‘The Language of Migration: From 2015 to Today’.

SolidariTee are delighted to invite you to our annual conference 2025 on Saturday 5th April in Camden, London. 

About the Event

Our signature event is back this spring! Bringing together activists and campaigners, NGO leaders, academics, artists, students and humanitarians, we invite everyone interested in participating in a space of learning, community, and solidarity to join us for an interactive day focused on grassroots change.

In the event, we will discuss the importance of legal language to access and realise one’s rights within the asylum process. We will also analyse the impact of language as a barrier within the legal process and how this can be overcome. We will consider the types of language used to represent displaced individuals in the media, including the use of anti-refugee rhetoric as well as in legal, academic and NGO settings. Through workshops, this event will demonstrate the importance of language to access mental health and how language can be used to promote trauma-informed approaches to wellness and the legal process.

Why this theme?

This year marks ten years from the onset of the ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe. In 2015, more than 850,000 people arrived in Greece in search of safety, only to be met by unsafe, overcrowded refugee camps, and waiting lists of months or even years just to have the asylum interview that would offer a chance to leave these camps. At the time, the UK media was continually referring to the ‘refugee crisis’, as a crisis of there being too many people arriving, rather than the crisis being the appalling conditions and hostility that refugees faced. 

Today, we don’t hear very much at all. In 2024, Greece received the largest number of people seeking safety since 2016, and yet today we hear very little about the experiences of those navigating the asylum process in Europe. During this same period, the UK’s treatment of refugees has also become increasingly more hostile. 

The conference theme ‘10 years on’ will explore what successes and key learnings members of the humanitarian and refugee support community have achieved and built on, as well as provide space to question how we can move the needle on the issues that remain. During the final hour of the conference, we will invite students, members of the public and our speakers to reflect upon the themes we have discussed. We will aim to develop strategies for the future and consider how we can each do better to support displaced individuals. 

Thank you for your interest in attending this event, we look forward to seeing you soon!

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