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Joint Statement from Project Resist and FiLiA on the Revised Proposals for Lengthy Routes to Settlement in the UK
Joint Statement from Project Resist and FiLiA on the Revised Proposals for Lengthy Routes to Settlement in the UK

The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood MP, has announced revised proposals for lengthy routes to settlement in the UK.

FiLiA and Project Resist’s new joint statement builds on our existing concerns on the ‘Earned Settlement’ proposals and changes to the immigration framework. Women will be disproportionately affected. They are more likely to be dependants of male earners, to be low-paid and to rely on public funds to survive. Under these proposals, migrant women’s vulnerability will be exacerbated and many of them will be trapped in precarious situations.

Far from encouraging integration, the proposals are likely to add to a growing migrant underclass subject to racism, sexism and exploitation.

StatementsMICHELLE KERWINAnti-racism
Joint Statement from Project Resist and FiLiA on the Home Office Guidance for Asylum Seekers
Joint Statement from Project Resist and FiLiA on the Home Office Guidance for Asylum Seekers

Joint Statement from Project Resist and FiLiA on the Home Office Guidance for Asylum Seekers: it’s time for this Government to target widespread misogyny, tackle the crisis of violence against women and girls and stop scapegoating migrants. The purported aim of this questionable publication is to inform asylum seekers about UK law and so-called societal norms on gender equality and public respect. However, it serves to fuel the far right’s anti-immigration agenda, which has led to widespread violence and pogroms against migrants in recent years.

Statements, BlogMiz JakubovicGlobal, Government Policy, Anti-racism
Joint Statement from Project Resist and FiLiA on ‘Earned Settlement’
Joint Statement from Project Resist and FiLiA on ‘Earned Settlement’

Following our co-produced response (alongside LISG and women in the FiLiA Women's Assembly) to the Government's consultation on the 'Earned Settlement’ policy, Project Resist and FiLiA have released a joint statement calling on the Government to reconsider the policy in its entirety. If enacted, it will have a terrifying impact on the poorest and most vulnerable migrants, particularly women. The political direction of travel could not be clearer, and we must resist. Read the statement and join our call here.

StatementsMiz JakubovicGlobal, Government Policy, Anti-racism, Lesbian Rights
Marching for Our Sisters - Million Women Rise
Marching for Our Sisters - Million Women Rise

As FiLiA volunteers, our group consisted of women from different parts of the world. Some of us grew up believing that sex-based violence was mainly an African issue, shaped by the struggles in our home countries. The UK, after all, prides itself on human rights and women’s rights. But as we stood among thousands of women, each carrying their own stories of pain and survival, we realised a harsh truth: violence against women knows no borders.

BlogFiLiASex-Based Rights, Class Politics, Anti-racism, Global
Fighting for the Forgotten Women in the UK's Asylum System: Accelerate Action Because They Cannot Wait Any Longer
Fighting for the Forgotten Women in the UK's Asylum System: Accelerate Action Because They Cannot Wait Any Longer

One of the most terrifying experiences women face is the Home Office Reporting System. For years, I had to report in person every single week, knowing that, at any moment, I could be detained.

The impact on mental health is devastating. The days before reporting are filled with anxiety, not knowing if you will come back, not knowing if that would be your day to disappear into detention.

The fear is relentless. Reporting is framed as a welfare check, but we must call it what it truly is: state-sanctioned psychological warfare. These women already live under strict controls, in National Asylum Support Service accommodation, barely surviving on limited financial support. The Home Office knows exactly where they are. So why force them to report? To keep them in fear.

BlogFiLiAGlobal, Anti-racism, Sex-Based Rights, Lesbian Rights
Some Good News: Migrant women's fight back against the hostile environment
Some Good News: Migrant women's fight back against the hostile environment

This article by Hannana Siddiqui and Selma Taha, members of Southall Black Sisters, brings into focus the stark reality of the plight of migrant and asylum seeking women escaping gender-based violence; and how the state traps them in abusive relationships or gender related persecution. It also highlights and celebrates the fight back by black feminists to these sexist and racist immigration laws and the wider hostile environment.

BlogFiLiAViolence Against Women, Anti-racism
Women in Motion
Women in Motion

How does one start with women in motion and end up with a women's movement? I want to share one of my last bike trips with the audience. I'm a woman on the go, meeting women along the way. I want to share how biking helps me on a daily basis. For me, biking is not only a means of transport, but a way of liberation, giving me a sense of freedom. It is also about women taking up public space and connecting together. I've noticed that the women I meet on the road are often isolated, with a need and a desire to connect with other women. I'd like us to be able to meet up on the same road, women on bikes, and share a stretch of the road together, an episode in our lives. A women's cycling movement! I want women who read my piece to find inspiration, if not join the movement to help them break any of the patriarchal chains that oppress us.

BlogFiLiAAnti-racism, EcoFeminism, Lesbian Rights
#169 Making Feminist History Visible: Women’s Archives and Records
#169 Making Feminist History Visible: Women’s Archives and Records

In this pilot episode of FiLiA’s new women’s history podcast series, we bring together four feminists from around the world to have an international and intergenerational conversation about the importance of women’s archives. We speak to American historian Max Dashu, Indian artist and activist Aqui Thami, and Algerian archivists Lydia Saïdi and Awel Haouati. Facilitated by Bec Wonders and translated by Natalya Vince.

PodcastFiLiAGlobal, Anti-racism, Class Politics
Which was Worse, Racism or Sexism?
Which was Worse, Racism or Sexism?

Merly Åsbogård, a political scientist & prostitution survivor, looks at how black girls and women in prostitution suffer the harsh consequences of an industry fueled by both rampant racism and sexism.

BlogFiLiAAnti-racism
From Grassroots to the International: A Focus on Women’s Rights and Activism at Huge Annual Feminist Conference
From Grassroots to the International: A Focus on Women’s Rights and Activism at Huge Annual Feminist Conference

FiLiA steps into the spotlight as a showcase for new thinking in feminism | Portsmouth, 16-17 October

At its seventh annual event, at Portsmouth Guildhall this month the FiLiA conference is hosting the Women who, in 2021, put feminism back at the top of the political agenda.

DiaryFiLiASex-Based Rights, Sexual Exploitation Industries, Representation, Reproductive Rights, About FiLiA, Health, Class Politics, Disability, Anti-racism, Peace, Global, FiLiArts, General Feminism, Secularism, Lesbian Rights, Spirituality, Violence Against Women
#156 Ban Virginity Testing and Hymenoplasty
#156 Ban Virginity Testing and Hymenoplasty

We talk to Halaleh Taheri, Founder & Executive Director of MEWSo, who is campaigning to ban Virginity testing and Hymenoplasty (hymen repair) and to expose it as the misogynistic practice that it is, which has no place in society today.

In this episode, Halaleh talks about her life as an activist, the brilliant work of MEWSo and explains more about the campaign and how you can help to end this abuse of young women and girls.

PodcastFiLiAViolence Against Women, Anti-racism
Interview with Yasmin Morais from Vulva Negra: A Brazilian Anti-Racist Feminist Uprising
Interview with Yasmin Morais from Vulva Negra: A Brazilian Anti-Racist Feminist Uprising

In this interview, Yasmin Morais speaks with FiLiA Spokeswoman Raquel Rosario Sánchez, about Vulva Negra: the project she created which combines the materialist perspective provided by radical feminism and the work of black female theorists who centre Black and Afro-Latina women both within Brazil and beyond.

BlogFiLiAViolence Against Women, Anti-racism, Class Politics, Sex-Based Rights, Reproductive Rights