Launch of Migrant Voice paper – so who is talking about migration in 2012?

Those who were there for the Migrant Voice launch last night at the Guardian offices were brought up to speed on the progress of this great organisation since it launched a couple of years ago. It was set up to offer trainings to migrants on how to speak to media and write for a non-migrant audience.

Starting up with no funding whatsoever, the team has now produced a number of annual newspapers, largely written by migrant contributors, which are distributed in public places across the UK and offer up articles which are accessible to a non-migration audience. The latest paper is another quality publication. All in all – their work so far is pretty remarkable and shows what raw commitment can achieve.

This launch also got me thinking about where we are as a migrant rights' movement in strengthening the impact of 'migrant voices' – who are the 'migrants' whose voices are missing, and what are the messages that can have the most impact? And, crucially, in a hostile political and media environment, who is listening to them?

Migrant perspectives certainly crop up in some parts of the media fairly frequently, their voices used to illustrate wider news stories. As was said by a Guardian journalist last night, having a good interviewee who can talk from personal experience often makes the difference between whether a story is published or not. And when charities collaborate with journalists to help migrants speak out in the media, I believe it certainly does support better reporting on migration.

It's more challenging to see how migrants can instigate news stories, or set the agenda for debate about the issues that they are concerned about. Journalists often urge community organisations to pitch ideas for stories to them proactively. In our experience this takes a lot of time and is worthwhile only if there is a really sharp 'newshook' (or angle) that the journalist can base the story on. It also means understanding how the journalist usually reports similiar issues or what their readers will be expecting to hear about – otherwise there might be a nasty surprise in the way that the story is finally edited and run.

I suspect that, increasingly, we'll have the most success where issues or campaigns led by migrants are sensitive to wider public debate and political narrative, enabling their messages to speak beyond their immediate supporters to wider audiences who have other things on their minds. The same is true of political campaigning.

An upcoming meeting we've been organising in parliament aimed at forefronting migrant voices on legal aid reforms has already come up against the fact that politicians are being innundated with personal stories from other campaigners representing the elderly, disabled and children among others. In this case, if the event is to have an impact then debate will need to be sharp – combining migrant community spokespeople with other perspectives that chime with wider political concerns.

There's no easy answer, and being heard beyond those who are already listening will be an ongoing challenge for all of us working to support migrant voices.