The #YourVoteOurFuture Campaign

Article written by Villads Zahle, Senior Communications Coordinator at ECRE.

The key challenge for anyone who opposes the current political meltdown on migration and asylum policies is the fact that the European debate is derailed by misconceptions. Its rationale is a self-feeding circle of myths: the number of migrants and refugees arriving in Europe constitute a serious crisis! European populations are extremely worried! Politicians at EU and national level are forced to prevent access! Any measure can be justified… Because we are in a crisis! By allowing the populist far-right to frame the debate more or less unchallenged, defeatist European politicians have turned a perfectly manageable situation into a full-blown and self-inflicted political crisis that now functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The consequences are visible along the Eastern and Southern European borders, on the Mediterranean, in Libya and in Europe, where EU solidarity and cooperation is seriously challenged, where a race to the bottom rages across member states, and deportations to conflict areas are accepted. This is of course not a crisis that can be solved in a single campaign but the European Parliament (EP) elections nonetheless provide a potential for change, and we at ECRE believed that we had to act. We are doing so on two levels, with two campaigns running simultaneously aimed at two different target audiences: one the one hand, we devised an advocacy campaign with the intention to directly influence the political manifestos of the EP groups and political parties at the national level, mobilising the ECRE membership and assisting them in their respective countries.

On the other hand, we launched a public campaign on social media with the hashtag #YourVoteOurFuture featuring three key messages: 1. We are the majority: public opinion studies across Europe consistently reveal that hostility towards migrants and refugees is a minority phenomenon; 2. We can win: recent polls suggest that it is possible to mobilise more Europeans to vote and have a parliament pushing for policies that are more in tune with the values of the majority; 3. A win will change policies: the European Parliament has the power to provide change and the history to prove it. We saw two main challenges related to the distribution and impact of those messages: the dilemma that many on the progressive left are skeptical towards the EU as an institution and therefore less likely to vote. And the paradox that the people of refugee and migrant background, while used as scapegoats and targeted by harsh policies, are rarely heard in the debate. However, the impressive counteractions since the defining year of 2015-16 from ‘old’ and ‘new Europeans’ working together at grassroots level had already proved extremely potent. The voices delivering the campaign messages of the #YourVoteOurFuture campaign belong to refugee advocates and refugee-led organisations. The target audience are the progressive Europeans who are already engaged in the work for and with refugees and migrants. It all came together with the support for a workshop prior to the launch of the campaign in early February, when a campaign coordination group was founded with ECRE and campaign partners from the membership and beyond. The campaign material features individual refugee advocates as well as campaign statements urging Europeans to “Vote for a Europe” that is open, progressive and respectful – the Europe representing a strong and optimistic alternative to the far-right dystopia. A Europe worth voting for!