Migrant empowerment & leadership
We resource initiatives that are led by communities with firsthand experience of displacement or ensure their meaningful co-design and participation.
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Free El Hiblu 3
Malta
2024
Abdalla, Amara and Kader are three young migrants at the center of the local, EU-wide, and global advocacy campaign “Free El Hiblu 3”, as their life-saving efforts on their route to Europe have resulted in entrapment in the anti-migration legal system. The case of El Hiblu 3 illuminates a systemic European policy of deterring migration, which must be replaced with the empowerment of safety and solidarity. The El Hiblu 3 have been recognized by the pope, with Amnesty International and other international human rights organisations calling for their acquittal due to the wrongful scapegoating of migrants.
Recent wins such as the freedom of the Pylos 9 – migrants criminalized at random following a shipwreck in Greek coasts – demonstrate the significance of movement lawyering, and how these cases set important legal precedents dismantling repressive EU migration policies, brick by brick.
Pasol Communità di Supporto alla Solidarietà
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Italy
2023
We seeded Casa del Mutuo Soccorso (House of Mutual Aid) in Partinico, Sicily, an initiative that cultivates the growth of resilient communities centered on deep ecological relationships against the exploitation of people and land. This co-operative community center arises out of self-organised coalitions between Italian activists and African migrant agricultural workers, who have independently come together since 2015 to oppose exploitation of migrant labor and precarious shelter conditions.
They’ve built up grassroots resistance to the Italian agro-industrial sector across Sicily, Calabria, Puglia, Campania and the northern part of the country – a map of labor mobility that overlaps with trajectories of people arriving in Europe through the Central Mediterranean. The inter-ethnic community space acts as a centralised point for migrant agricultural workers to build power in coalition with local trade unions during olive harvest season, as well as activate civil society's consciousness through public events on the intersection of migration, agriculture, and labor.
Arci Porco Rosso
Italy
2023
"From Sea to Prison" is an activist project in Palermo that works with and for people criminalized for having driven themselves and others across Italy's maritime border. It monitors the systematic arrest of people upon arrival in Italy, as well as their trials and sentencing. The project provides social-legal support to people in prison and after release, and advocates against the criminalization of freedom of movement. Working with local and transnational networks, it reports on the legal and political developments in the criminalization of people on the move, both in Italy and beyond.
The project involves a wide group of people – some of whom were also previously imprisoned and have since become part of the local community – and maintains regular contact with prisoners via letter, writing in a range of languages including Arabic, English, Farsi, Italian, Russian and Turkish. Carried out by the collective and community space ‘Porco Rosso’ in Palermo, and in collaboration with the NGO borderline-europe, its activists bring together a diverse set of knowledge and life experiences, finding connection through the common struggle for freedom of movement.
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Rosa Rolling Safer Space
Greece
2022
Rosa Rolling Safer Space is an initiative created from a 140+ member women and queer non-profit; it uses a converted truck to provide a mutual empowerment and community space for women on the move. Rosa describes itself as a political organization with an intersectional view of society, working with a queer-feminist and anti-racist consensus. Since March 2022, the team provides a mobile Safer Space next to three different camps on the Greek mainland, acting as a different kind of home in resistance to the systematically poor conditions of refugee camps.
Women and queer migrants are able to better access healthcare rights, join social and cultural workshops, and organise alongside other women to build longer-lasting relationships across backgrounds that dismantle the divisive, patriarchal, and colonial roots of repressive migration regimes.
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CommemorAction
Tunisia
2022
A long-standing tradition of resistance, CommemorAction combines the ceremony of ‘commemoration’ with the activism and tactics of ‘action’. Led and self-organized by the mothers and families of missing migrants, this was a week-long movement-building conference that united international and local groups in Zarzis, Tunisia. The project aimed to bridge African and European communities, enhance forensic and legal knowledge for those directly affected, and highlight the link between ecological destruction and European migration policies by collaborating with local fishermen. It culminated in a national demonstration marking the anniversary of a 2012 shipwreck involving 130 individuals who departed from Sfax, Tunisia, to the Lampionne islet near Lampedusa, Italy.
In addition to financial resources, our participatory team attended this conference as an in-person retreat to strategise and deepen relationships between each other, as well as learn from and show solidarity to partners outside of Europe.
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The Pomegranate Project
Greece
2022
The Pomegranate Project is an initiative designed and implemented by, for, and with women. It provides a holistic protection and empowerment model for women and gender-diverse refugees, with particular priority given to those at risk of and/or survivors of gender-based violence, as every 1 in 5 women who are forcibly displaced have an experience of sexual violence. The project includes safe housing, psychosocial support, case management, and income-generating opportunities to seed and strengthen the individual and collective skills, resources, and resilience of affected women and gender-diverse individuals. The center and model also supports networks and fosters solidarity between displaced women and the local Greek community.
Transborder Summer Camp
France
2022
The Transborder Camp is the largest grassroots-centric and self-organised gathering of an “underground railroad” for and with movements working on forced migration. We resourced its second ever iteration with 700+ participants of migrants and activists across Europe and Africa coming together for several days at Zone à Défendre (Zone of Defense) in Nantes, France, an autonomous area occupied by grassroots activists defending the forest and meadow environment from an airport construction. Strategic exchange took place through horizontal discussions in small groups with multiple simultaneous languages: 40+ parallel workshops were on the program, ranging from relationship and trust-building, critical reflections on movement wins and losses, sharing insight into cross-border struggles, and collectively building an intersectional approach to migrant justice across the realms of queer-feminism, climate, digital justice, and more.
