critical legal practice

We are committed to co-designing politico-legal strategies and interventions with migrant communities and migrant solidarity groups in ways that critically reflect (on) the im/possibilities of pursuing transformative justice for the global immobility regime, and for all forms of borders, physical and other—including gender, race, and class.

A central purpose of (violent) border regimes is social erasure, often through and by law. This includes, for instance, the normalisation of the criminalisation of people who defy borders (by crossing them or by supporting border crossers) under ‘crimmigration’ law (García Hernández), and the punishment of border crossers through their removal from recognition and protection by law, e.g. through secret detention, which according to the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances amounts to acts of enforced disappearance.

Hyper-legalism and a formalistic approach to law allows states to evade their most basic legal—as well as political and moral—obligations towards refugees and other migrants through laws and policies that enable organised impunity. This includes the informalisation and financialisation of migration cooperation with third countries (Moreno-Lax & Lemberg-Pedersen); the ‘management’ of fundamental rights through so-called “third party monitoring” and “due diligence” (Ferstman; Dembour; Spijkerboer); and the migration-development-security nexus, read “containment development”, “border militarism”, and ‘clientelism’ (Chimni; Walia; Spijkerboer).

Our interventions seek to mobilise the (limited) disruptive potential in law and, because of such limits, we are committed to centring the affective politics of communities in struggle, as well as counter-narratives around the violence and im/possibilities of law and the structural and epistemic injustice reproduced by legal systems.

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transformative and decolonial justice and reparations 

We seek to embody a self-reflexive praxis that is oriented towards no borders imaginaries and critical of the social conditions that (re)produce physical and other borders. We seek the transformation of the global immobility regime, including its enabling legal systems. Our interventions seek to capture, expose, and challenge the coloniality of migration, asylum and penal laws—or ‘crimmigration’ law—and the organised impunity of migration control. Understanding migration as decolonisation (Achiume), and free(dom of) movement as decolonial reparative justice, we are committed to pursuing legal interventions in ways that articulate, expose and resist the intersecting colonial continuities of socioeconomic exploitation and inequalities.

Transformation is often only possible through relational healing, which includes acknowledgement of experiences of violence, (political) participation in processes that seek justice and resist its denial, and accompaniment in community and solidarity. Struggles for the right to truth, relational accountability, and broader decolonial and intersectional visions of transformative migration justice also offer counternarratives and horizons for resisting the violence of laws and legal systems that work to narrow and invisibilise such politico-legal struggles.

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movement law and lawyering

In centring systemic change of the immobility regime and the limits of juridical justice and accountability, our interventions with/in and against law are informed by the idea of movement law/yering—“grounded in solidarity, accountability, and engagement with grassroots organising and left social movements” (Akbar, Ashar & Simonson; Movement Law Lab). Movement law seeks to “understand the strategies, tactics, and experiments of resistance and contestation”, so as to “engage new pathways to and possibilities for justice” that can contribute to systemic transformation and further social and political struggles (Akbar, Ashar & Simonson).

Through counter-narratives of the law that expose its reproduction of oppressive systems, irresponsibility and unaccountability, we aim to disrupt and rupture law’s instrumentalisation to justify policies of organised abandonment, to “disclose the moral lapses[,] illuminate the structural constraints of the law” (West), and to expose the limits of institutional (and juridical) justice.

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trauma-informed (legal) practice

Trauma-informed lawyering makes visible the many intersections of trauma and law by centring connection with lived-experiences of harm, including those (re)produced by legal systems, which often retraumatize by denying agency and invisibilising experiences of violence, and fail to provide safety and needs-based, life-affirming justice (Trauma-Informed Lawyer). The individualised and reactive forms of harm-reduction sought through human rights or other legal frameworks rarely offer truth-telling, let alone opportunities to pursue systemic change.

Trauma-informed lawyering is mindful and present to the needs of “claimants” throughout and beyond a legal case. This includes basic needs such as access to health, shelter and sustenance, and extends to the broader social and political visions of justice of migrant communities. The counter-affect of exposing and contesting the ways legal systems reproduce and entrench rightlessness is a measure of relational and healing justice.

A trauma-informed practice includes nurturing an organisational culture of individual and collective unlearning of harmful neoliberal practices of individualism, extractivism and saviorism dominant in social justice institutions, and healing from our institutional harms. “As people with vicarious-, generational- and oppression-based trauma, there is internal work needed: figuring out ‘how’ we do the work—the ‘why’, while building safety mechanisms to hold each other accountable in tender and kind ways” (Khan). The ‘how’ of our work is both part of and prefigures the work’s substance, intentionality, and affect. We are committed to centring community, solidarity and collective care in our praxis, as forms of everyday resistance to violence (Hartman).

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migrant-led communities of practice and visions of justice

We are committed to a collaborative praxis that envisions ways to align our resistance with/in and against law with the social and political visions of justice of migrant communities and no-borders social movements. Mindful of the repressive effects of criminalisation of migration and migrant solidarity, we aim to co-create safer spaces to engage in collective self-inquiry around our struggles and visions of justice and accountability.

We resist ‘NGOisation’ as other attempts to silence and coopt social justice struggles, including by human rights institutionalism and the ‘(criminal) justice industrial complex’. We seek to reimagine our engagements with/in and against law in ways that resist the cooptation of liberatory visions of justice and accountability.

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safety and self-accountability

We are intentionally working towards safety in community and in our relationships with others. We are working in coalitions of researchers, practitioners, scholar-activists, and direct-action groups to resist and safeguard our struggles from the harmful impacts of policies of increased criminalisation of migrant communities and solidarity groups.

In our community agreements (guided by the emergent justice collective), we actively strive to embody our values, including anti-racism, collective care, solidarity, intentional and transformative community, self- and collective accountability, and trauma-informed practice. Above all, we practice feminist accountability by engaging in collective inquiry around accountability and care with honesty, empathy, and compassion. We centre restorative and transformative approaches to conflict facilitation and transformation (e.g., Building Restorative Systems).