Mamadou Lamine Sarr and Maria Elena Coa sit down with our project manager Emmy Fu to describe Top Manta, an initiative created for and by undocumented migrant workers off the streets of Barcelona. A seed grant by Safe Passage Fund allowed the association to build up organisational capacity and infrastructures that sustained their long-term growth and vision.

Top Manta rebelliously reclaims the Spanish term “manteros,” which is used as a racialised “othering” term for undocumented migrant workers selling wares and clothing on the streets of Barcelona. A majority of this population migrate from Senegal due to extractive fishing deals with Spain cutting off economic possibilities from local fishermen; and their lives in Spain are often preceded by precarious routes from West Africa to Europe due to oppressive externalised EU migration policies. Top Manta is currently working in cooperation with other initiatives to demand the regularisation of status for half a million undocumented migrants living in instability across Spain.

This interview was lightly edited for clarity, and Lamine’s original answers in Spanish were interpreted and translated by Maria.

What was the journey for each of you to get involved in Top Manta?

Lamine: In 2015, I was on the streets, selling and producing clothing because I didn’t have other means of surviving. It’s a very difficult situation for African people in Barcelona; many male migrants are street vendors in order to economically survive, yet we face police violence and authorities who often try to track us down in public. I started to realize that there could be other possibilities – that we could at least build structures to gain our rights. Along with other vendors, we got to know each other in the streets, begun to organize ourselves, and started this movement.

Maria: Lamine is very humble, he doesn’t speak more than he needs to. But believe me, he is the soul of the movement. He always came with a powerful message: no racism, no discrimination. This energized people to be on board. And he’s creative, coming up with some of our most known slogans such as “Fake system, true clothes.”

Myself personally, I was introduced to some of the members of Top Manta through a friend. This was during the COVID-19 pandemic back in 2020, so I had little else to do and started volunteering there. It was a much smaller, looser organization, where the structure we have now wasn’t in place yet. A few months later, Lamine unexpectedly asked if I wanted to work in Top Manta as an employee, and I agreed. Before Top Manta, I didn’t feel welcome in Spain, because as a migrant, it can be difficult to feel like you really belong in a country you weren’t born or raised in. With Top Manta, I felt welcome and empowered, like this territory was my home now too. It mattered a lot that I found community with the people working here – Lamine is truly my brother.

My work is in the administration area, such as fundraising and reporting. But sometimes I’ll just go to the shop as well and help sell items, if nobody else is there, or I participate as a representative in presentations and events. We trust each other, so our participation is very open.  

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While Top Manta is a clothing brand and store, the collective also understands itself as a social movement with political participation. Can you describe these multiple roles?

Lamine: Top Manta is many things: a brand, a workers’ union for migrants, a social movement. From the beginning, we always went to the streets, doing various activities to make the situation of discrimination against migrant laborers visible, pushing governments and administration for social change. This political advocacy continues to develop and be a part of our work. For example, since 2021, a large movement from below exists in Barcelona called Regularization Now (Regularizacíon. Ya!). The work is about negotiating with the administration, as there are almost 500 000 people in Spain without regular residence status. It’s an example of how we are working horizontally with other communities beyond just our collective, how we build our movement for migrant rights together across groups and communities.

Maria: Lamine is the representative of Top Manta in this campaign, which has over 900 organizations involved. After getting signatories in the streets with clear demands, now there is a proposal that will go to the Spanish parliament for debate. Top Manta also had this trajectory, building steadily from the bottom up: it started very small, just in the streets, making clear demands about working and basic human rights, fighting against racism, and achieving dignity for migrants. But we’re proud now that we are part of a much larger, global movement. People recognize the brand, and we have connections to other parts of the world, for example in Mexico, Argentina, United States, and some parts of Africa. Top Manta is a symbol of the fight for migrant rights, and we work hard to ensure that the oppression of migrants is understood as an international system and issue.

How do you work internally within the organization? What values guide your work?

Lamine: We always work with the principle of living in collective. Our main value is to think of the group before the individual, yourself. The commons is where people’s power comes from, so we always think about how our actions will better us collectively. Our movement, our brand, and our shop is not meant for one person: it’s for the community.

Maria: Yes, we really don’t have hierarchies, nor a boss, even though we’re over 200+ people who are involved, mostly from Senegal and a few from Ghana and Venezuela. We are a horizontal organization where everyone has a voice and vote – literally everyone, even the customer’s opinion matters to us. And this means we shape our vision, our work, and our future together.

It’s also important for us to listen to each other deeply. We don’t put our foot down and push our own opinions, but understand that everything is under negotiation and must have collective decisions. Any product that you see from Top Manta is actually the end result of negotiations, discussions, meetings, and assemblies where we have made the decisions together.
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Lamine: It’s about true teamwork, fraternity, and equality. We practice these principles in our work and in our lives.

Maria: And we defend the rights of migrant laborers in all of our work. This is the affected community that we prioritize in everything. Often this means that our work can be disrupted – for example, we’ll have a call that there is a situation around a migrant worker such as facing police violence, and we’ll all attend to this, to make sure our brother is okay. In that sense, I learned the importance of simplicity through Top Manta. Before I joined, it felt like so many issues in my life were impossible to deal with – now I understand that you just need to stick to your moral principles. I learned this from my fellow people in Top Manta, because even though migrant laborers face so much structural discrimination in this society, the team is always friendly, and they persevere despite injustice.

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What is the vision that Top Manta promotes?

Lamine: By shedding light on systemic injustice around migration, we want to increase the freedoms of everyone. Citizens in the Global North have this freedom of movement: they are able to travel, live, and work in many places, while those especially in Africa do not have control over their own lives and resources due to the outside intervention of others. It is clear to us that the concept and reality of borders itself is criminal, not the migrants who are impacted by them. And it is always working class, everyday people who face the worst consequences. So our vision is that everyone has the freedom to move and nobody will be forced to move. This also means that people have rights wherever they are, including the ability to work, to stay, and to be secure.

‍Maria: Resistance is a daily practice for us as migrants. We understand that the problem is not necessarily the individuals of a society, but especially with the ruling order and the unequal structure, as it is those in power who make policies based on fear and say that “difference” must be a bad thing. These biases must be deconstructed and dismantled. We make it clear that migrants equally deserve belonging: our message is that this is also our home now, this society is also shaped by our participation, and so we do and will continue to make a “little country” where we are.

Further Resources

• About the Manteros Union
• A rebellious brand born in Barcelona sways the weight of language - article by Democracy & Belonging Forum (2022)
• COVID-19 campaign: Barcelona street vendors sew more than 5,000 masks and medical gowns for Catalan hospitals‍
• About the Regularisation Now campaign in Spain
• Fruit pickers and street vendors — migrants' struggle for decent work - Filling the Sink Podcast (2021)