We are members of Brighter Futures, a group for young migrants who come together, to feel good, build a family in London and speak up for the rights of young people like us.

We are fighters for change and justice. We want to transform the way the UK sees young migrants and challenge the hostile environment’s effects on young migrants' lives. This includes access to safe, secure and appropriate housing. 

We are here to talk to you about asylum support/accommodation. So many people are struggling to get good homes. Let me tell you some of our stories. 

People like me have lived in hotels where there is no kitchen. They go to buy food and put it in the microwave. They don’t ask what you want, you eat what they give you and you do not have the right to bring food from outside. We are supposed to be given £8/week for those in the hotels, but it is a nightmare, and you have to call Migrant Help every day to claim it. Some of us started receiving that £8 after being in the hotel for one year. 

You must eat as much as you can for breakfast because you don’t know what you will eat for lunch. You have no choice. 

Where is the humanity?

There are hotels with rooms with no windows, we are monitored as if we were in detention centres. When we go out, we are searched, when we come in, we are searched. In some houses, there are five to seven bedrooms and just one toilet, no living room and just a kitchen to share with strangers. 

It should not be a luxury to have a room of your own. 

“Where is the humanity in the United Kingdom?”
When you are moved from the hotels, they don’t tell you where you are going. You don’t choose where to be sent. There is no communication between you and the Home Office or Migrant Help. 

There are houses with rooms which are shared, two people, different ages, different religions, different sexuality, different mindsets. Sharing rooms is not easy as you don’t have any intimacy. I hope and pray I don’t share a room with someone nasty. 

“Where is the humanity”.

I could be sent to Doncaster today, to Portsmouth tomorrow, to anywhere in the UK. You have to leave your community, family, friends, organisations to go where the Home Office sent you, where you have no ties.  

When they send you far away with £40.85 a week how can we pay for our travel? for our food? for our clothes? 

And the cost of living rises but we are paying the price. 

“How can we handle this anymore?” If it was not for organisations like Praxis and other charities it would be so difficult to survive 

Where is the humanity? 

We want to ask the Home Office to have mercy and empathy on asylum seekers. 

To treat everyone equally not as statistics 

No matter where we come from, 

No matter what colour of our skin, 

No matter who we are, 

No matter our gender, 

Where is the human right?  

We are people with dreams and inspiration. 

Where is the humanity?