UK : Sheffield Transformed FestivalSunday 30th November 2025 . 3 of Speakers invited.

Sheffield Transformed Festival
Sunday 30^th November 2025

Displacement, Borders and Decolonial Resistance: Voices from the Margins

Hosted by Voice of Voiceless Immigration Detainees-Yorkshire (VVIDY), this session brings together lived experiences and collective resistance from people directly impacted by Britain’s border regime and the global climate crisis. As a decolonial migrant advocacy collective, VVIDY centres the voices of those silenced by detention, deportation, and displacement, connecting the violence of borders to colonial extraction, ecological collapse, and racial capitalism. Through testimonies, creative storytelling, and discussion, participants will explore how communities are organising for liberation beyond charity models and state-led inclusion. The session will highlight migrant-led and Indigenous-led strategies of resistance, solidarity, and care reclaiming voice, dignity, and belonging in the face of systemic exclusion.

VVIDY (Voice of Voiceless Immigration Detainees-Yorkshire)

VVIDY is a migrant-led, decolonial advocacy collective amplifying the voices, experiences, and leadership of people impacted by immigration detention, forced displacement, and the UK’s hostile immigration environment. Emerging from lived experience and collective struggle, VVIDY stands as a voice of resistance against a border regime built on colonial violence, racial capitalism, and the ongoing dispossession of Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples.
Rooted in solidarity, care, and radical imagination, VVIDY seeks to dismantle the narratives and structures that render migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers as passive recipients of charity or state benevolence. Instead, we centre the wisdom, creativity, and agency of those directly affected by displacement, foregrounding their knowledge as essential to reimagining justice, belonging, and freedom.
Through grassroots organising, cultural action, and community-led research, VVIDY builds bridges between migrant justice struggles and wider movements for climate justice, abolition, and decolonisation. We recognise that the same systems that criminalise migration also fuel environmental destruction, militarisation, and economic inequality. Our work challenges these global systems of control and extraction by nurturing spaces where healing, art, and resistance converge.

For VVIDY, migration is not a crisis to be managed but a profound expression of human resilience and resistance. We refer to those seeking sanctuary as Freedom Seekers, a term that disrupts the colonial language of “asylum seekers” and asserts both urgency and dignity. This redefinition reflects our belief that every journey across borders is an act of courage that exposes the hypocrisy of “fortress Europe” and its Eurocentric hierarchies of humanity.
Our practice is grounded in collective care and mutual aid, understanding that liberation cannot be achieved in isolation. We cultivate spaces of safety, healing, and solidarity where people with lived experience of detention and displacement can organise, create, and imagine futures beyond borders. Through storytelling, performance, research, and political education, we build community power and challenge the commodification of suffering that underpins the detention-for-profit industry.

VVIDY envisions a world where freedom of movement is a right, not a privilege, a world without cages, deportations, or borders. For us, imagining freedom beyond borders is not only a migrant struggle but also a classless and raceless struggle. One that calls for global solidarity against intertwined systems of exploitation, racialised surveillance, and dispossession.
We understand our work as part of a broader decolonial movement to reclaim histories, epistemologies, and futures erased by empire. In the face of ongoing border violence and climate catastrophe, VVIDY affirms that another world is not only possible, but already being built, in our collective organising, in our acts of care, and in the songs, stories, and resistances of Freedom Seekers everywhere.

Boucka Koffi (Chair of VVIDY)/ Eve Thibault (Vice-Chair of VVIDY)

Boucka is a decolonial migrant organiser and advocate and Chair of Voice of Voiceless Immigration Detainees -Yorkshire (VVIDY). Drawing on lived experience of displacement and collective resistance, Boucka works at the intersections of migrant justice, climate justice, and abolition. Their work centres the voices of those silenced by the UK’s imperial border and detention systems, using storytelling, community organising, and creative practice as tools for liberation. Committed to dismantling colonial and carceral structures, Boucka’s advocacy builds solidarity between displaced, Indigenous, and racialised communities envisioning freedom and justice beyond borders.

Guest Speakers

Toure Moussa Zeguen

Founding President of the Pan-African Social Movement for Integral Development
Publishing Director AfrikaNews Group
First Vice President & Spokesperson of Generation BRICS Network
Campaign Director for Africa of Ahoua Don Mello 2025 Presidential Campaign (Côte d’Ivoire)

Toure Moussa Zeguen is a visionary Pan-African leader and social movement strategist committed to advancing integral development across the African continent. As the Founding President of the Pan-African Social Movement for Integral Development, he champions grassroots empowerment, economic sovereignty, and the decolonization of African knowledge systems.
In his role as Publishing Director of AfrikaDNews Group, he leads an influential media platform dedicated to amplifying Afrikan voices, promoting regional integration, and highlighting transformative socio-political narratives from across the Global South.
As First Vice President and Spokesperson of the Generation BRICS Network, he contributes to building strategic South-South cooperation, fostering partnerships between Africa and emerging economies within the BRICS framework.
Toure Moussa Zeguen also serves as the Campaign Director for Africa for Ahoua Don Mello, candidate in the 2025 presidential elections in Côte d’Ivoire, supporting a vision of sovereignty, unity, and inclusive development for the nation and the continent.

Alex Akoman

Alex Akoman is the author of Behind Bars in Britain, a groundbreaking work that explores the lived experiences of immigration detainees and the broader implications of the UK’s detention system. Originally from Côte d’Ivoire, Alex moved to the United Kingdom after completing his university education, where he has since established himself as a dedicated advocate for human rights, education, and social justice.
A lecturer and security consultant, Alex brings a rare combination of academic insight and professional expertise to his work. He holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Management Studies (DMS) and is certified by the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Accreditation Board (ATAB). His interdisciplinary background enables him to engage critically with issues of migration, governance, and public safety through both theoretical and practical lenses.
Alex’s ongoing work focuses on amplifying the voices of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, particularly those whose perspectives are often marginalised in mainstream discourse. He is committed to fostering a more inclusive and equitable society that recognises the contributions and humanity of displaced people. His scholarship and advocacy contribute to broader conversations on decolonial justice, intercultural understanding, and the creation of spaces where dignity and belonging are affirmed for all.