How Migrant rights network use social media to achieve migrant justice?
Based on my own situation as a migrant person and my experiences with migration, the title of this article brings a lot of thoughts, issues and challenges in my mind. Every year lots of people move from one country to another one as migrants, for many reasons. Some people move just for providing a higher level of life for their family and themselves, while others are forced to leave their country for combination of complex reasons like economic hardship or other problems. As Jenna Hennebry said, every year 30,000 agricultural migrant workers arrive in Canada as part of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and the Low Skill Pilot Project (2012). Most of them do not know anything about their own rights and the ways for achieving them. I can remember the days that I was searching to know about my own condition and rights as migrant. Suddenly, I found migrant rights network, and learning about their community seemed interesting for me. The Migrant Rights Network is a cross-Canada alliance to combat racism and fight for migrant justice (Migrant Rights Network, n.d.). Both regular and irregular migrants should have human rights, including the right to freedom from slavery, freedom from forced labor, equal access to courts, rights at work and etc.
In recent years, migrants understood that using social media for both communicating and professional networking (like publishing the information) is an appropriate way to achieve their migratory rights and bringing migrant justice for them. Reformative approach of migrant rights network tries to support migrants to have their basic rights and social justice, and this is the reason why learning more about them is interesting for me. I will try to figure out with the certainty how the group’s approach, using from social media, can lead communities to provide migrant justice. In addition, I think Migrant rights network’s approach to use social media for achieving migrant justice is significant because it is realistic and inclusive, and I will prove and defend it by focusing on the ways that they use social media for this aim.
Social media are online technologies that strengthen communication and generate social ties among people around the world (Donath, 2014). As of the beginning of 2016, more than 3 billion people in the world have access to the internet, which corresponds at around 40% of the population (O’Reilly, 2005). Social media enable users to share words, images and videos with one other. They are used for three main purposes: interpersonal communication (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Skype), collaboration (e.g. Wikia, Digg, Google Docs), and multimedia sharing (e.g. in Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr).
In addition, there are critical information distribution and receiving channels. Of course, different countries and continents certainly have other social media that are popular and growing. Social media are particularly useful for people that live geographically dispersed but require transnational networks to remain connected, such as migrants. For this reason, communication literally is linked with migration like building social, economic and communication bonds between home and host countries as well as other places (Brokert, 2009). This link is underlined by the transport and communication technologies that facilitate migrants, connections with their country of origin. Therefore, migrants use social media to communicate both locally and globally. Meanwhile, information and communication technology has been recognized as critical for the integration of immigration and ethnic minorities (Vassallo, 2009). In recent decades, social media have become a facilitator of mobility. Migrants and refugees use social media throughout their migrant trajectory to find a place of acceptance and a safe refuge through which conventional stories are challenged (Charmarkeh, 2013). Within destination countries, social media can play a key role in addressing the need of multi-cultural communities. In addition, throughout the migration cycle, migrants have different information and communication needs. Before leaving the country of origin, prospective migrants are still located in the country of origin. In addition, they will look ahead to their new destination. During this period, they are trying to adapt to the new environment, and use the internet to integrate into the new society. Most forms of migration have employment-related aspect as geographic mobility is largely a response to lacking economic opportunities under conditions of insufficient or non-existing social safety nets provided by states and the increasing or continuing privatization of essential public good such as health and education (Hujo & Piper, 2010).
They move from their own country with hope of having a better situation. So, the organizations like Migrant Rights Network are needed to support migrants’ requirements and provide social justice for them. Migrant Right Network institution wants to provide universal services like Full access to quality public services including healthcare, education, income security, childcare settlement services, pensions, and more for all residents and migrants (Migrant Rights Network, n.d.). The Migrant Rights Network (MRN) has been established as a permanent network of organizations working to support the development of migrants’ rights. The point is that migrants need to have some rights and equalities to live in destination society with more convenience.
The seeds of Migrant Justice were planted in 2009 after young dairy worker José Obeth Santiz Cruz was pulled into a mechanized gutter scraper and was strangled to death by his own clothing. Migrant Justice has gained national attention for the innovative human rights organizing and the concrete victories (About Migrant Justice, n.d.). Migrant justice totally means access to social protection and portable social rights, dignity and respect for migrants in the countries of destination and their countries of origin. As Alberto Madrigal said “Migrant Justice is a school. Migrant Justice is my family; my brothers and sisters where I find the support I need”. On the other hand, social media are vital for talking about these rights, spreading and achieving them. For example, Facebook is the most popular social media network worldwide (Statistica, 2015).
Users may speak directly to each other as well as post links, photos, and messages to groups, pages and their own personalized “walls”. Or about Twitter, 316 million monthly ( as of June 2015) Twitter users post messages of up to 140 characters, which are aggregated to users’ feeds and can be searched by descriptive “hashtags” (e.g. #pfcmalta) (Twitter, company/about, 2015). These effective and popular apps are literally useful to make people aware of their own rights and try to providing social justice. The mission of migrant justice is building the voice, capacity, and power of the migrant’s community and engage community partners to organize for economic justice and human rights (About Migrant Justice, n.d.). Of course, the biggest issue in migration and technology is that newer forms of social media activism are increasingly enabling disrupters to set the migration agenda, based on fear and lies, in a quest for power. It is time to focus our collective efforts — technological, intellectual, political, social, financial — to implement effective ways to minimize the impacts of this growing problem (McAuliffe, 2018). Also, migrant rights network with sharing all the news and events about migrant justice from around the world in their “resource” part, play a key role in achieving migrant justice totally.
At the end, activists of Migrant rights network attempt to provide social justice in all the aspects for all the migrants (from all social locations including different races, ages, sexes, genders, educations, nationalities, socio economic statuses and classes). These days in all the countries, social media including facebook and different informative websites play an important role in providing social justice and migrant justice. I believe that although our world has a huge distance with meaning of justice, Migrant Rights Network had been successful to reduce this gap significantly and achieve more equality in compare with last decades.
