From Brexit to Windrush, from the Daily Mail to the Home Office, we are constantly assailed by anti-immigrant rhetoric. And it isnt just here – around the world, immigration is blamed for unemployment, homelessness, falling wages, strained public services, and almost every conceivable problem, and migrants are treated with suspicion and disdain. On both the left and right, there seems to be a consensus that people leave their homes and come to the UK for an ‘easy ride’.
But ordinary people don’t leave their homes and everything they know for no reason. Nor are they responsible for their exploitation or for the community being undeserved. Migrants aren’t to blame.
What is?
As part of the Edinburgh World Justice Festival, our panel will explore the bigger picture, connecting the dots between global injustice, migration and xenophobia. Over a two-hour discussion, we will start to unpick the legacies of exploitation, militarism, colonialism, corporatism, and environmental destruction that force people to leave their homes, and to identify the ways in which governments and corporations shift the blame away from themselves and onto the victims of their greed.
We will also start to explore radical solutions – how can we create a community that supports and protects migrants, and how can we work to undermine the systems that force them from their homes?
With a panel including experts and activists from organisations including Global Justice Now and the Glasgow Centre for Climate Justice, this promises to be fascinating in-depth look into the truth about migration.
