Chapter ten:
Impact of the asylum system on Pakistani women and children
This Chapter provides an analysis of participants’ views on the consequences for women and children who are subject to the asylum system and immigration control. In particular, the Chapter draws attention to physical and mental health issues, the isolation women experience (compounded by dispersal system) and their exposure to the potential for exploitation when they reach the ‘end of the line’ and when they ‘disappear’. The Chapter examines responses which highlight specific issues concerning children, in particular, their in/ visibility in domestic violence situations and the roles they are often required to perform in the process of attempting to gain safety. Much of the following analysis has resonance for all women who seek protection against domestic violence.
10.1 Women’s health
Participants provided a number of examples which highlighted how the relationship between domestic violence, health and well being is often overlooked or disregarded by decision makers. In one example, a London based solicitor drew attention to how the ‘culture of disbelief’ influenced the process of detailing the health consequences of domestic violence:
“The questions that they ask, in the first statement, there’s no question that addresses or elicits the mental health of the asylum seeker or tries to draw out issues such as rape or trauma… if you understand the context to that, that the woman has experienced mental trauma, constant bullying and harassment, then that would go some way to answering questions of credibility that arise.”
In another example, a worker at an international NGO stated that a client’s inability to provide any meaningful detail, due to trauma, undermined her credibility in the eyes of the Home Office. This was in spite of the worker’s view that the woman was manifesting trauma resulting from the violence:
“… the evidence of violence was poor and based very much on her testimony, which was not good as she was very traumatised, very, very traumatised. I mean her testimony was just appalling she couldn’t remember the dates of her children’s birth she was in such a terrible state. Her credibility was very low.”
Participants also described how many decision makers appeared to be ignorant about the long term nature of psychological and physical ill health following violence. A worker at a specialist legal advice centre stated that:
“There are also lots of judges who, when they are dealing with types of gender persecution such as rape or FGM, when the incident is finished they argue that the persecution has finished and the trauma has stopped. I don’t think there is a great understanding of the continuing ostracism, isolation and pain and that it’s an ongoing persecution rather than a one off incident.”
The role of medical experts is critical in this regard. However, as the discussion in Chapter nine on ‘expert evidence’ indicated, medical evidence on a woman’s health post-trauma, appeared to have insufficient persuasive value.
10.2 Isolating effects of the asylum system
Participants described how women remain isolated and vulnerable throughout the asylum decision making process. Women were often unaccompanied or lacked support throughout the process, from Home Office interviews through to appeal hearings. A local authority support worker explained:
“And don’t forget the solicitors often don’t even turn up in the appeal court, they just send the
papers on, so she wouldn’t have had anyone there and every time she went she had to desperately
try and find someone to look after the girls because they were terrified of going.”
Whilst legal support existed for the preparation of evidence, and other support was available to address health and well being issues, there was a gap in the provision of non-legal support to ‘accompany’ women through the asylum system. Some participants suggested that women in these situations were often likely to accept any form of informal support however inappropriate (for example from male or female members within a particular community group) but that they were unlikely to approach formal services, not only because they might be unaware of them but also because they were likely to have low expectations of receiving culturally appropriate support.
10.3 Dispersal: rural and urban isolation
Dispersal of Pakistani women to areas such as Wales, where there is a low Pakistani population, led some participants to state that women were geographically and culturally isolated in that region. A local authority support worker in Wales felt that there were no wider social networks for Pakistani women in the region.
Some women participants described how they were isolated by Pakistani communities in highly populated urban areas. A number of women commented on how they felt shunned by communities because of the ‘word of mouth’ culture and its scrutiny of local ‘new arrivals’. One woman explained how she had learned to ‘know where to go and where not to….’ Other participants explained how these hostilities were fuelled by local suspicions about Pakistani women’s motives for arriving, isolating them further and preventing them from speaking about their experiences. This extract, taken from an interview with an adviser at a refugee community organisation, explained women isolated themselves as a way of avoiding attention:
“I think women don’t speak about these things because of the trauma and taboo. I think it’s a lot easier for [British] women in this country to talk about these issues but I think we’d still find we’d have a delay in talking about the issues in our cultural and social environment. I think these are issues that in their own communities you simply don’t talk about. There’s a huge stigma in speaking out, perhaps also committing an honour crime in doing so which has its own punishment.”
In this context women continued to fear accusations of ‘dishonour’ and ensuing threats of reprisals from UK based communities.
10.4 When women disappear: hunted and exploited
“I had a case where a woman failed and was at risk of being removed she just disappeared so I
don’t know what happened to her. The reality is that the system, by not allowing women access to
services, pushes women to the very margins of society. They end up living on charity or the good
will of others, they find a way to live but they are exposed to exploitation in the process.”
These concerns, which were raised by a legal practitioner in the North West, were echoed by many participants in relation to the situation women faced when they reached the ‘end of the line’. When women’s asylum applications are rejected, some women ‘disappear’ rather than face proceedings for removal to Pakistan, which inevitably involves a period in detention. There is little information on how they tackle the challenges of life ’in hiding’ or how they access support for children whilst in the UK, if indeed they remain in the UK.189
Undoubtedly, current immigration and asylum legislation heightens a failed asylum seeker’s vulnerability; in the experiences of most practitioners, they were unlikely to approach statutory services or any other service which they perceived to have links with the authorities.
Participants commented on women’s need to financially survive, which rendered them more susceptible to exploitation by unscrupulous employers who themselves risked breaking the law by
189 See The Destitution Trap: Research into destitution among refused asylum seekers in the UK, Refugee Action, London, 2006.
employing failed asylum seekers. Within specific forms of employment, for example the sex industry and domestic work, exploitation was perceived to be more prevalent.190
Participants highlighted how women’s attempts to survive on the margins of the system had consequences for children’s physical and psychological health, as well as for their education. The emerging picture from the research demonstrated that UK legislation created the conditions which exposed women to further harm.
