Utopia 56 : rallying to help migrants

Utopia 56, a grassroots association of volunteers, who have been involved in migrant « camps » since 2016, does not want to limit itself to helping them in their everyday life emergencies anymore. The team wishes to extend its mandate by carrying out advocacy actions, thereby making the claims of migrants heard. Hence, Utopia 56 asked VoxPublic to help them in that direction.

Context

Utopia 56 was created in January 2016 to support and develop the voluntary solidarity towards migrants living in the Calais "jungle", in response to calls from Doctors without Borders and Doctors of the World. The association had more than 11,000 members in June 2019 and now operates in several regions in France : not only Calais, but also Paris, Lille, Lyon, Quimper, Rennes, Saint-Brieuc, Toulouse and Tours.

“Initially, our association was created to respond to the emergency and the needs - first material needs, then administrative needs expressed by asylum seekers left on the street or in camps like in Calais and Paris. We trained directly in the field through a learning-by-doing process. Three years later, we are tired of simply "distributing socks", this is not fully what the people we work with ask us to do.

Today, we have no choice, we must offer a political response, through advocacy. Because there is a fundamental problem in the administrative management of these people regardless of their status or their age”, Gaël Manzi explains, the national coordinator of Utopia 56.

The association was shocked to discover that many people do not benefit from their effective rights, in particular regarding the access to an accommodation and financial support, known as « material reception conditions » (Conditions matérielles d’accueil or CMA). The association points to administrative failures, particularly in regard to the difficulties to appeal against the decision of the French Officce of Immigration and Integration (OFII) to withdraw or suspend the subsidies.

Utopia 56’s advocacy objectives

With the support of VoxPublic, Utopia 56 has set out the following objectives with regards to its advocacy actions :

• To strengthen the migrants’ access to their basic rights in France.
• To carry out specific advocacy work on the need for transparency in the system of material reception conditions, especially the criteria dictating who is entitled to those rights and on what conditions they can be withdrawn. That way, the beneficiaries can claim their rights to accomodation or financial support when they are unduely taken away from them.
• To simplify registration procedures with the OFII and to inject transparency in the administrative decisions taken by this public institution so that any asylum seeker can introduce an adversarial procedure to legally reclaim his or her rights.
• To raise awareness on the number of asylum seekers who are left in the street despite their right to an accomodation, and enable them to testify to public opinion.

The needs stated by Utopia 56

• Help Utopia 56 to develop its advocacy strategies to achieve the stated objectives
• Train its members to be able to bring claims before the competent authorities.
• Reinforce the visibility of the association and its recognition as a « grassroot eye » and a « whistleblower » towards journalists.

VoxPublic’s mission

As part of its partnership with Utopia 56, VoxPublic undertakes to :
Provide a strategy that meets the needs set out above through consulting and the support of its team, between October 2019 and June 2020.

• Help strengthen the advocacy capacities of Utopia 56 and its local groups, by offering training sessions in the techniques of challenging decision-makers, so that they can then be empowered to work autonomously.
• Help Utopia 56 to identify and « map » the right interlocutors, from the targeted people or institutions, to the potential allies.
• Support Utopia 56 in the development or organisational and strategical tools (technical files, communication support) to successfully assert its recommendations.
• Support Utopia 56 in its media strategy, in order, not only to increase the visibility of the association, but mostly to raise awareness on the difficulties migrants face.