Interviewer: Dr Jáfia Naftali Câmara
Co-founder of Anti-Racism Movement (ARM): Farah Salka
Interview date: 31/01/2025
In this story
Co-founder and co-director Farah Salka reflects on more than a decade of feminist, antiracist organising in a deeply hostile context for migrant workers. From confronting the Kafala system to running Lebanon’s first political community centre for migrant women, Farah shares how ARM has built spaces of safety, solidarity and collective power – while navigating real risks from the state, employers and wider society.
This is an example of how one organisation has reimagined what migrant justice can look like: not humanitarian aid, but political education, representation, joy and resistance.
“The migrant worker speaks for herself — giving students a real, lived testimony, not a story told on her behalf”
FARAH SALKA
Inside you’ll find:
- How ARM grew from a small activist group into a movement challenging the Kafala system and the structural racism underpinning it
- The creation and evolution of the Migrant Community Centre (MCC) – a political space built with migrant workers, not for them
- ARM’s approach to antiracist education in schools, co-led by migrant activists sharing their own experiences and analysis
- The constant navigation of risk: safety planning, surveillance, police pressure, and the politics of representation in an unsafe environment
- Their feminist, intersectional ethos: power-sharing, collective decision-making, and centring migrant women’s leadership
- Reflective questions to help educators, organisers and policymakers connect ARM’s lessons to their own context
An urgent, powerful story of courage and community, showing how antiracism rooted in feminist organising and migrant leadership can grow even in the toughest terrain.
