The LSE International Inequalities Institute and Runnymede Trust are proud partners in organising Building Bridges: connecting stories and championing racial justice, taking place at the LSE in London on July 1st.

Building Bridges is designed to bring together people working toward racial justice, so that we can share our work and consider ways to support each other in progressing our shared ambitions.

We will host a variety of panel discussions and workshop-style sessions, which will run parallel throughout the day, split across the three streams. The three core areas of interest are:

Wealth inequality and the racialised impact of the cost of living crisis
Hostile environment and migrants rights
Policing and criminal justice

Participants will be able to attend different sessions across the three streams throughout the day.

While we recognise that these issues do not always coincide, a key theme of bridging this work is citizenship and the rights that citizenship confers in relation to home and belonging. We know that those rights are differentially awarded, protected and threatened through a matrix of ‘race’ and bordering arrangements which put some communities at greater jeopardy than others. We are also firm that citizenship should not be the arbiter of the provision of fundamental rights that are owed to all human beings regardless of the documents they may or may not be able to access.

At the same time, whilst the cost of living crisis may no longer dominate headlines, it continues to dominate the lives and experiences of these very same communities. Whether we are talking about migrants who have No Recourse to Public Funds, or generations of settled ethnic minority communities who continue to experience disproportionate levels of poverty and destitution, there are issues around wealth inequality that are common to our communities, and also central to why they are continuously over-policed.

As we approach the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush, Building Bridges is an opportunity to facilitate conversation and share of knowledge, both across race equality and migrants’ rights sectors, and the academic and wider civil society space. By working together, we hope to provide opportunities for connection and build bridges between communities that are too often siloed in the work we are all collectively doing.

We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to our sponsors:

LSE Department of Sociology

LSE Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity

LSE International Inequalities Institute