On the 21st January, Migrant Action gathered with local migrant rights and justice community members to collectively interrogate the systemic labour exploitation of migrant workers and how we can take meaningful action to achieve rights, justice and humanity.
The day aimed to CONNECT individuals, organisations, campaigners and agencies with experience and expertise on the systemic exploitation of migrant workers on sponsored visas in Leeds and beyond. Our purpose was to collectively LISTEN deeply and compassionately to interrogate the injustices, and place lived experience at the centre of our action. We are grateful to have had keynote speeches and thematic workshops examining various aspects of this systemic injustice– including the unjust No Recourse to Public Funds Scheme, wage theft, and the power imbalance of rights with Certificates of Sponsorship.
From this listening we were able to PLAN as a collective, and allow trailblazers in the migrant rights justice community to present projects in a design lab environment, in which we could collectively pool resources, passion and critical ideas to create ways to ACT and take meaningful steps towards transformational change and systemic justice for migrant workers. The design lab process embodied space for 10 migrant-led community projects to develop and take meaningful steps in building community resilience and capacity, including providing specific networks, opportunities and campaigns for parents, women, care workers and all sponsored workers.
This summit provided a chance to create a network across Leeds and surrounding areas which can meaningfully and collectively achieve work and migration rights, justice and humanity. Deep gratitude and solidarity to all involved in this day and we remain hopeful for the action to come.
We will be producing a report and a video based on our discussions, planning and ideas sharing from this summit so watch this space!
For now, you can watch a live stream of the conference here:
