Quiet Power: Migrant Voices for Economic Justice
Funded by Borrow Cadbury Trust, this multi-year initiative is part of a wider effort to tackle economic injustice and strengthen migrant participation in shaping Birmingham’s future
Migrants play a vital role in Birmingham’s economy and communities, yet many continue to face unfair barriers in work, housing, healthcare, childcare, and access to public services. Experiences of low pay, insecure employment, discrimination, exploitation and exclusion often remain hidden from mainstream conversations about economic justice.
This project is our response to those challenges.
Over the next two years, Centrala will deliver a migrant-led programme combining leadership development, creative research, campaigning and policy engagement. Through training, storytelling, evidence gathering and collective action, migrant communities will be supported to strengthen their voices and influence the systems that affect their lives.
Participants will:
- Develop leadership, organising and advocacy skills through workshops and peer learning
- Explore issues of economic injustice including work, housing, access to services and wellbeing
- Use creative methods such as Quiet Data, storytelling, photography and participatory reflection to document lived experience
- Build confidence in public speaking, campaigning and engaging with decision-makers
- Co-create policy recommendations and contribute to conversations with local authorities, service providers and civic partners
- Take part in campaigns, public events and exhibitions that amplify migrant perspectives and challenge stereotypes
- The project is rooted in Centrala’s long-standing work supporting migrant communities through culture, community organising, advocacy and research. We believe that those most affected by inequality should have the tools, platforms and support to shape the solutions.
Alongside leadership training and campaigning, the project will produce annual Migrant Economic Justice Reports for Birmingham, bringing together lived experience, evidence and policy recommendations developed directly by migrant communities. Public exhibitions and storytelling events will create spaces for wider audiences including policymakers, organisations and residents to engage with migrant experiences of economic injustice.
This programme is open to migrant communities in Birmingham and is shaped by the diverse realities, experiences and strengths of the people who take part.
At Centrala, we are committed to building migrant power through creativity, connection and collective action. Quiet Power: Migrant Voices for Economic Justice is about moving beyond awareness towards organising, leadership and meaningful systems change — ensuring migrant experiences are recognised, valued and reflected in Birmingham’s movement for a fairer future.
Year One Theme & Delivery Overview
Invisible skills, blocked progression, and wasted potential
In the first year of the project we will focus on the systemic barriers migrants face in accessing fair work, career progression, and leadership opportunities in the UK. Many migrants arrive with professional qualifications, skills, and leadership experience, yet are routinely channelled into low-paid, insecure, or manual labour roles with limited opportunities to progress into skilled professions, management, or leadership positions.
Through this work we will examine how invisible skills, unrecognised qualifications, language barriers, discrimination, and lack of information about systems and opportunities prevent migrants from progressing in their careers. These barriers often lead to long-term underemployment and wasted professional potential, despite migrants’ significant contribution to the economy and society. Community-led storytelling workshops will bring together members of migrant communities to share lived experiences of navigating work, education, and career progression in the UK. These sessions will provide a safe and structured space for participants to reflect on their employment journeys, identify common patterns of exclusion, and articulate the barriers they face.
Insights gathered through these workshops will be documented through anonymised notes, thematic summaries, and participant reflections. This qualitative evidence will help build a clearer picture of how structural barriers affect migrant workers in practice. The findings will contribute to a year-end report, creative public outputs, and a community-led advocacy campaign aimed at challenging harmful narratives and highlighting migrant leadership potential.
Alicja Rogalska is an artist based in Berlin and London. Her research-led practice explores social structures and the political dimensions of everyday life through collaborative situations, performances, videos and installations that collectively imagine emancipatory futures. She has recently presented work at Zachęta National Art Gallery (Warsaw), n.b.k. (Berlin), Biennale Matter of Art (Prague), Videobrasil (São Paulo) and Manifesta 14 (Prishtina), among others. She is currently completing a PhD in the Art Department at Goldsmiths University of London.
April-April – Migration motivations & first expectations
Participants will explore their reasons for coming to the UK for work, capturing early hopes, pressures, and expectations that shaped their migration journey.
May- Unrecognised qualifications & disrupted careers
Participants will explore the contrast between their professional identity before migration, their career path since migration and their current work situation to bring out stories of deskilling, loss of status, and resilience.
June- Underemployment & economic exclusion
This session centres on the experiences of being forced into low-paid or insecure work regardless of qualifications.
July- Information gaps, bureaucracy, and language barriers
Participants share stories about trying to understand and access systems of education, accreditation and job markets without guidance.
August- Leadership exclusion & progression barriers
This workshop explores how and why migrants are often seen only as a cheap labour force, not as decision-makers, leaders, or innovators.
September – Power, Money and Economic Justice
The training will integrate insights and materials gathered from the storytelling workshops (April–August), using participants’ lived experiences as a foundation for exploring power, inequality, and economic justice.
October – Turning stories into action
Participants will use materials and insights gathered from previous workshops to transform their experiences into campaign messages, creating bold statements and visuals (e.g. posters, T-shirts) that highlight overlooked skills, blocked opportunities, and collective demands for change.
November/December – Exhibition
Campaign – “More Than a Workforce” – Invisible skills, blocked progression, wasted potential
More Than a Workforce is a campaign that challenges the way migrants are too often seen only as a workforce, rather than as people with skills, qualifications, leadership experience, and aspirations. Across the UK, migrants contribute significantly to the economy and society, yet many face blocked career pathways, non-recognition of overseas qualifications, low pay, and limited opportunities to progress. Through community-led storytelling, this campaign brings forward lived experiences that expose invisible skills and wasted potential, while calling for fairer systems that recognise migrants not just for the work they do, but for who they are and what they can offer.