The Migrants Movement is a non-profit, non-governmental, civil rights movement inspired by prior acts of resistance among people of African descent, the movement was started by academics, health practitioners, business professionals and unskilled migrants in 2015.
Launched as a campaigning organisation, our work brings together and deepens connections, understanding, and solidarity within the migrants’ rights sector and across other sectors to share learning, facilitate access and bring about visionary and practical solutions. As an organisation that is challenging in our approach, we tackle strategically important but unpopular issues that particularly impact on groups most harmed by anti-immigrant policies and narratives.
We have a dynamic approach that uses a plurality of methods for change. These methods include; strengthening, supporting migrant leadership, associations, and promoting a unified community structure among migrant nations. To encourage legality, discouraging criminality, collaborating with local authorities to amplify and centre the voices, issues, of migrants and grassroots groups.
The Movement embraces an African/identity and worldview that combated structural racism, encouraged cultural revitalization, and achieved community empowerment by promoting legality among migrants.
The purpose of the ‘network’ is to redistribute access to knowledge and change the narrative that considered migrants a liability to the nation, which coined the word Amakwerekwere, a term adopted as an expression of defiance to the migrant communities. A Pew Research poll conducted in 2018 showed that 62% of South Africans viewed immigrants as a burden on society by taking jobs and social benefits and that 61% of South Africans thought that immigrants were more responsible for crime than other groups.