Introduction
The UK government’s approach to reducing migration levels involves making the conditions so hostile for migrants with precarious status that they choose to voluntarily leave the country. The term ‘precarious’ for the purpose of my study refers to the circa 1.2 million unauthorised migrants in the UK who have arrived without a visa, overstay their visa, have failed asylum claims or pending asylum claims which are likely to be rejected.
During the last eight years, as part of my role at Migrateful, I have been supporting women with ‘precarious’ status. I was struck by the fact that these hostile policies barring them from working or accessing benefits were not working in their stated aim to prompt their voluntary departure, instead forcing them to live for extended periods in destitution. I noticed that those waiting 5, 10, 15 years to get their immigration status were often fleeing domestic violence, attempted honour killings or modern-day slavery; all issues which predominantly affect women. I also noticed how the ban on working forced them into even more vulnerable positions by preventing them from providing for themselves.
Whilst interviewing migrant women for this study, I heard them recount how these hostile conditions impacted their lives, in some cases for over 20 years. Akuba from West Africa told me: ‘It was the immigration status that led to the homelessness: they told me you have no recourse to public funds; you can’t keep your roof anymore.’ Vinisha from the Carribean: ‘I haven’t been able to see a GP for 15 years.’ Darcelle from West Africa: ‘Even if someone rapes you, you can’t go to the Police because they will ask you “where is your ID?”’ Amal from South Asia: ‘10 years later I feel like my life is wasted. There were so many dreams I had for my life.’
The assumption made by policymakers that these hostile conditions would prompt them to return to their countries was clearly not working. Was the policy succeeding in prompting male migrants to leave? Unable to find a report on the difference in the number of women voluntarily leaving the UK compared to men, I analysed the Home Office’s raw data to produce this graph:
Graph 1: Quarterly number of voluntary and enforced migrant returns by sex from UK 2004-2022 (Home Office, 2023)
Since the male and female migrant population (both unauthorised and authorised) is roughly equal, this graph shows that fewer women have been voluntarily leaving than men and that significantly more men have been deported than women. Is it possible that policymakers have failed to understand the unique experience of women which makes returning so difficult for them?
I conducted 17 in-depth interviews with migrant women with precarious status and two interviews with frontline case workers. I wanted to understand why migrant women with precarious status remain in the UK despite state-imposed hostile conditions, designed to prompt their voluntary departure. I examined the role of two intersecting social constructions playing out in the lives of the women I interviewed; the patriarchy and the nation-state. The patriarchy is characterized by women’s subordination to men, which manifests through gender violence and gender inequality. The nation-state system enables states to deny rights to non-citizens through immigration policies.
Findings Part One: Gender And The Difficulty Of Returning
Many of the participants I interviewed were fleeing gender violence in their countries of origin, so they understandably felt it was safer to stay in the UK, even if it meant enduring the UK’s hostile conditions. The case worker explained that the Home Office does not recognise domestic violence as a valid reason for asylum because they say you can go back to your country and live in a different location away from the perpetrator. She said:
“One of the few people I know who was advised to claim asylum for domestic violence was from Saint Lucia, because the argument was that the island is so small that the Police can’t offer her sufficient protection from the perpetrator. But for most cases, unless your perpetrator is connected to the ruling party it’s very hard to make a successful claim”.
Amal from South Asia had come to the UK to join her husband as part of an arranged marriage. As soon as she arrived he beat her, locked her in the cellar, and told her he had another wife in the UK. When after two years Amal managed to escape from the house, her husband told her family that she had cheated on him and left him. Consequently, Amal’s family sent her an official disownment letter and said they would kill her if she returned home because of the shame she had brought on the family. Amal told me she had submitted an asylum claim to the Home Office 10 years ago and was still waiting after multiple rejections. Unfortunately, when she came to the UK her husband told her not to bring her marriage certificate. She later realised this was because he was already married and so didn’t want the UK authorities to find the marriage certificate. She explains:
“The judge said there is not enough proof because I didn’t have a valid marriage certificate so they rejected my application…My immigration claim has been rejected five times. It’s such a horrible feeling. Once I thought about ending my life here. I thought this is too much. I was telling the truth and they just wouldn’t believe me. They said we understand you’ve been through domestic violence, but you can go back and live in another part of your country”
Amal’s situation was representative of many of the women I spoke to. They are placed in an impossible situation, where both returning and remaining expose them to great harm, but the UK still feels the safer of the two options. One participant referred to this dilemma as being placed “between the devil and the deep blue sea”. Even if it was true that they could safely live in another part of their country, returning to a country where you know your perpetrator lives is a huge psychological barrier to overcome.
Erisha had fled to the UK from Eastern Europe after she found herself pregnant outside of marriage at the start of her final year of university. She said she came from a conservative Muslim family and that her cousin was killed by her father’s brother when her cousin fell pregnant outside of marriage. Erisha believed her father would kill her if he found out about her pregnancy. She waited 8 years in the UK living in extreme poverty, unable to work or receive benefits, before finally getting her status. She said that it was not only the fear of her father killing her that prevented her from returning to her country, but also the fear of the social stigma she would experience living in her country as a single mother. She told me:
‘The first thing you would hear is “she was a prostitute, that’s why she has a child, and she came back here”, and everyone would treat you like a prostitute. You’d never be respected whatsoever. And these are really big things. At least for me. They were very big things every time I thought I want to go back, I’ve had enough, I would always be thinking but if I went back, what would happen.’
