Solidarity and justice for undocumented migrants: mobilising against restrictive policies

On 23 and 24 May 2024, PICUM brought together over 60 member organisations at our General Assembly in Madrid to reflect on the current context and strategise about resistance and mobilisation in the next five years. This blog shares some highlights of our discussions.

Setting the context: between the EU Migration Pact and the Global Compact for Migration

As far-right politics and their anti-migrant messages become more normalised, migration policies become more repressive in a growing number of EU countries. Some of the EU’s recent policies in the area of migration are also aiming to institutionalise them. As PICUM’s board member Moussa Sangaré noted in his opening speech, the EU Migration Pact, adopted in April 2024, will increase harm for people seeking safety and opportunities in Europe.

As we have been pointing out with many other human rights organisations, this Pact will likely increase the likelihood that people coming to Europe without valid travel/residence documents will be deprived of their liberty, face lower safeguards in deportation procedures, and heightened racial profiling at and within the EU’s borders. As Claudia Bonamini from the Jesuit Refugee Service Europe pointed out, many of these practices already exist, but the Migration Pact will consolidate and institutionalise them. In parallel, the Pact is likely to increase irregularity as people who will be quickly unsuccessful in requesting asylum will be fast tracked to deportation, without being offered a means to seek other protection statuses or residence permits.

Many member states are already taking measures even beyond those adopted in the Migration Pact. Referring to the hostile political context on migration in Europe, Spanish Secretary of State for Migration Pilar Cancela Rodriguez evoked a recent letter sent by 15 member states to the Commission calling for more deportations and externalisation of migration control measures.

If the EU Migration Pact essentially aims to restrict migration to Europe, the 2018 UN Global Compact for Migration encourages states to expand regular routes for people to migrate. Paloma García of Red Acoge highlighted four opportunities the Global Compact on Migration offers for states and civil society to advance fairer, inclusive and rights-based migration policies: a holistic view of human mobility and its root causes, a focus on fostering international cooperation to build safe and regular routes, a multi-level governance approach involving stakeholders from the UN to local authorities, and review mechanisms to track states’ progress on the implementation of the Global Compact.

UN bodies have also expressed their concerns about the EU Migration Pact. UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants Gehad Madi discussed a recent joint statement from UN bodies prior to the adoption of the EU Migration Pact, calling on EU member states to prohibit child immigration detention, following international human rights standards that immigration detention is never in a child’s best interests and always a human rights violation. The statement also urges states to end immigration detention for all, establish independent mechanisms to monitor strict respect for human rights during screening and border procedures, refrain from collective expulsions, prevent racial profiling by immigration and law enforcement officers, and expand and diversify pathways for regularisation.

Organising resistance

Hostile migration policies have for years been a reality in many parts of Europe. We heard from Alkistis Agrafioti from the Greek Council for Refugees about de facto detention at borders, the abuse of the “safe country” concept, swift asylum procedures and pushbacks in Greece. María Fernández from Andalucía Acoge evoked the reception crisis in the Canary Islands in Spain. Diana Radoslavova from the Center for Legal Aid-Voice discussed violent border controls in Bulgaria and the application of the “safe country” concept to authoritarian regimes like Turkey and Iran.

PICUM board member Adam Weiss set out key avenues for strategic litigation against the Pact’s provisions that knowingly violate EU law principles of non-discrimination, privacy, respect for family life, and freedom. He encouraged advocates and activists to engage in strategic litigation to expose such violations to counter the institutionalisation of racial profiling (on anti-discrimination grounds), the establishment and use of mass surveillance (on data protection and privacy grounds), and the detention of children and families (on family life grounds).

Members from Spanish civil society reflected on the role of migrant women in social change, from an intersectional perspective: we heard from Lucy Polo from Asociación Por Ti Mujer, Antonia Ávalos from Mujeres Supervivientes, and Diana Tutistar from Red AMINVI.

In the face of a largely hostile environment, PICUM’s network remains determined to keep working for a compassionate Europe where everyone can thrive. Our 2024 General Assembly was a key moment to reconnect and strategise about future mobilisation and resistance.

We discussed thematic priorities in workshops covering community engagement, detention and deportations, health and social rights, labour rights and labour migration, and regularisation. We further explored strategic directions for the network in the field of narratives and communications, funding, the geographical scope of our work, criminalisation, and the participation of people with lived experience. Many members expressed concern about an increasingly hostile environment where civil society is harassed or outright criminalised, and the dehumanisation of undocumented and racialised people which opens the door to ever more repressive policies. While recognising that the network is built on solid foundations, members underlined the importance of strengthening work on emerging issues of concern, engaging meaningfully with affected communities and with people with lived experience, and on building shared transformational narratives for a fairer Europe for all.