2025 was a critical year for grassroots migrants justice organisations like ours. We are living through a time of deep division and hostility. But, we won’t be silenced!
We’ll keep up the work of building a power that cannot be detained, deported or divided. We need everyone that cares about dignity and justice for all people to take a stand. Our solidarity unites us.
We’re proud of what we achieved together in 2025, let’s take a look back together.
COMMUNITY PROGRAMME: WELCOME AND SUPPORT
Our front line service, the Community Programme, made sure that 1325 people and their families were supported through outreach, advice and holistic activities.
Our incredible caseworkers went above and beyond in providing advice and support to people building their lives here in the UK. The majority of the people were support are living precariously, in asylum accommodation and unable to work. Our team help them to find survival resources- from destitution support and other essential steps like getting healthcare.
When our members are more settled, for example if they’re been formally recognised as a refugee, then our team help them find a home or being the journey to finding a job. From our centre we run conversational English classes as well as other practical skills.
Our team also support people who have been here many years but face extra challenges in regularising their immigration status, or who are going through a difficult time.
We worked tirelessly with survivors of trafficking as well as working with people with complex mental health conditions. We organised bespoke support to families as they arrived from conflict zones, including a dedicated support programme with the British Palestinian Committee supporting families from Gaza.
During the year we responded urgently to rapid government announcements- from the pausing of Refugee Family Reunion to new proposed rules on indefinite leave. Throughout the year we saw that connecting people to basic support services became harder.
Our team launched a vital report, Leave No One Behind: the Challenge of Providing Care in a Hostile Environment, highlighting the barriers people with complex mental health conditions face in accessing support.
OUTREACH
We increased our outreach programme this year in order to support more people arriving in the UK for safety and protection.
Our case workers ran sessions in four asylum accommodation sites so that we could be on the ground to share important info and ways of accessing resources.
We experimented with new ways of working and organised 12 Collective Learning Sessions, bringing members together to share vital information, like how to prepare for an asylum interview. This also included building safety protocols after far right intimidation and protests outside asylum accommodation sites.
SPACES OF JOY, CONNECTION AND CREATIVITY
Our creative sessions are a chance to come together to laugh, play, move and build community. That’s why we ran 17 weekly sessions; from dance, football, walking groups, gardening, sewing, storytelling, poetry groups to name.
For Migrants Organise members who are stuck in small hotel rooms, with little control or information of how their asylum case is progressing and with distressing news coming from home; having a spaces to come together to have fun and connect is like a breath of fresh air.
We were excited to launch two new creative programmes; a new live music programme working with a professional Venezuelan musician drawing on different genres and traditions to use music as a way of building common ground, as well as a new theatre partnership with the Good Chance Theatre Company which culminated in the Wishing Tree performance.
COMMUNITY RESILIENCE FESTIVAL
The Migrants Organise Resilience Festival is our annual summer festival, celebrating hope, community and solidarity. This year the focus reflected the Refugee Week theme: “Community as Superpower”.
We see resilience as something we create together, in moments of connection and relationships.
From June – July in London we came together and practised resilience through 60 activities; together from live music events, picnics, gardening, painting, art, creative writing sessions, storytelling, as well as doing the 10km London Legal Walk together.
ORGANISING: BUILDING PEOPLE POWER
When we are united in broad coalitions and movements, we have the power to address the structural problems facing migrants in Britain. That’s why our work focuses on organising.
The foundation of organising is in our relationships, that’s why our organisers had over 600 one to one listening conversations this year. This resulted 27 actions demanding safer homes, access to healthcare and to build anti-racist futures, and we made some real progress.
SOLIDARITY KNOWS NO BORDERS (SKNB)
To build a better world, we must build our power as a progressive movement for social justice that does not leave anyone behind. That’s why we’re committed to movement building and connecting organisers from across the country.
The 2025 Solidarity Knows No Borders Summit national summit as our space for grassroots migrant justice organisers from around the UK to listen, share and commit to deep-organising in our communities.
The National Summit was one of five Migrants Organise summits happening around the country where people focus on different issues related to migrant justice – from housing, healthcare, hostile surveillance, health, access to justice to racism.
The summits demonstrated that when we build connections across regions, borders and campaigns we can build something better. Together we learnt:
- Hope is grounded in real organising, not rhetoric.
- Power is built through relationships and collective action.
- Lots of practical inspiration for taking organising back into our own communities.
Also this year the Solidarity Knows No Borders Community launched a three part film- series focusing on themes of community, listening and hope.
866 of you attended Stand Up! Speak Out! – a free, online training series to resist the Hostile immigration policies in public services organised through the SKNB community.
DEMANDING SAFE HOMES FOR ALL
This system of warehousing people in barges, barracks, ‘detention’ hotels, and crumbling flats strips people of their dignity- we’re fighting for safe, decent homes for all!
Our members continued to share their stories and took action against the companies profiting from the hostile housing.
We submitted our evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee and worked with Corporate Watch to expose how corporate companies Clearsprings are making record breaking profits from asylum accommodation.
We know that safe community housing is the best solution. Within communities, people are able to lay roots, find support systems and start to rebuild their lives.