The social stigma attached to being a single mother also impacted their ability to survive financially if they returned to their country. Chenara from West Africa fled to the UK and submitted an asylum application because the Police in her country had refused to protect her from her violent husband. She explained:
“In my country as a single woman with children, it’s impossible to get a job. They say what if something happens to your child, you won’t be able to come to work. Secondly, you can’t rent an apartment as a single woman. Landlords will never grant you permission to rent an apartment. They will laugh at you. They will never take you seriously. They will tell you, go back to make peace with your husband.”
Not only were the participants navigating the challenges of gender violence and gender discrimination in a patriarchal system, but they were also having to navigate the power structure of the UK nation state which uses its power to block them from providing for themselves. This consequently pushes them into even more vulnerable situations. For example, Darcelle from West Africa arrived in the UK at 17, fleeing an abusive husband who had kept her as a slave since the age of 13. Following the rejection of her asylum claim, she became a victim of modern-day slavery, taking her 24 years to regularise her immigration status. She said:
‘When they refused my asylum application, they said I would be deported. I felt my life is so in danger; I would rather sleep here on the street than go home. I refuse to be anyone’s slave anymore. But what I experienced in that house was 10,000 times worse.’
This case demonstrates the role that immigration policy can play in pushing women towards modern-day slavery as a means of survival.
Findings Part Two: Gendered Survival Strategies To Remain
The findings expose the huge challenge that female migrants experience in navigating the intersection of gender violence and immigration policy. However, a more surprising finding was that gender stereotypes which reinforce the perception of women as more “vulnerable” than men offered female migrants a form of protection in the UK. Firstly, participants said they were less likely to be arrested than men. Mila from East Africa said,
‘That’s why most of the men are staying at home looking after the children while the women going to work. Because it’s much more likely for a black man to be stopped and arrested.’
This was backed up by the caseworker who said, after dealing with hundreds of cases, she had never come across a woman who had been stopped and arrested on the street whereas almost all the men she supported had been. Secondly, the two participants who had husbands said they felt far more relaxed than their husbands as they knew that it was very unlikely for them to be deported because they were women. This is backed up by the data in Graph 1 which shows the majority of people who are deported are men despite similar population sizes. Lastly, apart from one woman who faced homelessness, the others said that outside periods where they stayed in people’s homes as live-in maids, they survived by staying on friends’ sofas. The caseworker added context to this, saying that she dealt with more men being homeless than women because:
‘It seems generally people are more likely to let women sofa-surf for longer periods than men because maybe women are viewed as more vulnerable.’
In addition, as a result of women’s vulnerability to gender violence, there were certain legal loopholes which then afforded them the ‘right’ to access rights in the UK. For example, Satou from West Africa had been seeking asylum without success for 8 years. When Satou fell pregnant with her third child, it was her first girl. The midwife advised her that she could apply for refugee status: because Satou was a victim of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), her daughter would be at risk of FGM if they returned to her country. Her daughter’s birth is the only reason that her refugee status was finally recognized as her previous asylum claim, that she would return to a violent husband, was insufficient.
Another survival strategy uniquely available to female migrants was through the rights they gained from having a child. Samira from North Africa told me:
‘When you give birth in this country, after 7 years, you get your paper.’
The reason that Erisha from Eastern Europe eventually got her status in the UK after 8 years was not because her asylum application was successful, but because her daughter reached the age of 7. Having children is not only a route to accessing status but as several participants explained to me, having a child can also provide a small financial contribution to alleviate the pressure of destitution. After Satou’s asylum claim was rejected, for five years her only means to survive was by doing full-time domestic work for a family in exchange for bed and board, a set-up which soon became exploitative. She told me:
‘Yeah, I made a decision to have a child, because at that time the situation I was in I was thinking that having the kids might change a lot of things, which it has worked for me, because after having kids so many things have changed. I got financial help and they found me a place to live.’
The idea that the immigration policy encourages individuals in this position to draw on the survival strategy of having children is problematic if being a mother is not actually the path they want to take. It also doesn’t make sense from the government’s perspective because it increases the likelihood that these women will become economically dependent on the state, as it is well-documented that single mothers have lower economic outcomes.
Conclusion and policy implications
The findings show that migrant women with precarious status are faced with gender-specific constraints rooted in gender inequality and gender violence which means that returning to their country is not a viable option. In addition, with time, remaining in the UK becomes the more viable option because of the gendered survival strategies that are available to them. These findings identify important factors influencing the data in Graph 1 which shows that fewer women return than men. This reinforces the need to include gender in policy analysis, to gain a deeper understanding of how gender plays out in migratory processes. With this understanding policymakers will be in a better position to implement policies which contribute to achieving gender equality. The UN’s theme for International Women’s Day this year is ‘Invest in women: Accelerate progress’. It is clear that if the UK government wants to support the progress of women in the UK this means rethinking these hostile immigration policies which are pushing migrant women into even more vulnerable positions.
The participants in this study plan to spend the rest of their lives in the UK, yet their lives will always be marked by the avoidable trauma of these years of state-enforced destitution, not to mention the effect on their children. This policy also doesn’t make sense from an economic perspective. The work ban’s impact on long-term employment is well-documented. Fasani et al.’s study (2021) shows that preventing asylum-seekers from working in Europe from 2015 to 2016 led to an economic output loss of €37.6 billion. In the words of Agila from Southeast Asia, a modern-day slavery survivor who has been waiting 10 years in the UK without the right to work:
‘Come on – If you give me my visa back, I can work, I can pay my tax. I’m already here. I’ve worked before. I have the experience. People trust me. People like me, so just why? I always ask why? Why don’t they give me a chance?’
