Empowering Multicultural Communities Alliance

Migrant Justice Edinburgh (MJE) is organising a workshop to get together with migrants residing in the areas of Craigmillar and Niddrie. The event will take place on 22 November from 11 am to 2 pm at The Bothy [92 Niddrie Mains Rd, Edinburgh EH16 4DT] and chosen participants will receive £60 compensation. It aims to be a collective act of imagination, where participants will explore what the next decade could look like when local migrant voices are truly heard, valued, and supported.

Participants will be able to talk about their sense of belonging in Craigmillar/Niddrie, explain their experiences and understanding of collective action, activism, and social change to explore how these ideas may differ across cultures, generations, and personal histories, and identify personal and local needs and opportunities.

Ultimately, their contributions will help co-develop our Regenerative Futures Fund Proposal. Migrants will not only identify challenges but also co-create and lead actions to bring their solutions to life — building a shared, just, and regenerative future for all.

Interested in taking part? Register here.

Why Craigmillar and Niddrie?

MJE is part of the cohort of projects selected for the capacity building phase of Regenerative Futures Fund, “a ten-year fund for Edinburgh that puts decision-making power into the hands of the people who are most often excluded and gives organisations the opportunity to think and plan for the long-term.” The fund has been designed “to enable the deep work needed to address the root causes of poverty and racism in an environmentally sustainable way and to create spaces for people to collectively imagine and build towards a regenerative and just future for Edinburgh.”

Piloting a workshop during this capacity-building phase will help us to test one version of our participatory month and explore key themes that will shape our ten-year proposal, ensuring that local residents’ perspectives guide the long-term design.

As a result, over the past four months, MJE has been working closely with local migrant communities in Craigmillar and Niddrie to explore what a migrant-led vision for justice, belonging, and shared futures could look like in this part of the city. We chose to pilot our work with migrant communities in this area because these neighbourhoods capture both the challenges and possibilities of Edinburgh’s evolving social landscape of migrant communities.

Craigmillar and Niddrie are places shaped by rich histories of working-class solidarity, creative resilience, and migration. These communities hold both a legacy of grassroots organising and the potential for new, inclusive forms of change.

In recent years, many migrant families and individuals have made these areas their home, contributing diverse cultures, skills, and aspirations. At the same time, they face a range of barriers and structural challenges that shape daily life and access to opportunity. Despite this, there is a strong and growing culture of migrant-led organising and collaboration — where people are already building networks of care, solidarity, and shared action.

Getting to Know the Area: Local Migrant Activism and Collaboration

Our first steps were simple: walking the streets, sitting in cafes, joining local events, spending time at community hubs such as Places for People, Trade Unions in Communities, The Bothy, or Sandy’s Community Centre, and talking to local stakeholders.

By taking part in neighbourhood life and listening to stories — of displacement and resilience, of everyday struggles and acts of solidarity — MJE built meaningful relationships and a deeper understanding of the area. We found that many migrant residents are already leading formal and informal networks of mutual support — sharing food, culture, care, and knowledge across communities.

Projects like the Migrant Workers Café, supported by Trade Unions in Communities, have become vital hubs for advice, mutual aid, and collective empowerment — places where migrants come together to share experiences of work, life, and struggle, and to take action. Other initiatives such as Connecting Craigmillar and Craigmillar and Niddrie Matters play an equally important role in building resident-led networks, like the Mindful Mothers Circle, and strengthening community power from the ground up.

Through these connections, we met several migrant organisers and community activists whose commitment to their neighbours continues to inspire our work. These community activists now get deeply involved in MJE and play key roles in shaping and facilitating our upcoming workshop at the end of November, ensuring that the work remains relevant and genuinely migrant-led.

Join our workshop

If you’re part of Craigmillar or Niddrie’s migrant communities — or if you want to stand in solidarity with them — registered your interest to attend our workshop:

Building the Craigmillar & Niddrie of the Future: Migrant-Led Change in Action

 📅 Saturday 22 November 2025
  🕚 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM
  📍 The Bothy, Craigmillar

🔗 https://form.jotform.com/253075384223354

Empowering Multicultural Communities Alliance (EMCA) has joined Citizens Rights Project (CRP) and the Worker’s Observatory (WO) to create the collective Migrant Justice Edinburgh.

This collective was born as part of the application process to the Regenerative Future Fund (RFF), a long-term community fund aimed to shift the decision-making power into the hands of those most excluded from this process, fostering lasting change through the lens of intersectionality, tackling racism and poverty while keeping the focus on just transition solutions.

We are thrilled to announce that MJE’s proposed project—to build solidarity, organise, and take collective action among migrants across the city— has been selected for the capacity-building phase that will take place between August 2025 and January 2026.  

During this period, MJE will be able to pilot what our proposed 10-year project could look like. Our proposal places migrant voices, workers, and deprived and impoverished neighbourhoods at the centre of our strategy by developing and embedding a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach throughout.

We will also have the opportunity to work closely with 30+ organisations from across Edinburgh—fellow members of the cohort— which will greatly enrich our understanding of the city.

Are you curious to know more about what we’re preparing? Feel free to contact us!

About MJE

MJE is an alliance founded by Citizens Right Project (CRP), Empowering Multicultural Communities Alliance (EMCA) and the Workers’ Observatory (WO) to empower Edinburgh’s global majorities and under-represented communities, taking action on the places where they live, and considering the jobs that they perform.