Zrinka Bralo

Campaigning background

Zrinka is a refugee to the UK from Sarajevo, where she started as a journalist and worked with leading war correspondents during the siege of Sarajevo in the 90s.  

On the back of her own anti-deportation campaign, she helped grow the anti-deportation network now known as Right to Remain, strengthening legal solidarity and resistance to unjust removals. Through policy advocacy, she successfully campaigned for and advised on the Mayor of London’s Integration and Inclusion Strategy, embedding principles of dignity, welcome, and participation into local governance. 

In 1998, Zrinka graduated with an MSc in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics to further this advocacy work. 

After the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001 prompted anti-immigrant backlash, Zrinka Bralo was a just 3 months into her role as CEO at Migrants Organise, and she transformed the organisation from a small West-London hub into an operation that advocated for migrants’ rights at national level. For 25 years, Zrinka has maintained people-first values and built relational power in the face of rising hostility toward migrants and refugees, and she has brought together thousands of grassroots organisers to learn, build power, speak out, and take action for dignity and justice. 

Zrinka played a pivotal role in the Independent Asylum Commission (2005–2008), contributing to the most comprehensive review of the UK asylum system to date. This work fed directly into a successful national campaign that led to a change in law in 2010, ending the detention of children for immigration purposes, a landmark human rights victory that prevented lasting harm to thousands of families. 

During that time, she developed support and training programme for refugee and migrant doctors and dentists and helped nearly 4,000 of them to pass verification exams and get jobs delivering much needed healthcare on the UK. 

In 2011, she won the Voices of Courage Award by the Women’s Refugee Commission in New York, and she used her award of £5,000 to establish the Women on the Move Awards in 2012, which in partnership with WOW Festival, UNHCH, and Southbank Centre, created a national platform to celebrate and legitimise migrant and refugee women leaders, journalists, and organisers who are often erased from public recognition. 

Having learned from the US immigrant justice organisers, in 2014, she pioneered a new model of grassroots migrant organising in the UK, which combines organising and campaigning for systemic change with direct access to justice – advice and support for people affected by the Hostile Environment immigration policy.  

In 2020, Zrinka built the Solidarity Knows No Borders movement, taking hundreds of actions to resist hostile policies, hate, and racism. Her strategies combine community organising, leadership development, direct advice, coalition building, speaking out and direct action rooted firmly in the lived experience of migrants and refugees. Through this movement, thousands of migrants, refugees, and allies have taken hundreds of coordinated actions resisting hostile policies institutional and everyday racism, shifting public discourse and winning tangible protections for communities. She has successfully pushed back against immigration reporting practices that separated families, challenged NHS charging regimes that denied people healthcare, and mobilised migrant voters to claim their place in democracy. Crucially, Zrinka has built lasting leadership: thousands of migrant and refugee organisers who now lead campaigns in their own communities. By centring people living in the hostile systems and insisting on relational, values-based organising, Zrinka Bralo has moved migrant justice from the margins to the heart of social movements, changing not only policies, but who holds power in shaping them. 

In 2022, Zrinka was awarded an honorary doctorate (DLitt) by the University of Exeter, and in 2025, she received the Honouring Elders Award from the Thirty Percy Foundation for social justice leaders working on the front line for 25 years or more.   

Under Zrinka’s leadership over the past 25 years, Migrants Organise has helped transform the landscape of migrant justice organising in the UK. Her strategies combine community organising, leadership development, direct advice, coalition building, speaking out and direct action rooted firmly in the lived experience of migrants and refugees. In her time as CEO, she has supported the development and establishment of many new groups and organisations, and catalysed many powerful grassroots campaigns, including Abolish Reporting, Patients Not Passports, Access to Justice, Housing Justice, Promote the Migrant Vote, Solidarity Knows No Borders, MPs Not Border Guards, and the Fair Immigration Movement Charter. 

Ongoing work 

Zrinka continues her work at Migrants Organise to this day. She also continues to publish political writing for outlets including for The Guardian, openDemocracy, and Political Quarterly. These, alongside her TEDx talks and international media appearances, continue to ensure that refugee voices remain heard. 

“The future of struggle for migrant justice is about deepening and widening our movement,” Zrinka says. “We will continue to grow Solidarity Knows No Borders as a national force for migrant justice, supporting new groups, training the next generation of migrant and refugee organisers, and building coalitions across race, class, and borders. We will keep challenging the hostile environment in all its forms, while advancing positive visions of solidarity, dignity, and belonging. Above all, we will keep organising relationally, because lasting change is built through trust, shared leadership, and the unwavering belief that everyone deserves to live with safety, dignity, freedom, and justice.”