HuBB – Humans Before Borders is a collective based in Lisbon and Porto. They are a group of volunteers and activists working towards a world where refugees’ and migrants’ rights are fulfilled. Since 2018, HuBB have been advocating and campaigning for human rights, demanding the protection of migrants and raising awareness among civil society.
To make this a reality, they create petitions, put together gatherings and protests and organize movie screenings, debates and talks, creating public awareness. Ultimately, HuBB want to have a political influence, seeking system change and social justice.
The crew have a non-hierarchical structure and everyone is welcome regardless of their origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation or availability. For this reason HuBB have members from different parts of the world, with different backgrounds and experiences.
The actions HuBB organize can be divided in two main clusters: awareness raising & advocacy, they also have one running project aimed at directly supporting young refugees from the Greek refugee camps.
The awareness raising events are usually film screenings, street actions, debates and conversations with specialists on a specific topic related to borders and human rights. The aim of this is mainly to draw attention to the plight of refugees and migrants at the borders of Europe in a time when that topic has ceased to make the headlines. This is a way to create outrage in civil society, that can then be channeled towards action for change. Their advocacy work focuses on organizing protests and meetings with government, MPs and Members of the European Parliament.
Naturally the groups with which they have created stronger bonds are the ones sharing specific goals with HuBB, such as Solidariedade Imigrante and Serviço Jesuíta aos Refugiados. Although they employ different methods, have different backgrounds and even visions, they operate collaboratively across a number of projects. Moreover, the HuBB crew is usually in close contact with groups fighting for climate justice, anti-racism, feminist and others. They organize protests together, and stand in solidarity with one another and attend each others’ events.
The Guerrilla Grant
The most common way for people to achieve regularization in Portugal is by first getting a work contract. While this provides a useful way to get your papers in order, the fact that people are required to work before they even get the chance to apply to get a residence permit means that, for extended periods of time, people are desperate to get and maintain their contracts and will accept virtually any working conditions from their employers. There are now 20o,ooo people in the country waiting for a permit and there are many known cases of exploitation and even slavery in Portugal.
All this is made significantly worse by the fact that the agency responsible for issuing permits regularly exceeds the legal period of 90 days to provide a final answer. In fact it often takes years to do so.
HUBB’s response is to gather a sufficiently large number of people in this situation and sue the Portuguese State for reparations in their name. This, together with a well-built communication campaign, will draw media attention to the fact that the State is regularly violating people’s legal rights and actively making their life conditions more precarious. There are strong indications that HuBB can win the case, since there have been several successful individual attempts in recent years, albeit ones that went very much under the radar in the media.
If and when HuBB win, they aim to repeat the action to build up media and financial pressure for the government to change this system, thereby taking one significant step towards equal rights among Portuguese people and migrants.
The grant would mainly fund the legal expenses involved and the communication campaign.
