At the end of 2025, the Right to Remain team spent some time together to reflect and plan our work for 2026. Over the festive period, my mind kept on returning to the conversations I had with my colleagues. As we open 2026, these are my thoughts that are shaping our forthcoming work.
We are here to stay.
2025 was a tough year for many in the migration justice field, including Right to Remain.
In 2026, we will be claiming our space. With many of you, we are choosing visibility and presence to assert, again and again, that migration is a normal course of life. We have no intention of surrendering to the powers that try to derail our quest for migration justice, whether that means the government’s attempt to curtail our right to belong, or the threats and intimidations that are stemming from everyday racism and hostility against our community.
The pace of change and the depth of chaos in the asylum and migration system, engineered by the government, can feel paralysing. Those of us on the ground are likely to be forced to rethink how we can continue to stand in solidarity with our community: we will be even more stretched. We will remember that crises are designed to destabilize us, to make us feel powerless and to stop resisting. At a time when our right to protest against injustice is evidently under threat, it is important to remember that. And, we do not have to surrender to this script that’s been forced upon us. With many of you, we will be rewriting the script, for a society that protects us all.
From the changes to the asylum system to the proposed overhaul of the settlement process, the battles are indeed many and complex. Our ability to stay focused will be tested. Simultaneously, we will be addressing the immediate risks to our community and preparing for our future through horizon scanning. We need each other, and we need solidarity across communities more than ever in order to think and act well together. Through these practices of shared thinking and acting, we will be building our community’s collective power, together with you.
High among our priorities is to ensure as many people as possible get onto a more secure immigration status, including settlement and naturalisation. Another key priority is to protect our community from the harm and the violence of immigration raids, detention and deportation. We all have a right to live in peace and safety, and we reject the idea that people should be warehoused in camps or detained in an expanded immigration detention estate.
This is a tough challenge: many struggle to navigate the complicated, confusing and bureaucratic asylum and immigration system, often caught up in the delays and traps created by the system. Needless to say, there are not and will not be enough high quality, free or affordable legal advisors and lawyers. During their protracted journey to access justice, many are excluded from society, facing destitution and exploitation. This is not new: it has been going on for many years, causing an incalculable damage to our community. It is important to recognise the extreme degree of hardship that our community has been enduring – and the critical role their own mutual help and the solidarity work by grassroots groups and activists have played in sustaining our community.
We know knowledge is power. We need to democratise knowledge about the asylum and immigration system to ensure our community feels more in control of their lives and exercises their right to justice. We must make sure that people are not reduced to individualised immigration ‘cases’. We must make sure that we work towards justice together. We salute people and groups who continue to champion our solidarity-driven model of public legal education which centers and values our lived-experience and empowers our community.
In practice, this is how Right to Remain is starting 2026.
Standing in solidarity with our community
We have many workshops and events coming up, to build knowledge, radical solidarity and power for the migration justice movement. With These Walls Must Falll, we are looking forward to connecting with as many groups and people as possible.
11 February – Knowledge is Power: Detention and Enforcement (online)
Date to be confirmed – Asylum Appeals workshop for people who are unrepresented (online)
This year, we are hosting two Annual Gatherings, one in Birmingham (6 Feb) and another in Leeds (12 Feb). For more information, visit our webpage here.
Building our team
We are recruiting more staff members to be ready for our work ahead. We know that our community needs more legal education work to gain clarity over many changes that are coming our way, and our community is itching to build more power to campaign for migration justice.
We are recruiting for another Legal Education Officer. The application deadline is 2 February. We are looking for an exceptional person to join our team.
We will start recruiting for a part-time These Walls Must Fall Organiser in coming weeks. Stay tuned if you are are already active in organising people seeking asylum, refugees, migrants and allies in your local area and are interested in joining our team.
Also later this year, we are planning to hire a part-time Communications Officer. We are currently scoping for this position. This is an exciting development for Right to Remain – and we grateful to the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Foundation for giving us an opportunity to strenghten our team.
Finally, we are looking for exceptional people to join our Management Committee too. More information is avaialble here.
ARM – The Anti Racist Movement
Over the last few months, we have been working with Black Lives Matter, Maslaha and Migrants Organise to establish ARM – The Anti-Racist Movement. It has been a rewarding experience, walking with a like-minded group of people, wanting to meet the moment.
ARM is a network of anti-racists, migrants, trade unionists, and community organisers, building a radically democratic, multicultural society free from racial oppression and exploitation. This builds on and extends the work that Right to Remain has been doing already: to build knowledge, radical solidarity and power to boost and mainstream the migration justice movement.
We will be sharing more information about ARM in due course. In the meantime, you can watch the recording of the launch event on 30 October here: I briefly explain why Right to Remain decided to join forces with others to set up ARM (1hour 17min onwards). I will be starting one-to-one conversations with some of the groups that Right to Remain has been closely working with. If you have any questions or want to know more about this, please get in touch with me at eiri(at)righttoremain.org.uk
Right to Remain will be continuing our fight for migration justice with energy, compassion and hope, with all of you. This is our collective struggle. We all have a role to play. We can all step up. We look forward to working with you in 2026.
Eiri Ohtani, Director
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