Clandestino conference

Strangers into Citizens was one of the scheduled presentations at the Clandestino conference on Friday 27 March.

This conference was organised by the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) an umbrella organisation for over 400 NGOs all across Europe that work with irregular migrants.

150 attendees packed the Amnesty International Human Rights Action Centre in Shoreditch, London, for a day full of valuable information sharing and networking.

At the conference PICUM presented the results of their major research project into numbers of irregular migrants in European countries like the UK, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands, Portugal and others. You can read more about this on the PICUM website.

Their findings are in line with what we have always claimed: that the number of migrants in the UK is not above the European average; that the percentage of irregular migrants is not on the rise; that there need to be effective mechanisms for measuring how many irregular migrants there are in a country in order to create policies accordingly.

One of the workshops at the conference focused on regularisations programmes, and Strangers into Citizens was leading the debate along with the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICPMD), based in Vienna.

Our colleagues from Vienna had done their own research on a regularisation programmes in the European Union and have given us more evidence to claim that regularisations do not produce more irregular migrants. You can read more about the report on the ICPMD site.

Our presentation was much applauded and commented on by all attendees - our colleagues over in France were very impressed with the fact that Strangers had pulled 15,000 people to Trafalgar Square back in 2007.

As always, there was a mix of views from the crowd as to what a regularisations would entail in the long run. Our proposal is simple and aims to put forward a model for regularisation that governments can draw ideas from to create new policies. You can read about our proposal on our website.

Our presentation has put us on the map for the rest of Europe. We cannot disappoint. We need more people than ever to come and rally with us on May 4th, 2009 for our day of Action and Celebration. Visit our website for more details.