Migrants are revolting

Something rotten has been discovered and is making putrid all the things we hold dear. A rancid menace, that is both burdening and dissolving our public services and destroying the economy. It’s denying opportunities for young people, while tearing apart communities and a collective sense of solidarity. The ruling government scapegoats migrants when the rot lies with them. Governments do have everything to fear from migrants. We are revolting; we turn established ideas and customs upside down in the struggle that is our existence.

As new migrants, we are accused of both stealing jobs and stealing welfare, we are told that we are health tourists and essential health workers. We reject being defined by those who seek to rule over us. We are thinkers and office cleaners, we are your hopes and your fears, we are lovers and agitators, we are greedy and self-sacrificing, we are the policed and the persecuted, we are the Other. Our children are likened to parasites and our acceptability is ranked according to our “usefulness” to the nation. We are criminalised and classified as “illegal”, and to become “legal” we must be loyal and obedient, we must bear heavy burdens but not become burdensome, we must know more statistics about Britain than the British Prime Minister. We are forced to justify our right to exist, work, live and procreate.

We cannot be passive when, both young and old, we are being harassed by both state and immigration police, when we are being killed by outsourced state enforcers, when we are being sent back to our certain death. We fight against class exploitation in the workplace, state sponsored racism, homophobia and misogyny, White Supremacy, Ableism and more. We fight for our liberation and the recognition of our human dignity.

We are a collective of migrants from both near and far who recognise the importance of culture in setting standards and boundaries of our imagination and ways of living. We are writers, poets, both lovers and creators of music, artists of all kinds, sports pundits, film buffs and critical theorists. We seek to document the cultural and social experiences of migrants in multicultural Britain. Our project is political because culture is political, our politics is intersectional because we live intersectionality every day. We will hold events, debates and publish art and analysis about the state we are in, and the struggle to change it.

We want to reclaim the migrant experience and the word “multiculturalism” from below. We are The Multicultural Politic and we want you to join us.

The multiculturalism of fact is rooted in considerable achievements of who we have become. The multiculturalism of fiction is rooted in the fear of what has never been.

– Gary Younge