Hello everyone,

A warm and sunny welcome to your spring newsletter.

In this issue, you’ll find out more about our AGM (18 May) Refugee Week (16 – 22 June), our plans and how to get involved. 

In addition to an update on the Border Security Bill (and an URGENT action ⬇️), you’ll find the news round up, the new monthly ‘myth busting’ section, and more. 

We couldn’t do any of this work without your support and would like to invite you to join us and become a member. Members help us become more financially sustainable, which is vital to continue providing our free weekly drop in service, and importantly they help us build a stronger community. 

Our latest updates are only one click away! Please follow us on Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook.

Never hesitate to get in touch: [email protected]. It’s always a pleasure to hear from you.

In solidarity,
Anne

WFMA News

📆 Join our AGM!

The AGM is an opportunity to come together, for members to be actively involved in shaping our organisation and co-create a stronger, migrant friendly community. 

🧡 Refugee Week is just over a month away!

🥾On Tuesday 17th June, Cansu, George, Jaz, Misba and I will embark on our 10k London Legal Walk – and we have never been more ready!

There is still time for avid walkers to join our team … and everyone who is able to, please support our fundraiser. We are already a quarter of the way there. So please help us build momentum to reach our £1,000 target! Every single penny will go towards supporting our work at the drop-in and raise awareness about the need for free legal aid. Your generosity means the world to us. 
 

🎉 Refugee Week Community Celebration – an evening of poetry and music

Join us on 20th June at the Trades Hall for what is shaping up like a wonderful evening. We will have some poetry to begin – with a stellar line up of local poets – but it’s not too late to sign up, we have a few spaces left. We’d really love to hear from people with lived experience, keen to perform or read poetry. We will then move to the dance floor! We have some fabulous DJ’s lined up to help us dance the night away. Tickets go on sale very soon and you will be the first to know! 

Any questions about Refugee Week, please get in touch: [email protected].

🚌 Citizens UK members pulled together a brilliant event to celebrate the Free Bus Travel campaign at City Hall with speakers and performances from different organisations. Sadly, Deputy Mayor for Transport and Deputy Chair of Transport for London, Seb Dance, pulled out of the meeting the day before. A missed opportunity for London to show solidarity with people seeking asylum, many of whom struggle with the cost of bus fares.

The Border Security, Immigration and Asylum Bill

We are still keeping an eye on the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which is currently at Report Stage. We are expecting Third Reading, when amendments are debated, soon.

🚨 With that in mind,  Care For Calais launched a useful tool encouraging people to contact their MPs ASAP to support a range of amendments that would improve the Bill.

Even as we await further debates, it is absolutely clear where the government stands. 

You may remember the highly contentious ‘Organised Immigration Crime Summit’ hosted in the UK in early April, as part of the government’s ‘smash the gangs’ approach to migration. We joined over 130 organisations to call for an end to ‘hostile politics’ in a letter co-ordinated by Together with Refugees. 

The letter reiterated our calls for a fair new plan for refugees that is compassionate and well-managed, with: 

  • Protection for people fleeing war and persecution by upholding the UK’s commitment under international law to the right to claim asylum.
  • A proper strategy for welcoming refugees by ensuring fair, rapid decisions on their application for asylum, and the chance to rebuild their lives through settling in a community.  
  • Stronger global cooperation to tackle the root causes that force people to flee their homes and provides positive solutions when they do, including through safe routes to refugee protection

The Summit was a huge PR exercise, where the PM spoke to representatives  from over 40 countries about tackling irregular migration. Safe Passage provided a very useful analysis debunking some of the key claims made at the Summit. 

In the News

Last week marked a new low in British politics. The Reform party with its racist, Islamophobic, anti-migrant agenda continues to make headway. In Runcorn and Helsby, Reform won by SIX votes. What is particularly frightening about this result, is that the Labour Party candidate, Karen Shore, made ‘asylum accommodation’ a key aspect of her campaign. Choosing to ignore deepening inequalities, the cost of living and housing crises in favour of demonising migrants will have grave consequences for us all. Most of you will also have heard Andrea Jenkyns, now sworn in as Mayor of Greater Manchester, suggesting migrants should be housed in tents. Where will this end?

