About our campaigning groups
RAPAR members began to develop specific campaigning groups in 2019 to reflect our members' main concerns about living in the UK's 'hostile environment'. Utilising RAPAR's participatory action research methods, key members of RAPAR and of the leadership group considered the sorts of campaigning groups that could be established within the organisation to help members concentrate on the most pressing issues that needed to be addressed, collectively. As the work developed, members created other groups to campaign around particular issues.
Click on the links below to learn more.
Click on the links below to learn more.
Mental health group
The mental health group came about because of a recognition that the hostile environment affects our mental health deleteriously, especially when we are living in Britain without status for a long period of time or have claims for asylum rejected (i.e., we have been disbelieved by the state). The mental health group develops campaigns that address these attacks upon our humanity and human rights and works continuously to protect and uphold our human rights.
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Housing group
The housing group developed when members came together to talk about their problems with the asylum accommodation provided by a private company commissioned by the UK government – SERCO. Realising that issues with accommodation (e.g., vermin infestations, broken appliances, fundamental safeguarding) were remarkably common, the group formed to support RAPAR’s members to address individual and collective housing problems, to ensure also that Home Office evictions are stopped, and to mount a campaign to prevent SERCO from being awarded further housing contracts in the Northwest.
See the SERCO MUST GO! campaign page here, and Shay's family campaign page here. |
Women's group
The women’s group came together to campaign around women’s housing needs in particular - including ensuring safe, secure, and appropriate accommodation for families - and to think about women’s issues more broadly. Knowing that women who have been displaced often carry embodied trauma and particular lived experiences, the members of the women’s group have a space where they can consider together what it means to be a woman living in the hostile environment and identify gendered issues of concern.
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Disability group
LGBTQ+ group