We deepened our connections with groups and organisations across the country, and ran our first national Migrants and Refugees Housing Justice Summit co-organised CARAG in Coventry. We built international solidarity at the Narrative Power summit in New Orleans and expanded our reach back at home by working with groups and movements demanding better rights for renters.
Read more about our Housing Justice campaign.
ACCESS TO JUSTICE!
The crisis in Legal Aid has left thousands of people without legal representation, without a fair hearing and are consequently denied the basics.
After sustained pressure from our Access to Justice campaign we received good news last year, when the Ministry of Justice pledged to increase legal aid funding.
But one year on, the situation in communities has not changed. We turned up the pressure and made some real progress.
We ran actions outside the Ministry of Justice and sent letters written by our community to David Lammy, Secretary of State for Justice. Our report, Threadbare: The quality of legal aid, exposed the depths of the crisis and made headlines.
We strengthened our grassroots strategy, with Hope and Justice Collective, and energised our network through a national gathering of Legal Aid campaigners.
At the time of the writing this- the government confirmed a new timeline for funding legal aid- this is the first increase to legal aid funding in 30 years. In the new year we’ll be applying more pressure to make sure they stick to it!
PATIENTS NOT PASSPORTS
Patients Not Passports is the campaign organising to end racist immigration controls in the NHS.
Thousands of you joined our solidarity actions calling for a national healthcare system that is accessible for all. Your solidarity is everything!
5500 of you wrote letter in solidarity with 300 NHS workers at risk of deportation. Over 1000 of you sent letters to secure a new medical payment plan for our community member Atef.
All of this alongside the “Resisting NHS charging” photo exhibition, “No Borders in Healthcare” parties, ‘Know Your Rights’ sessions and a Patients Not Passports national gathering.
Alongside our partners Medact and a community of healthcare workers, migrants and community campaigners we have ten local groups across the country focused on local hospitals and their trusts.
ABOLISH REPORTING
At a time of increased border security and relentless surveillance the Abolish Reporting campaign is calling for a world built on care, not surveillance.
This year, Abolish Reporting organisers focused one of the core private profiteers of the hostile environment: Serco.
The private company making millions of pounds in government contracts for invasive 24/7 GPS tagging, immigration detention centres, and miserable asylum accommodation sites. Watch our action on instagram.
With Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) we turned up at their AGM to share messages from people who have been forced to wear ankle tags and their impact. As a result of this, our members met with Serco’s leadership to raise their concerns and demand them to stop this cruel practice.
We’ll keep up the pressure in 2026!
Anti-Racist Movement (ARM) – Relief, Repair and Restructure
Across the UK, we are building a growing, interconnected network of anti-racists: migrants, trade unionists and community organisers rooted in shared struggle. Our movement starts from a simple truth that racism cannot be dismantled in isolation. Class, race, gender, disability, religion and sexuality are interlinked, and so is our resistance. Through transformational organising, we are turning shared pain into shared power and isolation into solidarity.
The rise of the far right in Britain is not an accident. It is the result of a failing, racist economy that deepens inequality and then diverts anger away from those responsible, towards migrants and communities of colour. We know that austerity and state abandonment fracture solidarity and make authoritarianism seem inevitable. It is not.
On 30 October, we came together at Here to Stay, Here to Fight to launch the Anti-Racist Movement (ARM). The room was filled with courage, clarity and possibility. Through lived experience and collective strategy, we were reminded that change does not come from fear, but from people organising together with purpose and care.
Alongside Black Lives Matter UK, Maslaha and Right to Remain, we are rebuilding solidarities and growing collective power to shape a radically democratic, multicultural society. This work is not easy, but it is hopeful, necessary, and already happening – check out our ARM workbook! Together, we are building the future we deserve.
Honouring Award for Migrants Organise Elder, Zrinka Bralo
One of the exciting moments of our year was the news that Zrinka Bralo, our CEO, received the Honouring Award, recognising decades of courageous leadership on the front line of social justice struggle, building collective power with migrant and refugee communities. The Thirty Percy Foundation set up this special award for Elders, which is breaking new ground in philanthropy.
This recognition comes at a meaningful moment for Migrants Organise, as we strengthen our Senior Leadership Team and begin a thoughtful succession planning process, including the recruitment of a new Co-Director to join our team in the year ahead. The Honouring Award affirms not only Zrinka’s extraordinary 25 years at Migrants Organise, but also the determination, creativity and resilience of everyone in our community as we step into the next chapter with energy, courage, clarity and a commitment to solidarity, dignity, justice and freedom.
LOSS AND GRIEF
In the summer we lost a dear friend, brother and ally, Dr Pious Nyandoro. Pious was a tireless defender of migrant rights, a voice for the voiceless and a committed organiser.
Pious was a loved member of the Solidarity Knows No Borders community, trustee of Voice of Voiceless Immigration Detainees Yorkshire and Assist Sheffield. We will miss Pious deeply. Rest in power Pious, your struggle lives on in us.
THANK YOU
Thank you for acting in solidarity with us- for being there, taking action, donating, speaking out and amplifying our work. None of this would be possible without you – our members, volunteers, supporters, allies and wider community.
We refuse to allow this hostility and cruelty to be normalised. 2026 will be another crucial moment to build unity and momentum. We need you to continue to to act with us in resisting hate and hostility.
Our communities will resist together, until we win! As Mandela once said “it seems impossible until it’s done”!
