‘Not another toolkit!’ we hear you say. We hope this one will offer something different. 

At Open Rights Group, we support migrants rights groups by establishing long-term relationships with our partner organisations, founded on trust and mutual respect. Consultation, participation and co-development sit at the heart of everything we do. We call this work the Migrant Digital Justice Programme.

Our goal is to ensure that migrants’ right organisations can sustainably challenge policies and practices and advocate for necessary safeguards by:

• supporting them to fully recognise the impact of data and technology on their work
• developing their understanding and ability to identify new and emerging harms and
abuses
• providing access to the resources they need
• showing solidarity with migrants’ rights organisations as a digital rights group

Before we started this work, ORG consulted with a range of migrants’ rights organisations and practitioners within the sector to assess their needs and capacities to address data and new and emerging technologies through a combination of surveys, focus groups and one-on-one interviews. The findings directly informed the content of, and our approach, to collaborative working and learning exchange.

We equip our partners with best practice resources, tailored support and policy briefings. ORG supports partners to forge new alliances within the digital rights sector at both a national and local or grassroots level. 

This toolkit is the fruition of our work in the Migrant Digital Justice Programme. It is grounded in the relationships we have built with our partners: learnings on what works and what doesn’t regarding information sharing and exchange on data rights and technology, what their priority issues are in this area, preferred resource formats, for example. 

But of course, what works changes. New legislation is introduced, meaning more information needs to be shared with migrants’ rights practitioners. Strategies for challenging data rights breaches may need to flex in response to government policy. We are committed to maintaining this document as a living resource with our partners, continuing to feed additional content in it as the need arises. As it develops, we will add case studies, giving space to the testimony of individuals harmed by data rights harms in the UK immigration system. We hope, therefore, that this toolkit will improve over time, filled with our learnings and those of our partners.

Toolkit Objectives

• To provide the migrants’ rights sector with practical information and advice on the impacts of digital technology, data, privacy and new technologies as used for immigration control 

• Provide definitive information and guidance on human rights, the law and policy thinking on this issue, as well as on how to challenge these data threats 

We hope that by equipping migrants’ rights groups with this information and practical know-how, such organisations will be able to incorporate data rights work into their work, correcting these new technological injustices through advocacy, campaigning and litigation.

Target Audience

This Toolkit is aimed at the staff and volunteers of migrants’ rights organisations particularly those in charge of advising on and applying data protection standards. It may also prove useful to those working in other civil society sectors, where their work concerns advising and supporting people who are minoritised and in vulnerable and/or marginalised situations.