NCADC Campaigning Toolkit
Campaigning can overcome the barriers to justice, and win the right to remain; and it can produce other benefits for the individual and the wider community too.
In many cases, campaigns are indirectly successful. For example, a solicitor may secure an injunction stopping a deportation and that person may eventually get status. People at risk have told us that they would not have had the strength to continue with the legal process – which can be a long and rocky road – without the knowledge that they had people supporting them. The campaign can be a way of showing that people care; it can boost someone’s morale, giving them the strength to fight another day.
As one asylum-seeker said about the importance of a campaign:
The support from the campaign along my tough journey gave me the courage and confidence to fight. I have now been granted my rights.
Campaigning can have the positive impact of an individual or family taking some control back over their situation, by campaigning for the right to remain. Campaigners feel empowered by speaking out and bearing witness to injustice, by feeling the support of those around them, their community, and wider supporters of a campaign who they may never meet.
The asylum and immigration system does not place a high value on the voices of migrants: on the contrary, it is a system that at times silences, at others twists the words of applicants in order to refuse their cases and categorise them as incredible. Individual campaigning is an opportunity for asylum seekers and other migrants to control their own story.
Receiving a positive decision in an asylum or immigration application is rarely straight-forward, or quick. Persevering in the fight for justice in one’s case requires enormous emotional reserves, which we have seen replenished by the support of a campaign group.
With a broken asylum system, and so many people unrepresented or poorly represented in their legal cases, there are many people in need of support and community action to increase their chances of their legal case being recognised.
In addition to the benefits of campaigning for justice for the individual at the centre of the campaign, individual campaigning can have a broader impact as well. The campaign group or community that supports an individual in the campaign can gain strength from coming together for a common cause. They may learn skills and lessons that will make them better placed to campaign successfully the next time, irrespective of the outcome of the current campaign. The networking process of a campaign can help to build bonds and links within and between communities.
Individual campaigns are also a unique insight in to the injustices of the asylum and immigration system in the UK, and human rights abuses abroad. The breaking down of stereotypes and abstracts to individual human stories is a key weapon against anti-immigrant rhetoric, and helps to explain the human impact of unjust policies.
