Resistance and solidarity: Introducing PICUM’s Strategic Plan 2026–2030

To say that we live in a challenging environment is quite the understatement.

Across Europe, human rights standards are backsliding, civic space is shrinking, and migration policies are increasingly defined by criminalisation, surveillance, detention, and deportation.

Undocumented people face deeper insecurity and exclusion from essential services, which are being increasingly instrumentalised for migration control. For many migrant workers, exploitation persists amid worsening labour shortages across the continent. At the same time, civil society organisations face mounting political and financial pressure – and outright criminalisation.

And yet, across Europe, resistance continues. Communities step up against the deportation of friends and neighbours. Teachers and doctors defend access to services as safe spaces. Workers and trade unions organise against exploitation. Civil society, migrant-led groups and local actors build alliances, challenge criminalisation, and push for inclusion and regularisation.

For 25 years, the PICUM network has been contributing to this movement. Our vision is clear: a world where everyone can realise their human rights, regardless of migration or residence status, and where human mobility is recognised as a normal reality.

But in today’s world, we realise that advocacy alone is not enough to promote sustained change – and that we need to revisit and consolidate our approach by incorporating more campaigning to amplify our impact, mainstreaming meaningful participation of people with lived experience across all areas of work, as well as incorporating strategic litigation to ensure increased accountability.

Against this backdrop, PICUM’s Strategic Plan for 2026–2030 sets out a clear pathway for change, shaped by collective resistance, solidarity and participation. Rooted in principles of social justice, anti-racism and intersectional equality, this strategy builds on shared learning and extensive consultation and co creation with PICUM members and partners.

Three objectives to guide collective action

The strategy is built around three interconnected objectives.

Resistance and remedy focuses on countering harmful migration enforcement and upholding rights. PICUM will work to challenge detention and deportation, safeguard essential services as safe spaces, expand access to justice and effective remedies, and counter the criminalisation of migration and solidarity. This means promoting community-based, rights-based alternatives and holding institutions accountable for violations, including through strategic litigation.

Belonging and inclusion recognises that undocumented people are part of our societies. PICUM will continue to push for regularisation and secure residence status, stronger workers’ rights and decent labour migration pathways, equal access to essential services, inclusive anti-poverty policies, and EU funding that truly reaches undocumented people and the organisations supporting them.

Resilience and participation reflects PICUM’s belief that lasting change comes from strong, connected movements. Over the next five years, PICUM will work to strengthen its collective voice and communication, protect civic space, foster participatory and inclusive ways of working, and systematise learning across the network. Central to this objective is ensuring that people with lived experience of undocumented or precarious status are meaningfully involved in shaping policies, research, and advocacy.

How we will work

For 25 years, the network has gathered evidence from its members to document the lived realities of undocumented people and translate this knowledge into concrete recommendations at EU, national and local levels.

The new strategic plan deepens this approach by:

• placing meaningful participation of people with lived experience at the heart of all areas of work – from advocacy and research to communications and governance;
• working more intentionally across movements and building alliances, strengthening cooperation with professional associations, trade unions, anti-racism, disability, child rights and workers’ rights actors to confront shared forms of structural exclusion;
• further developing strategic litigation and legal accountability work, pooling legal expertise across the network to support cases with the potential for wider systemic impact;
• reinforcing support to members, including in response to criminalisation, shrinking civic space and other legal, political and financial pressures they may face;
• strengthening work on narrative change to deconstruct criminalisation narratives around irregular migration and centre migration as something human, which helps societies grow and thrive.

PICUM’s Strategic Plan for 2026–2030 is both a response to today’s challenges and a commitment to a shared future. It is an invitation to continue resisting harmful policies, building inclusion in practice, and strengthening collective resilience.

The full Strategic Plan can be read here.