describes ways of activating lived experience leadership for migrant justice. There is plenty of sector attention and research that recognises how change-makers and innovators with lived experience shape social movements in a different way from those without lived experiences. But there is less research on how to activate our lived experiences and navigate barriers in our artistic and cultural work.
Migrant Futures is part of our ongoing, collective investment in how we can reclaim and revalue ancestral, diasporic and migrant knowledges, practices and tools (knowledge we already have) to bring our multiple experiences to our work and worlds.