2025 Wrap Up: Climate and Migrant Justice Organising Group
The Climate & Migrant Justice Organising Group, a collective of climate, migrant and racial justice organisations, works to build solidarity and strengthen the connection between movements. As the year comes to a close, we’re taking a look back at the work we’ve done together in 2025, including workshops, blocs on demonstrations, movement gatherings and much more:
Building connection between movements
The year began with our Climate and Migrant Justice Movement-building Summit, which took place in Sheffield at the end of January. More than 100 climate, migrant and social justice groups were in attendance during this two-day gathering.
Throughout the year, we also held frequent Online Gatherings to bring people together and connect our movements – building our network to 205 climate, migrant and social justice groups.
If you’re interested in getting involved and joining our network, let us know!
Influencing at the COP30 summit
Ahead of the crucial COP30 summit, our Climate and Migrant Justice Policy Working Group co-wrote a Climate and Migrant Justice Policy Open Letter for COP30, signed by over 100 organisations. And we organised a Climate and Migrant Justice Policy Briefing for groups working on COP30.
We were also represented by speakers on four panels at the summit in Brazil:
- Expanding Legal Protections for Climate-Displaced Populations
- Climate displacement solutions: bridging research and lived experiences
- Political issues of environmental migration in the era of the rise of extremist parties
- Advancing climate justice: legal, artistic, and community responses
Mobilising in our communities
We mobilised for demonstrations and protests, including a Migrant and Racial Justice Bloc with over 200 people from different local migrant and community groups at the Glasgow COP30 Day of Action. Afterwards we organised a community meal and film screening, which brought together people from the bloc and helped strengthen connections and solidarity between groups.
We also organised a Migrant and Racial Justice Bloc at Make Them Pay demonstration, which took place in central London in September and created a resource for climate and activist groups on How to Respond to Far Right Violence and Support Migrant Justice.
And, toward the end of the year, we co-organised the Climate and Migration Film Festival with Counterpoint Arts. There were more than 300 registrations for community and home screenings, with events taking place in schools, universities, galleries, libraries, temporary accommodation, nature reserves, pubs, churches, mosques, community centres, law firms, production companies and more! Groups held discussions and shared meals with their screenings, making new connections across the movements and across the issues.
Workshops and talks
Representatives from the CMJ also organised workshops and spoke at events across the country and worldwide, including:
- Running a Climate and Migrant Justice Workshop in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
- Organising and facilitating a workshop at Climate Camp Scotland.
- Taking part in Narrative Strategy for Border Abolition with Migrants in Culture.
- Speaking on a panel at the Border Economies Workshop at Liverpool University.
- Facilitating a Climate and Migrant Justice Workshop for Safe Passage EU.
- Speaking on a panel for the ‘Climate-driven Migration Symposium’ organised by Western Michigan University.
- Taking part in the Climate Justice Conference in Baghdad, Iraq.
Looking ahead to 2026, we’ve got ambitious plans to keep building connections between movements and communities and take action together.
If you can, please consider chipping into our fundraiser for our work next year!
Building a Better Future: CMJ Sheffield Summit Report
What happened
As part of our long term strategy to build collaboration and coordination at the intersection of climate, migrant and racial justice, we held a hugely successful 2 day cross-movement building event for groups from across the country to connect, learn and plan together in Sheffield from Friday 31st January to Saturday 1st February 2025. The summit included:
- Workshops on intersectional issues, anti-racist solidarity and collaboration, climate and migrant justice, led by racial justice and migrant-led groups.
- Movement-building, connecting and mapping activities, structured and unstructured collaboration building spaces.
- Discussions on cross-movement collaboration and tactics.
- An arts and cultural programme led by local migrant groups
- Shared meals and a party with local artists
We supported 40 plus grassroots and migrant groups to attend the event, with over 100 groups attending from across the spectrum of both movements and across the country – the first of its kind in recent history.
The focus was on creating an anti-oppressive movement space to mitigate inequality and prevent harm. This was implemented in the planning process, communication, programme design, discussion spaces and social programme. As part of our care and justice framework, there was a welfare space (with arts and crafts, chill out area, games, etc) and dedicated welfare team, conflict mediation team, a prayer room and quiet space.
