Forced migration in the United Kingdom: women's journeys to escape domestic violence

Janet C. Bowstead

47 citations0/0 files storedTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers

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Intimate Partner and Family Violence Migration and Exile Studies Gender and Women's Rights

Abstract

This paper examines a process of forced migration within the United Kingdom: that of women (often with children) escaping violence within relationships. Studies of internal migration in the UK have rarely examined forced migration or emphasised gendered processes, and studies of migration and relationship breakdown have under‐recognised abuse in forcing migration decisions. This study used administrative, survey and interview data to identify and explore processes at a range of scales, from individual to national. The empirical analysis reveals that there are high rates of forced residential mobility within many local authorities as well as migration across local authority boundaries, with over 18 000 journeys a year by women to access formal services in England. The migration is distinctive from other internal migration in the UK because of its gendered and forced nature: women are relocating to escape violence and had not otherwise intended to migrate. Journeys are therefore typically focused on trying to minimise disruption either by staying as local as they can, but avoiding friends, family and known locations, or by travelling to a similar type of place to the one left. The primary concern is safety, and journeys are often complex and segmented into multiple stages over time and space. However, despite such disruption at the individual scale, the journeys do not aggregate into net migration flows at the local or national scale and the overall process is one of spatial churn. The multi‐scale analysis of this research reveals the turbulence beneath the surface, and highlights a forced migration process which had previously remained invisible to studies of internal migration in the UK.

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References

2007Space, place and gender 2004Understanding Home: A Critical Review of the Literature 2014Exploring Contemporary Migration 2000Place, social relations and the fear of crime: a review 1996BodySpace 2004Family‐related migration: a critial review of European Studies 1995Feminism and Geography 2005Cultural geography: cultural geographies of home

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2019Between ‘here’ and ‘there’: family violence against immigrant and refugee women in urban and rural Southern Australia 2016Association between maternal intimate partner violence victimization during pregnancy and maternal abusive behavior towards infants at 4 months of age in Japan 2019Spaces of safety and more-than-safety in women’s refuges in England 2021Collective trauma? Isolating and commoning gender-based violence 2016Women on the move: theorising the geographies of domestic violence journeys in England 2019Editorial: Emotional geography and Transactions

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