Migrant Artists Mutual Aid

  Over ten years Migrant Artists Mutual Aid, has learned the hard way that justice has a price tag. Female and child asylum seekers struggle to find refuge and justice against forced marriage, domestic violence, FGM and other gender based violence. The asylum and legal system are often stacked against them getting the security they need in the UK.

  Migrant Artists Mutual Aid (MaMa) assists our members with our legal fund where we can fund expert reports, medico-legal reports, solicitor fees for complicated cases and other legal support to give them access to expert legal services that would otherwise be unavailable to them in a legal system stacked against the poor and destitute.

  MaMa has worked with a number of legal practices and cultural organisations in Liverpool and around the UK, such as the International Slavery Museum, and the Bluecoat to support our members and to raise awareness of the issues faced by migrant women and children.

  MaMa was set up in 2011 to originally support one women seeking asylum in the UK to protect her daughter from Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) back in Gambia. After many years of campaigning and raising a considerable amount of money for legal fees, Fatoumata finally won her case, changing UK case-law in the process and helping access to justice for women in her position in the process. MaMa decided to carry on working with other migrant women and has funded a number of successful cases for vulnerable women and their children.

  Unfortunately, many women still struggle with access to justice, and not every case is a success. Members of MaMa have suffered deportation and incarceration despite our best efforts. This is why a robust access to legal funds is vital for us to help fight for their cause.

 One MaMa member seeking asylum with a particularly complex legal case has been ‘sitting in limbo’ for over a decade. Living with an uncertain legal status is like having unstable ground beneath your feet. As a survivor of gender-based violence, living with that level of daily uncertainty makes it especially challenging to recover from trauma. How can one build a new life on unstable ground? MaMa members gain ground together through connection and friendship, cultural production, and strong legal support to counteract the ‘hostile environment’.

  MaMa’s legal fund is used to gain expert legal support for members who have been living with uncertainty for far too long. With sustaining support toward our legal fund, we can continue creating solid ground for our membership to grow, heal and move forward.

  We are unique in that we directly fund and campaign on behalf of individual asylum seekers, allowing us to support people with the most complicated cases, and with successful campaigns, change case-law and precedent that helps all asylum cases in the future.