Description
Social and economic inequalities can be linked to violence and vulnerability to violence. This research draws on a bespoke database of empirical evidence drawn from third sector organisations in the UK to excavate the structural and systemic forms of discrimination and oppression that produce outcomes of violence, exploitation and inequality for people in insecure migration status. The qualitative analysis maps health inequality through intersecting pathways of immigration enforcement, policing practices, destitution, social isolation and maladapted support systems. The research considers how racializing and minoritizing structures undermine the types of security that are normally attached to citizenship and belonging. It finds that unequal forms of citizenship, residency, and immigration-based constructed dependencies such as spousal or employer-tied visas exacerbate vulnerability to violence and create a deep-rooted insecurity that prevents disclosure of violence and abuse, and precludes support-seeking. Drawing from the empirical data, this research contributes to our understanding of insecurity as a complex social experience that can be tied to (gendered and racialized) structural and systemic inequality. Empirically, it finds meaningful evidence of insecurity embedded in and produced by the way immigration is governed in the UK.
