In our fourth Mad Campaigns Lab session of 2026, we looked at the relationship between mental health and migration. We heard from Francesca Humi, a migrant justice organiser and community historian, and Brian Dikoff, an immigration lawyer and campaigner who is in the process of setting up Include – a new legal charity to support disabled people caught in the immigration system.
Panel & Discussion
During our panel and discussion, Francesca and Brian explained to us how the Home Office – the government department responsible for immigration – makes obtaining permission to live and work in the UK difficult, expensive and confusing.
The Home Office is actively trying to create a ‘hostile environment’ not just for people who do not have the legal documents required to live in the UK, but many of those who do. A key factor in creating this feeling of hostility is that it is not just border guards who are responsible for checking people’s immigration status. By law, doctors, teachers and landlords have to check people’s passports and visas in different situations, bringing borders into hospitals, classrooms and homes.
Many visas come with restrictions on working and volunteering, as well as being incredibly expensive. They cost thousands of pounds every few years in many cases and regularly increase in price.
On top of this, delays and bureaucracy mean that people who have been victims of human trafficking or need to claim asylum can wait over a year for decisions on their cases.
In these ways, the immigration system is disabling in its own right because it prevents people from meeting their basic human needs. Poor accommodation while waiting for a decision on an asylum application can cause someone to become disabled, for example, as can the distress of spending years in limbo or living in fear of not being able to pay for a visa renewal. All of this means that the mental health impact of being a migrant in the UK is significant.
Action
As campaigners, once we have done the important work of making the connection between mental health and migration, there are many different ways that we can push for change.
Praxis and the No Recourse to Public Funds Partnership are doing important work against the Government’s ‘earned settlement’ proposals, which would make the path to permanent legal status in the UK longer and prohibitively expensive for thousands of people.
Elsewhere, Reunite Families UK campaigns for the removal of minimum income requirement (MIR) – which currently applies to people wishing to sponsor their partners or family members to come to the UK – and the Disability and Migration Network works to draw attention to the disabling nature of the immigration system.
It is important to acknowledge how overwhelming it can feel to be up against a system like this. As such, it is crucial that we build community together as campaigners and celebrate our resistance as much as we feel the fear and sadness of what we are fighting against.
A crucially important lesson from this installment of Mad Campaigns Lab is that, if we cannot enjoy ourselves and build meaningful relationships with each other while we campaign, we risk becoming too overwhelmed to campaign at all.
While you may not be able to attend physical protests or have an MP who engages with you, if you have a skill or an interest that could help people do something fun together, that is equally important. It could be the difference between a campaign carrying on or having to stop because everyone is too burnt out.
Next steps
If you’d like to get involved in campaigning for migrant justice, here are some actions to get you started:
1 minute: Follow Migrants’ Rights Network (@migrants_rights_network) on Instagram and elsewhere for helpful explainers and analysis of migration and intersecting issues.
10 minutes: Read about the ‘earned settlement’ proposals and call on Andy Burnham to scrap them.
10 minutes: Read about the United Domestic Workers’ Association’s beauty pageant, planned for November 2026, as mentioned by Francesca during the panel discussion.
1hr: Find and attend an event happening near you or online this October as part of the National Week of Solidarity to End Immigration Detention, which you can read more about here.