But where are the women?
(In which I discuss the deadly effect of woman being ignored and misrepresented within the asylum system - and show off about a new publication.)
I’m pleased to say that my chapter in Georgina Colby and Jane Freedman’s edited book ‘Representing Violence Against Women: Asylum, Voice, and Testimony’ is now out.
The book brings together contributions from experts with direct experience of the asylum system. The contributors are service providers, activists and academics from literature, social sciences, criminology and legal studies.
My contribution discusses how common narratives about women in the asylum system affect their daily life and their experience of the asylum system. Women are rarely allowed to live or present themselves in ways they would choose or that are meaningful to them. In the chapter, I aim to show how women are forced to present themselves as ‘victims’ yet still find their needs neglected or denied. The chapter drew on research with women who had experienced immigration detention for the co-produced Briefing Paper posted here.
*Warning* – the following includes discussion of suicide and unnecessary death.
My title came from a conversation I had when out walking with the Refugee Tales project. I was asked “But where are the women?” But what I was really being asked was why so many young men (sometime referred to as being of ‘fighting age’) arrive on small boats across the Channel without women accompanying them.
The sad fact is that while roughly equal numbers of women are forced to flee their homes as men, most women don’t make it to Europe. Only about 29% of asylum claims made in the EU are made by women and girls. Asking where the women are, given these statistics, is a fair question but the answer most often given – that they have been kept back or pushed passed by young men, is not accurate - or fair. Migrating to find safety is a dangerous business and a disproportionate number of women globally die [1] while attempting to cross borders. Would a young man want his mum, sister, daughter, wife to take this risk or would he rather go ahead and hope to bring her to safety later?
Whatever the reasons, far fewer women claim asylum in Europe and in the UK – especially after crossing the Channel. But still, many women do and they get caught in the same inhumane waiting pattern as the men. Because these women are in the minority, however, many get lost in a system which assumes asylum seekers are men. Women have to manage without the women-centred services they need and if they do manage to find support and friendship, they may be hit especially hard if they are re-located. Frequent and random re-location is typical in the asylum system. The women I spoke to who had experienced detention described how, after being detained, they were moved to different cities, often without their belongings, and had to try to rebuild their support networks from scratch. Of course this disruption is difficult for men too, but when asylum seeking women are few and forgotten about, treated as unusual, as not-the-norm, their needs are easily, and frequently, neglected.
This is perhaps difficult to comprehend when the overall narrative about women asylum seekers is that they are vulnerable and in need of special protection. But a women asylum seeker is still an asylum seeker and if her claim has been rejected, any sympathy for her can evaporate fast. Worse still, if she is a woman who does not want to be treated as ‘vulnerable’ [2] who understands herself to be strong and independent (why wouldn’t she? – she’s one of the few who made it all the way to the UK) sympathy and understanding will be in short supply. It’s the patriarchy, in the form of the asylum system, gaslighting women yet again. One minute you are vulnerable, the next a devious cheat.
The process of applying for asylum is an intrusive one. Asylum seekers must tell their stories and repeat them frequently and accurately. A women’s best chance at gaining international protection is through a claim of gendered violence but the proving of such a claim, by repeated and detailed description of that abuse, may be another, and continuing, form of violence. Much about the asylum system in the UK is humiliating – having to live cheek by jowl with people you don’t know, in poverty, disbelieved and obliged to narrate crimes made against you again and again is terrible for anyone but for women, it may be incredibly shaming. Many women are very afraid of their past and present experiences becoming common knowledge in their communities and beyond. Gossip and shame can end their hopes of a dignified future - for themselves and their children.
My book chapter ends with a re-telling of the stories of two women who died while in the asylum system. Both are stories of neglect and disrespect. As I wrote them up I found myself getting angrier and angrier. Both women did their best for their children and themselves but were let down by an uncaring system that gave them little dignity even after death.
Here's an abridged version of that final section:
Lillian Oluk and her two- year- old daughter Lynne were found dead in their flat in Gillingham, Kent in March 2016. The flat was empty and they had died of starvation. Lillian was originally from Uganda and had worked in the UK until she was told she had no right to remain. She had tried to find support for herself and her child, having apparently ‘camped out’ at a hospital in Croydon. Her admirable self-advocacy led to social services housing her and appointing a Key Worker. The Social Service Serious Case Review following Lillian and Lynne’s deaths found that public agencies had met the standards required of them by law. The Coroner recorded an open verdict on their deaths referring to a ‘tragic set of circumstances whatever they were’ (my emphasis).