This parallels the situation for women and their children in Pakistan who escape domestic violence and find themselves either on the streets, in prison or exploited by unscrupulous ‘businessmen’. Chapters four to seven provide a more detailed analysis on this parallel existence; however the following extract from an interview with a worker at an international NGO exemplified how easily women from Pakistan were subjected to further abuse:
“I explained in one case that the daughters would probably end up in prostitution, as there was
no way they, from a particular class and situation, could be supported in Pakistan. There is a form
of prostitution that is not streetwalking, but a woman is used to make money and contacts and
it would be perfectly logical in that situation, where the family is trying to survive, for them to be
forced to use the daughters in that way, and that was successful on appeal, even though it was at a
very late stage.”
This account is likely to be familiar to many UK based women’s service providers; it is well documented that British women and girls, in the process of escaping familial violence, often find themselves submerged in further abusive situations, in prostitution for example.
10.5 Children
‘I’m not afraid; I just have nightmares’...”
These words were spoken by a child to a local authority housing support worker. It was a considerable challenge for this study to identify the experiences of children but to not explore in depth the forms of ill treatment to which they are exposed in their own flight from domestic violence. Children’s needs in these situations urgently merit study in their own right. Almost every issue raised in the analysis above had an implication for children who accompanied their mothers throughout the asylum process and raised concerns for service providers. Children usually accompanied their mothers during flight. Participants described the presence of children at almost every stage of the process, for example, when the violence itself had occurred, in interviews with legal practitioners, in court during hearings and in detention pending removal. The process of conducting interviews with women survivors for this study was often challenged by the presence of lively, noisy and demanding children and yet women themselves, who were keen to recount their experiences, did not consider separation from their children for the purpose of the interviews as desirable.
This raised two key issues for this study: the role of children when they were present and the effects on them of what they witnessed and experienced of the process.
10.5.1 The role of children
One participant, a woman who volunteered at a BME organisation, and who had experienced domestic violence prior to claiming asylum, described how children often became tools in the informal bartering process for ‘freedom’ from violence; she spoke of her attempts to negotiate with her estranged spouse for the return of two abducted children. She succeeded in being reunited with them only after being advised by her father to offer to exchange them for the third child in her custody. Her father advised her that this would make the husband believe she did not care about the children, and so would return them:
“He kidnapped my children at gunpoint because he wanted me to go back…in the car was their uncle and two or three men with guns and they snatched the kids and took them and kept them
190 See The Destitution Trap, op.cit. p. The Report provides detailed ‘survivor’ accounts on hardship and destitution resulting from failure to obtain protection from within the UK’s asylum system.
at somebody else’s place…what they wanted was that I should come back…I said… [to him] I’m
sending you the third one…I said this because my father said if you say this they will give the
children back because they don’t really want them…”
The woman explained that she decided to leave Pakistan when her estranged husband expressed his wish to marry the elder daughter (aged eleven at that time) to a man he knew.
A worker at an Asian women’s support service explained how they directed some of their resources in trying to reconcile women with spouses ‘for the sake of the children’, particularly in cases involving women on spouse visas. For this particular service, children were seen as the single over-riding reason for retaining familial connections, irrespective of the further harm to the woman, and to the children, which might ensue.
Although undoubtedly inappropriate, children were frequently required to act as interpreters for their mothers, a situation which arose at different stages of ‘crisis’ throughout the asylum process (see also Chapter nine on ‘interpreters’). The dangers of these practical demands on children cannot be disassociated from the potential harm resulting from women’s dependency on them for emotional and psychological support, whether during the process of interpretation or simply during the process of women recounting their experiences, as we witnessed when we interviewed women.
Children as witnesses to incidents can be critical in their role as providers of testimonies; however participants generally considered it not in their best interests to be called to give evidence. Nor did participants consider it to be a suitable tactic of legal practitioners unless a child could be counted on as a reliable witness. It is noteworthy however that many service providers, such as the police, gave less consideration to the potential harm to children as conduits for information when placing them in the position of interpreters.
10.5.2 Impact of the asylum system on children
The limitations of this study to explore in depth the full impact of the process on children has been highlighted above. However participants were acutely aware of the distress and damaging psychological impact of the asylum journey on children who had experienced violence and dislocation and were now placed in an uncertain situation in which their safety could not be guaranteed. A housing support worker based in a local authority described one situation she had witnessed:
“…the kids were terrified of anyone official especially the police, because she had to sign every
month at the police station and every month she had to look for someone to look after the girls
because they were absolutely terrified of the police station. I think that was because of the police in
Pakistan and experiences they’d had there.”
Some participants also described how some children had expressed their anxieties about being separated from their mothers, having already experienced separation from one parent. This provided some context to the presence of children (during interviews and so on) but highlighted their vulnerability to certain expectations from service providers (to act as interpreters, for example).
Participants described how it was easier to access support for children than for their mothers; given statutory duties to protect children, this is unsurprising... However the long term effects on children of seeking refuge against domestic violence demand further investigation as this quote from a worker in a refugee community organisation demonstrates:
“…her oldest daughter suffered from depression before she arrived here because of the violence; she was being treated for depression. The girl wet the bed in Pakistan and she was eleven when she was deported from here and she still wet the bed, even after she’d been here three years.”
Clearly the scope to examine in-depth issues concerning women and children’s physical and mental health and well being in asylum and immigration contexts is urgent. We highlight this as an area for further study in the final Chapter, ‘Discussion’, which follows. Indeed the following Chapter provides a summary of the key themes which emerged during this study in both Pakistan and the UK, drawing out commonalities and differences in the two ‘regimes’ and summarises the areas which merit further research.