Asylum housing is in the headlines a lot – but for all the wrong reasons. The huge housing crisis we face in the UK is not caused by people seeking asylum, but by greedy private landlords and companies cashing in. It is therefore harrowing to read that the government have awarded contracts to house people seeking asylum in hotels a barges until September 2027 – despite promises to stop the practice. 

Housing is not the only area where the private sector is benefitting. Open Democracy research shows that ‘private companies have received more than £3.5bn of public money in an economy connected to border management over the past seven years. This includes contracts specifically related to the regulation of people moving across the English Channel in small boats, and for the provision of indirect services in the economy.’

Myths Busting

If you are reading this newsletter, chances are, you’re already well informed about migrant justice. Still, with so much misinformation and lies kicking about, it’s easy to get confused and important to stay on top of facts and get the language right.  

Language about ‘migrants’, ‘asylum seekers’ and ‘refugees’ is often inaccurate and disparaging. Imagine if instead of pigeonholing people into categories we focused on our shared humanity and accept that we all have multiple identities. For instance, I self identify as a woman, using the pronouns she/her, I’m also a migrant, European, a worker, a Londoner and the list goes on. Regardless of our respective identities, all of us have the right to safety and dignity – no matter where we are from. 

There is a semantic/legal difference between the terms ‘migrant’, ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘refugee’ – see below – but it’s people we should be talking about, not labels. 

  • There is no internationally accepted legal definition of a ‘migrant‘. It is anyone who moves from one country to another – and who is not an asylum seeker or a refugee.
  • An ‘asylum seeker’ – although we use ‘person seeking asylum’ – is an informal term used to describe someone who has fled their home country and is asking for protection in another country – i.e. ‘seeking asylum’ – but has not yet been formally recognised as a ‘refugee’.
  • A ‘refugee’ is someone who has been forced to leave their country because of war, persecution, or fear for their life due to their race, religion, nationality, political views, or identity. 

Things we rarely hear, however, is that migration has always existed, that it is part of human history. We always have and always will migrate and we all do so for different reasons – work, study, family, or to improve our quality of life, and, increasingly, war, complex, geopolitical, post-colonial contexts and the climate crisis, to site but a few – all of which are putting lives and livelihoods at risk. Ultimately, it shouldn’t matter whether someone is a migrant, a person seeking asylum or a refugee, our main concern should be to welcome them to safety. 

There is an added layer of viciousness to the public discourse about migration – the use of unhelpful binaries such as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ’legal’ and ‘illegal’, ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’. These only serve to devalue and stigmatise people – and there is no better example than the recent government decision to amend the ‘Good (!) Character Guidance’ to refuse citizenship to people who have arrived by means they deem ‘illegal’, regardless of their refugee status. 

A recent report by Stefano Piemontese, The narrative construction of migrant irregularity in the United Kingdom, provides important in depth analysis of representation and narratives in media, politics and civil society, examining how irregularity features in the in British public discourse on migration between 2019-2023. 

This short piece and clip from PICUM, a European network working to ensure social justice an human rights for undocumented migrants, ‘Why Word Matter’ illustrates how using people-centred language can help reframe the debate – putting compassion, empathy, and solidarity at the centre.

Events an Resources

The 2025 Migrant Homelessness Learning Symposium, hosted by Praxis, is for everyone who encounters homeless migrants in their work. Every attendee will have the opportunity to attend a range of learning sessions where specialists will share their knowledge and participants will share information and learning from their experience.

Last chance to join the amazing free online learning sessions, hosted as part of Stand Up! Speak Out! by the Solidarity Knows No Borders community. 

On Wednesday 4th June, the Migration Museum team are inviting you to join their City of London Migration Walking Tour.

And finally, I wanted to share this practical guide for migrants by migrants by Praxis, packed with important and useful information. Please share it widely.