[STATEMENT] We Are Workers. We Are Not Slaves. All Workers Unite and Fight!
International Migrants Alliance
8 April 2026
As we prepare to celebrate International Labour Day, hear us who are migrants, refugees, and displaced people whom governments and poverty forced to leave our homes, who labour yet receive less, who toil in the harshest conditions. We continue to resist the violations that intensify against our being every day.
We form part of the working class. Our labour sustains economies across the world—in agriculture, construction, care work, hospitality, seafaring, and countless other essential sectors. Yet despite the importance of our work, employers and systems treat us as cheap, disposable, and replaceable.
We know this reality firsthand. Poverty, war, landlessness, climate disasters and neoliberal policies adopted by our governments push us out of our homelands. Necessity, not choice, forces us to migrate. And when we arrive in host countries, host governments and employers place us in the most precarious jobs—low wages, insecure contracts, unsafe workplaces, and no social protection.
Among the working people, those in power make us occupy the lowest position, an underclass within the working class. Our immigration status defines us, and authorities use it against us—to silence us, to prevent us from organising, and to keep our wages low. We face long working hours, dangerous working conditions, and the constant threat of detention and deportation. Abusers, traffickers, and exploiters deny many of us access to justice when they abuse, traffic, or exploit us.
Propagandists and politicians blame us for crises we did not create. They tell us that we take jobs from our local brothers and sisters, that we burden public services, that we cause social problems. But we know the truth: a system that prioritises profit over people causes these crises. The same system that exploits us also exploits local workers.
We work beside you; we suffer from the same exploiters. We share the same struggle. Those in power use the divisions between us—gender, nationality, "legal" status—to keep us divided. An attack on migrants is an attack on the entire working class.
Around the world, states and authorities criminalise, detain, and deport migrants and refugees. They subject us to racist profiling, violence, and inhumane treatment. Governments use detention centres, border militarisation, and anti-migrant laws to control and intimidate us.
But we refuse to live in fear. We refuse to let anyone silence us. We must unite. Our struggle as migrants and refugees forms part of the broader struggle of all workers and toilers of the world. The system that forces us to migrate is the same system that exploits workers everywhere. That is why our liberation forms part and parcel of the liberation of the entire working class.
We call on our fellow migrants, refugees, and workers to stand together and fight for our rights and dignity. We must organise in our workplaces, in our communities, and across borders. We must support each other’s struggles and build solidarity in action.
Together, we can fight for livable wages, decent working conditions, and access to free social services. Together, we can resist deportations, detention, and all forms of repression by the State. Together, we can fight the system that exploits and divides us.
We must strengthen our organisations and alliances. We must build unity between migrants and local workers, between workers and peasants, and with all oppressed sectors of society. Through collective action—protests, campaigns, organising, and education—we can confront exploitation where it happens, and strike when the iron is hot.
Our struggles in different countries connect. What we face in one place forms part of a global system. That is why we must also build international solidarity—linking and coordinating our local fights together against all exploitation and oppression.
We also raise our voices against the root causes of our displacement. We oppose wars, occupations, and interventions that destroy our homes and force us to flee. We oppose economic policies that impoverish our communities, plunder our land and resources, and push us into migration. We demand climate justice for those whom environmental destruction displaces.
On this May Day, we raise our collective calls and demands:
We are workers, not slaves— uphold our rights and dignity
Livable wages, social protection, and safe working conditions for all
End deportations, detention, and the criminalisation of migrants and refugees
Respect our right to organise, unionise, and speak out
End racism, xenophobia, and fascist attacks against migrants and marginalised peoples
Hold governments and corporations accountable for human rights and environmental violations
Oppose wars, sanctions, and interventions that force people to migrate
Reject State policies that displace communities and commodify migrant labour
Climate justice and protection for displaced peoples
Migrants and all workers unite in a common struggle against exploitation
We have nothing to gain from division—and everything to gain from unity. Let us stand together as one working class. Prepare our ranks by studying our conditions and the conditions of other workers. Build cooperation with other migrant workers and local workers organizations. Let us organise, resist, and fight for a future where no one forces anyone to leave their home, where our labour values us, and where dignity and justice deny no one. Prepare to flood the streets and workplaces come May Day.
