UK Border at Heathrow airport. Credit: David McKelvey via FlickrThere is one group of migrant women in the UK of whom we hear very little in the news: those who come here on a spousal visa i.e. on the basis of marriage to a British citizen. Although it appears to be the largest group of women migrants (there is no gender breakdown for the spousal visa category), over and above asylum seekers and women trafficked into the sex industry or domestic slavery, their day to day difficulties of settling in do not attract the same attention as the dramatic disclosures of women asylum seekers in the Yarl's Wood detention centre who have died, or been sexually harassed and assaulted, and gone on hunger strike in protest against the conditions in detention.
When this group of migrant women on spousal visas has hit the headlines, it has been largely because of the longstanding efforts of Southall Black Sisters and their allies to draw attention to the fact that their marriages had failed as a result of violence, and they were unjustly faced with deportation and/or No recourse to Public Funds. However, these are women who, even by the severely restricted scope for legitimate migration under the law, should be on a route to settlement in the UK on the basis of their marriage to British citizens, find their aspirations ground down on a daily basis.
New research, Settling In, by Eaves, a charity which specialises in supporting trafficked women and women exiting prostitution, has found that women on spousal visas are frozen out of British society at every level. The report which is due to be launched in Parliament on 24 June is based on in depth interviews with 86 women, from 32 countries, ranging from the USA to Yemen and Venezuela to China. You would have thought that a government so committed to the idea of marriage and family would do everything in its power to smooth the path of the newly-weds. Wrong.