The reporting of the Inquest implies that their deaths were inexplicable; no reports that I could, find linked their deaths to their migration status. Another view on these ‘tragic circumstances’ is that Lillian and Lynne had been made destitute, threatened with deportation to a country Lillian had already fled from (she was HIV+ ), isolated in Gillingham and unable to find the support and help they needed.
Lillian and Lynne’s story is not unique, and it is estimated that 29 asylum seekers died in Home Office accommodation in the UK in 2020 alone [3]. One of these asylum seekers was Mercy Baguma. Like Lillian she was originally from Uganda, she was an asylum seeker and not allowed to work. She too was found dead in her flat – in Glasgow in August of 2020. Fortunately, her baby son was found by his father in time save his life. Mercy’s case has been notably more politicised than Lillian and Lynne’s. She was in touch with a local refugee support group who have worked hard to publicise her case. They are clear where the blame lies. But whatever the cause of these deaths these women were not able to speak for themselves and certainly in Lilian’s case, no-one has been held responsible nor required to even revise their processes.
It is often assumed that women are more likely to be supported through the asylum system than men because of their ‘vulnerabilities’. Both Lillian and Mercy had been provided with accommodation and Lillian, and probably Mercy, had social workers because of their children. Clearly, however, the support they were offered was insufficient or inappropriate. Living in Glasgow, Mercy had access to networks of support, but there would have been little support available to Lillian in Gillingham and she had been moved around the country before being placed there. I cannot find out if either of them had been detained but both would have known it was a possibility. We have to wonder how many other women, with children or maybe without, are struggling on alone. Certainly there has been no improvement in support for women since these deaths.
The answer to the women in the street who asked, ‘But where are the women?’ is that they are everywhere - but neglected and silenced. Many disentitled migrants in the UK have friends and belong to supportive communities, but if networks of family and friends cannot provide support, who will step in? Who can women turn to if they have been shamed and humiliated by the asylum process? How can we expect anyone living in these circumstances to represent themselves and speak up about what they are suffering, not least as their very existence in the UK has been criminalised and negated?
Poverty and destitution is a gruelling slog and an everyday struggle. Detention and threats to deport are stigmatising, undignified and experienced as deeply shameful. The reports of Lillian and Lynne emphasise that the flat was clean but empty – as if this fact is intended to return some dignity to Lillian – that she was indeed a good mother who kept a clean house. It is a detail that leaves me imagining her last moments as she cleaned the empty house before giving up and lying down with Lynne to die.
Some further reading:
Lynn Cox, ‘Inquest hears of tragic deaths of Lillian Oluk and her daughter Lynne Mutumba at flat in Trafalgar Street, Gillingham’, KentOnline, 8 September 2016’, https://www.kentonline.co.uk/medway/news/inquest-into-deaths-of-mum-102094/
Positive Action in Housing, ‘The death of Mercy Baguma’, 25 August 2020, https://www.paih.org/statement
Notes and references
[1] Pickering, Sharon, and Brandy Cochrane. "Irregular border-crossing deaths and gender: Where, how and why women die crossing borders." Theoretical Criminology 17.1 (2013): 27-48.
[2] Being classed as vulnerable may allow a woman to remain in the UK but it may not allow her to live her life as she chooses. One of the women who co-produced the Briefing Paper Women in Immigration Detention was housed as a trafficked women. She was telling me how the shelter she was living in kept tabs on her day and night and expected her to be in the shelter most of the time. Right on cue, the shelter management rang her to ask why she was not in her room.
[3] The UK does not record asylum status on death certificates and does not routinely record the numbers of deaths, even suicides, in asylum accommodation. Because of this lack of data, what we know comes from FoI or special reports. The most up to date of these is the 2023 report from Liberty Investigates which shows that 180 people died in asylum accommodation between 2016 and the end of 2023. For more information and for the names and some history of the lives of these people women, men and children see the Asylum Memorial Project Lillian and Lynne are not included in the memorial because they did not die in asylum accommodation.
