WoRC Attends: "Beyond Windrush: Building the movement for migrants' rights"
By Aleksandra Tomczak - 28 July 2018
WoRC attended Beyond Windrush: Building the movement for migrants rights on 28th June 2018, together with over 100 people representing different organisations from the migration sector. In the first part of a discussion about the hostile environment for migrants took place, with panellists from Liberty, Schools Against Borders for Children, Let us Learn, Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, Global Justice Now.
Since 2010, the Government launched a new wave of immigration controls, which are embedded in the centre of our public services and communities. These policies prevent people from accessing housing, healthcare, education, work, benefits, bank accounts or even a driving license. Immigration controls are now embedded in everyday interactions between public sector workers and their clients; nurses and patients, teachers and their students, police, and victims of crime. People who are in the position of power and trust, like doctors, teachers, and police, must collect the data, which can be used for deportation purposes being shared with them and share it with Home Office. Speakers said it creates a society in which we all are expected to show ID and have our interactions with the State logged, as monitoring migrants require surveillance of every one of us.
The second part of the meeting was a set of brake-out sessions with campaigning groups. The sessions were around topics such as; how to ensure that housing is accessible to everyone, how to build local communities of resistance to the hostile environment, migrant solidarity action around the Trump's visit amongst others.
