International Migrants’ Day 2025 – It Takes a Community

Today marks 2025’s International Migrants’ Day, observed on the 18th of December, reaffirming that human rights belong to everyone, regardless of status or origin. This year’s focus reminds us that it takes a community — not only to welcome migrants, but to defend their rights in increasingly hostile environments.

With approximately 272 million migrants worldwide, we are reminded that humans are inherently mobile beings. Migration is, and remains, an ordinary and routine phenomenon. It is a long-standing practice, spanning millennia and societies alike. People move in search of work, safety, family, opportunity or simply out of curiosity. Yet it is also undeniable that movement is very often shaped by global inequalities and the actions of states — including economic systems, colonial legacies, conflict, and environmental degradation — frequently driven by the same countries that later seek to restrict or criminalise migration.

In contrast to these hostile and exclusionary narratives, upholding the dignity and rights of people on the move lies at the core of Citizens Rights Project. By providing rights-based support, welfare assistance, and cultural interconnection through our migrant led staff, we aim to recognise, validate, and support the full diversity of migration experiences. Our immigration, welfare and advocacy services are tied together by a shared understanding that desires and possibilities for migration are open and expansive. 

At Citizens Rights Project, community is not an abstract value but a daily practice. Through migrant-led, multilingual support, shared knowledge, and cultural awareness, we work alongside individuals and communities to reduce isolation, build trust, and ensure people can access their rights with dignity. In doing so, we seek to strengthen spaces of cultural respect, representation, and solidarity — where different experiences and identities are recognised and valued — particularly amid the UK’s concerning rise in anti-immigration rhetoric.

The current landscape

Despite migrants being active agents of prosperity and change, like any other members of society, the UK’s current immigration landscape, and therefore Scotland’s, is starkly hostile. Mainstream media narratives that position migrants as scapegoats for social ills have incited unprecedented unrest, as seen in the recent violent anti-immigration demonstration outside an asylum housing facility in Falkirk. With racist offences now accounting for 60 percent of all hate crimes, we are also experiencing the rise of the far-right seen across North America and Europe, alongside increased policing and vilification of migrants. 

As a result, several of our clients have described feelings of desperation and confusion when navigating isolating immigration systems during this period of heightened social polarisation. When these narratives roam freely and unexamined they constrict access to legitimate rights-based services. People in need of civic aid, can either turn to uniformed sources of knowledge or hide out of fear or civic persecution. This harm is compounded when such narratives are reflected in restrictive policy frameworks that further narrow migrants’ access to rights and protections.

Recent evidence points to the growing complexity of public attitudes towards migration in Scotland. Early findings from Migration Policy Scotland’s surveys showed relatively open and pragmatic views, particularly recognising migrants’ social and economic contributions. More recent data, however, suggests a cooling of these attitudes — not a clear rejection of migration, but an increasing ambivalence that appears to sit alongside heightened political and media narratives.

Our own community-based work reflects this contradiction. While online commentary and public-facing discussions increasingly feature hostile or exclusionary responses, direct engagement on the ground often tells a different story. In a recent focus group for migrants organised in the Craigmillar and Niddrie area of Edinburgh, in partnership with our partners from the Workers Observatory and Empowering Multicultural Communities Alliance (EMCA), participants described feeling welcomed in their neighbourhood and report little overt hostility in everyday interactions. 

At the same time, there are emerging signals—symbols, language, and rhetoric—that create fear and uncertainty, particularly when far-right narratives become more visible in public spaces.

This suggests that the issue is not necessarily a widespread shift in community attitudes, but rather that individuals holding anti-migration or racist views may feel increasingly legitimised to speak openly when such narratives circulate unchecked. In some cases, repeated misinformation and inflammatory media coverage may also gradually reshape perceptions among those who were previously neutral. This dynamic is not new; similar patterns were evident during the lead-up to the Brexit referendum, where sustained negative framing of migration played a decisive role in shaping public opinion.

It Takes a Community: Our Approach

Moving forward, our work will continue focusing on responding to the realities migrants face with care, clarity, and accountability. Our multilingual, migrant-led model is designed to reduce barriers and create familiar, supportive space t where people can access immigration, welfare, and wider support without fear, assumption, or generalisation. 

We recognise that challenges such as labour exploitation, housing insecurity, racism, exclusion from decision-making, and environmental precarity do not exist in isolation. Our response is therefore integrated — addressing immediate needs while remaining attentive to the wider conditions and systems that produce harm.

At Citizens Rights Project, we ground our work in lived experience rather than assumption. This requires ongoing reflection and a willingness to adapt and learn. We are committed to continuous learning in anti-racist, trauma-informed, and rights-based practice, informed by service user feedback, community relationships, and the changing political landscape.

Moving beyond individual casework, we are working towards creating spaces for collective learning and collaboration. Through our emerging partnership with the Empowering Multicultural Communities Alliance (EMCA) and the Workers’ Observatory, we are developing Migrant Justice Edinburgh as a space to better understand how work, place, and inequality shape migrants’ everyday lives. This reflects our recognition that services alone are not enough, and that lasting change requires learning alongside communities and partners.

Our aim is to create space for more nuanced migration experiences — recognising migrants not only for their contributions, but as workers, carers, neighbours, organisers, and cultural participants: as people, not numbers. Through our multilingual services, we work to reduce isolation, restore agency, and support people in navigating systems that are often complex and exclusionary. At the same time, through initiatives such as Migrant Justice Edinburgh, we are working towards creating opportunities for migrants to collectively identify challenges, propose solutions, and take action to shape the communities and futures they are part of.

Help Us Make an Impact: Support our work 

While grants help fund our vital work, they are often short-term, sparse, and don’t cover everything. Donations are essential to help us maintain and expand our services, build reserves for long-term stability, and ensure we don’t have to close critical support programs. 

If you agree with our ethos and our practiced approach on migration aid, please help us maintain our work. 

There are many ways to donate available on our website: citizensrightsproject.org/donate. 

To get into contact or collaboration with us, reach as at: info@citizensrightsproject.org