In addition to financial support, we attended the Camp as an in-person annual retreat, strategising about the development of the Fund and deepening our relationships on an eye-to-eye level with the transnational migrant justice ecosystem.
Stand By Me Lesvos
Greece
2021
We resourced a recycling project initiated and self-organised by migrant residents from within Moria Refugee Camp in Lesvos, Greece. The project’s mission is increasing environmental protection, building coordination and organising capacities of the camp’s residents, forging new connections between camp residents and local Greek providers, and ensuring sanitary and well-being measures during COVID-19. Camp residents return empty bottles in exchange for food items, cold water, or other needs prioritized by the residents.
With 1500 participants per day, the exchange system offers a chance for refugee self-organisation while changing the perception of residents as passive ‘recipients’ of aid to engage in more horizontal systems of exchange and mutual cooperation. Residents also self-organised trainings – from refugees to refugees – based on their areas of specialization and interest.
Top Manta
Spain
2021
We seeded Top Manta, an initiative created from the streets of Barcelona by and for undocumented migrant workers, a population who arrive following precarious routes to Europe. By reclaiming the racialised Spanish term "manteros," Top Manta functions as a labor union, eco-friendly clothing brand, and pro-Black social movement. It provides tailoring apprenticeships so that migrants can regularise their status, sustainably produce clothing, and foster community resilience, while offering a central infrastructure to connect for legal and social support.
Campaigns offer sharp critique on the systemic discrimination faced by nearly half a million migrants in Spain: the recent campaign “Barcelona or Death” (Barça o Barzakh) works towards international solidarity and climate consciousness around the extractive fishing deals between Spain and Senegal, which have brewed a crisis of displacement. Top Manta also plays a crucial role in migrant-led coalitions, such as the ever-growing Regularisation Ya campaign to advocate at the highest national level for expanded migrant rights.
Community Kitchen
Niger
2021
Community kitchens have always played an important role across mutual aid practices and interconnected fights for food, class, and racial justice. Involving cross-border stakeholders from Niger, Mali, Togo, Morocco, Germany, and Austria, the weekly community kitchen in Agadez, Niger offers a practical solution for migrants who have been stranded. Migrants' struggle for dignified life has become even more precarious due to the global pandemic, exaggerating the globally uneven impacts of health apartheid.
This regular communal space plays many roles: it fosters solidarity and trust between various communities, serves as a hub for developing lived experience leadership, and enhances the organising capacity and holistic well-being of displaced populations. As a crucial support structure and movement-building base, it also collects participatory testimonies of migrants in the systematically overlooked situation in the Sahel-Saharan zone, advancing advocacy efforts across national and international media.
Palermo and Dakar Convergences
Italy, Senegal
2021
Under the banner “from the sea to the city,” a slogan that encompasses the transborder linkages of solidarity work for migrant justice, two parallel gatherings in Palermo, Italy and Dakar, Senegal took place with 250+ members of civil society organizations and grassroots social movements across Europe and in the African regions of Tunisia, Morocco, Niger, and Mali. Throughout several days, practices and visions for freedom of movement were collectively discussed, with a focus on practical workshops and reflections on recent legislation of externalised EU migration policies impacting regional and transnational activist structures.
Moreover, this rare in-person gathering mitigated the barriers of security and time sensitivity typical to remote coordination, allowing in-depth reflection on various experiences of the last several years, sparking an evaluation of united visions, goals, and relationships built for the future.
Skills 4 Utopia
Germany, pan-European
2021
Skills for Utopia is a grassroots-oriented political education collective training activists and political groups across and beyond Europe. Throughout 24 workshops and webinars, and with a network of 30+ qualified trainers, the collective provided expertise for practical, free skill-sharing directly tailored to migrant justice organisers and support structures at the external EU borders. Results included support groups in strategically dreaming of utopic visions, launching effective public campaigns, engaging knowledgeable with cyber security, and deconstructing power-critical structures.
Skill-sharing becomes increasingly important to strengthen the tissue of our movements. As an activist-led collective, with low-barrier and cost-free trainings, Skills4Utopia is specifically intended to be accessible to and empower smaller groups, grassroots activists, and directly impacted populations to benefit from the program. Their training approach enables activists to share gained knowledge within their organisations and beyond, creating a multiplying effect of capacity-building.
Solidary Wheels
Spain
2021
Solidary Wheels is a non-hierarchical, women-led organisation bridging the gap between a formal legal entitlement to claim asylum and the administrative reality in the only land borders from Africa to Europe: Melilla and Ceuta. Taking a feminist and decolonial approach, the collective focuses especially on advocating for the rights of migrants facing multiple marginalisations. It connects impacted people with movement lawyers, offers social and holistic well-being support, provides close accompaniment throughout administrative procedures, and monitors human rights violations for policy transformation.
Solidarity Wheels sustains the building blocks of resilient movements in this region through its dual pillars of providing informational workshops and activity-based social events to build coalition and activate civil society.
ReFOCUS Media Labs
pan-European
2020
ReFOCUS Media Labs is dedicated to educating and training refugee citizen journalists, providing unique and fair opportunities for displaced individuals to tell their own stories and reclaim their autonomy within a dominant media landscape that often speaks for them instead of with them. The training is conducted by those directly affected by complex crises. The multi-media content in video, photography, and testimony produced through this initiative is utilised not only by humanitarian organisations like Sea Watch, Human Rights Watch, and One Happy Family Center Lesbos, but also by major news outlets such as the BBC. This approach meaningfully helps build a global network advocating for migrant rights through participatory narrative change.