Releasing resilience and building networks of resilience: learning from the survey, interviews, and evaluation

The Building Resilience project, funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, Coronavirus Community Support Fund, aimed to learn about the impacts of COVID-19 and the lockdowns in marginalised communities, and to organise, empower and build networks of resilience with some of the migrant communities most marginalised by COVID-19 – those who are without status, including those with no recourse to public funds and those who are in the asylum process or who have been refused asylum.

Migrants without recourse to public funds and with limited immigration status, who work in exploitative conditions, and/ or face sustained social and economic exclusion, need to be able to speak about their experiences of the pandemic, and to work together for change. The Building Resilience project aimed to work alongside migrant communities to understand and hear experiences of the pandemic, to explore how resilience may be released and built, and to develop the process of building community networks of resilience.