Through working directly with migrant-led and racial justice groups through the planning process (where also we had 121 planning conversations with all invited organisations), we were able to build a movement space that centered the voices and experiences of migrant and marginalised groups – ensuring these voices lead discussions on intersectional issues.
The event was organised collaboratively by the CMJ, with support from other organisations across the movement, and in collaboration with local groups and volunteers in Sheffield. We also held online movement gatherings in the run-up to and following the event, focused on building trust and connectivity in the cross-movement network, as well as planning towards future projects.
Feedback and reflection
There has been a great deal of positive (and constructive) feedback from this event – structured and unstructured – at our online gathering and through feedback forms. Through actively making space for feedback and discussion during the event, we were also able to adapt the programme to incorporate key racial justice learnings and feedback from migrant-led groups.
Many migrant-led and racial justice groups contacted us following the event to say that they found the event to center the voices and experiences of their communities in a way that had not been seen before in climate justice spaces.
We have learned a great deal about the barriers migrant-led and grassroots groups face in engaging in movement-building spaces, and will continue to develop our understanding and practices in maintaining anti-racist, decolonised spaces that can foster trust-building and collaboration between the movements. Furthermore, there is a need to work more closely with climate groups and climate funders to ensure the needs and voices of migrant and marginalised communities are centered in intersectional messaging and projects.
There was a call for more open space and unstructured activities to facilitate organic and self organised collaboration and planning between groups, which will help shape the next gathering. We also had feedback that the language used in some of the workshops was not accessible to all the grassroots groups in the room. With such a broad spectrum of organisations and communities represented in these spaces, it is really important that the CMJ works to ensure that the language and framing is accessible to all at future events.
We learned a huge amount during this project, which marked a huge step forward in the development of our strategy, tactics and ways of working as an organising group. One of the most important learnings was the need for deeper and more sustained organising work in order to build trust and meaningful collaboration between groups – that is embedded in principles of anti-racist solidarity – to be able to deliver impactful campaigns and action at the local and grassroots level. This needs to be matched with a shift of resources to migrant groups and grassroots groups that face significant capacity issues dealing with frontline support, otherwise they will not be able to engage in long-term power building and coordinated, collaborative campaigns.
Impact
There was incredible energy in the room across the two days at this event. The skills, perspectives, and ideas that different groups brought to the space was inspirational. So too was the motivation to listen and learn to groups from different parts of the ecosystems – to build a truly intersectional movement.
The key impacts were in the long-term connections and collaboration built between groups. Many groups made valuable connections across the sectors and across the movements. Furthermore, local intersectional climate and migrant collaborative groups have been formed by groups who attended, including in Glasgow and Brighton.
The event created a clear base of understanding across both movements on climate-linked migration and intersectional issues more broadly, with attendees bringing the learnings back to their own organisations and into their own work. It did so in a way that centered frontline voices and experiences, with migrant led groups, and people with lived experience holding workshops and leading discussions. The focus was on anti-racist solidarity, and embedding migrant justice in the climate movement, as well as fighting dangerous narratives around climate linked migration.
The event also helped promote and support joint action between the movements in the future. We generated considerable energy to build collaborations around joint climate and migrant justice targets, with the finance targets workshop being especially successful in bringing groups together around these potential targets.
Bringing so many groups together consistently has enabled us to not only facilitate wide reaching connectivity and trust building between the two movements, but also to root this in shared principles that are centered in migrant and racial justice. We work to connect climate and migrant justice through a justice lens and direct our organising toward sustained, practical solidarity and joint action in the long-term.
What’s next?
The CMJ has continued its cross-movement building work: with online gatherings and infrastructure development for skills, learning and information sharing across movements, with a focus on supporting local intersectional organising against the far right. We are now planning towards our next gathering in Summer 2026, which will focus on collaborative action and solidarity building – from the ground up – in response to the far right, the deepening hostile environment and climate breakdown.
A huge thank you to everyone who contributed to our first in person cross movement building event: donating into the grassroots fund, contributing to sessions, providing input and support, and to our wonderful hosts in Sheffield you are all amazing.