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Domestic abuse and women with 'no recourse to public funds': The state's role in shaping and reinforcing coercive control
Abstract
If they are subject to immigration control, women who experience domestic abuse in the UK face particular barriers to finding safety and support. In particular, the ‘no recourse to public funds’ (NRPF) rule means that women subject to immigration controls on a variety of visa statuses cannot access safe refuge accommodation or other support. Based on interviews with service providers in six cities, this article explores the impact of this rule in trapping women in relationships of coercive control. These women expect, and frequently encounter, a climate of hostility to which the state contributes. The state, through this rule, plays an active role in factors that increase danger for women, even as it reduces their options.
... Women with NRPF frequently report experiences of domestic violence (27,28). Research has shown that the NRPF rule has been used by men to coerce women to stay in abusive relationships, which has forced some women into the informal economy (28). ...
... Women with NRPF frequently report experiences of domestic violence (27,28). Research has shown that the NRPF rule has been used by men to coerce women to stay in abusive relationships, which has forced some women into the informal economy (28). Because of this, many advocacy groups understand NRPF within current patriarchal structures, and argue that NRPF worsens conditions for women, and that it urgently needs to be abolished (27)(28)(29). ...
... Research has shown that the NRPF rule has been used by men to coerce women to stay in abusive relationships, which has forced some women into the informal economy (28). Because of this, many advocacy groups understand NRPF within current patriarchal structures, and argue that NRPF worsens conditions for women, and that it urgently needs to be abolished (27)(28)(29). ...
In a 2012 newspaper interview, Theresa May announced a commitment to reducing immigration figures by creating a ‘hostile environment’ for undocumented migrants (1). This ‘hostile environment’ has been perpetuated by the state in the form of a restriction of access to basic social services, social security, work and education.
... Femi-Ajao et al. (2020) found four barriers preventing DVA disclosure to services for Black and minoritised victims in the UK: immigration status, particularly 'No Recourse to Public Funds', community influences, lack of interpreters, and unsupportive attitudes from staff within mainstream services. These interconnected barriers are reflected in the under-reporting of DVA for minoritised women (Sundari, 2008;Femi-Ajao et al., 2020) and can prevent victims from seeking support or restrict their ability to leave an abusive environment (Begum et al., 2020;Burman et al., 2004;Dudley, 2017;Sundari 2008). Spousal migrants to the UK are often unaware of their rights and can be manipulated by their perpetrators into believing that they could be deported or separated from their children should they seek support (Begum et al., 2020;DAC, 2021;Harrar, 2021). ...
... Spousal migrants to the UK are often unaware of their rights and can be manipulated by their perpetrators into believing that they could be deported or separated from their children should they seek support (Begum et al., 2020;DAC, 2021;Harrar, 2021). However, deportation is a possible outcome and insecure status engenders fear of services (Chantler et al. 2003;Dudley, 2017;Sundari, 2008). ...
... Services may also be reluctant to engage with communities, limiting opportunities to inform migrant victims about their rights in the UK (Harrar, 2021;Siddiqui, 2018). Further, incomplete records on the ethnicity of individuals affected by DVA and homicide in the UK, makes it difficult to ascertain the prevalence of DVA in minoritised communities (Begum et al., 2020;Chantler et al., 2020;Dudley, 2017;Rowlands and Cook, 2022;Wiper, 2012). Phoenix's (1987) characterisation of 'normalised absence/pathologized presence' is highly pertinent to our analyses. ...
This article considers how minoritisation features in Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) in England and Wales and identifies critical learning in relation to addressing minoritisation. Five themes were identified: i) the invisibility of race, culture and ethnicity; ii) perceptions and experiences of services; iii) use of stereotypes and the culturalisation of domestic violence and abuse (DVA); iv) lack of interpreters; and v) DHR recommendations. Our analysis illustrates that statutory sector services should strengthen their responses to Black and minoritised victims by ensuring proper recording of cultural background is used to inform practice; engage professionally trained interpreters with an awareness of DVA; resist framing DVA as endemic to minoritised cultures; and enhance trust and confidence in public services within minoritised communities. The best examples of DHRs challenged service narratives and usually sought expertise from a specialist Black/minoritised DVA service or community organisation (frequently minoritised women's rights organisations).
... She had no independent income, relying on her partner's income. She was in the country on a spousal visa and had no recourse to public funds (Dudley, 2017). My abuser lived in my house and with the help of the police, I got him out. ...
This paper explores issues of reflexivity and knowledge production when cisgender researchers conduct social work research, using feminist narrative methods, to advance understanding about trans and non-binary people’s identities and experiences. Cisgender (or ‘cis’) refers to people who identify with the gender identity assigned to them at birth. The paper examines cis identity, privilege and positionality arguing for a reflexive engagement of the ways in which these influence ethical decision-making and research praxis. In this way, we speak to existing critiques that suggest that only trans and non-binary people should research their own experiences and identities. To address the neglect of gender diversity in education for social work practice and research, we propose that doing social work research with trans and non-binary communities requires cis researchers to adopt critical ethical reflexivity (CER) to scrutinise the impact of gender normativity and its effects in knowledge production for social work.
... In addition, it is also a partial picture because many women were already in temporary accommodation before their first appearance in the data record, and move to temporary accommodation after their service stay(s); indicating longer journeys. It also does not measure the strategies of women who were unable to access services, including those who may have contacted services but were turned away; such as is often the case for women with No Recourse to Public Funds (DAHA & Women's Aid, 2020; Dudley, 2017). The data cover a period of increasing domestic violence service provision in England -and therefore a wider potential range of options for women's help-seeking-before the cuts and constraints on services due to austerity policies (Bridge, 2020;Ishkanian, 2014;Towers & Walby, 2012). ...
In published domestic violence strategies, there is a tendency to focus on service provision and service responses in each administrative location; rather than recognising the extent to which women and children move through places due to domestic abuse. Whilst a woman’s help-seeking may be local—if she has the information and resources, and judges it possible to do so—such help-seeking whilst staying put is only one of many strategies tried by women experiencing domestic violence. Women’s strategies are often under-recognised and under-respected by the very service providers which should be expected to be supporting women’s recovery from abuse. This article uses administrative data (monitoring records), which were collected as part of a funding programme, to provide evidence of women’s domestic violence help-seeking involving these types of housing-related services in England. More than 180,000 cases of service access over eight years provide evidence of women’s three help-seeking strategies in terms of place: Staying Put, Remaining Local, and Going Elsewhere; and the distinctive patterns of service involvement and responses to these strategies. Service providers typically attempt to assess women’s levels of “risk” and “need;” however, such snapshot assessments in terms of time and place can fail to address the dynamic interplay between women’s location strategies and their needs for safety, wellbeing, and resettlement. In contrast, viewing the system from the perspective of what women do provides important insights into leaving abuse as a process—not an event—and highlights the impact of different types of services which help or hinder women’s own strategies.
... NRPF has consistently been shown to trap migrants in conditions of destitution (Jolly, 2018), with single-parent families, mainly headed by mothers, most negatively impacted by the policy (Anitha, 2010;Price and Spencer, 2015). Mothers with NRPF are heavily reliant on informal networks and may become 'subject to coercive control' or made homeless and destitute when this support is unavailable or fractured, for instance by domestic violence (Dudley, 2017). ...
In 2012, the ‘no recourse to public funds’ (NRPF) condition was extended to long-standing migrant families in the UK who had previously achieved rights to residence and welfare through human rights mechanisms. Through close examination of policy, political statements, and media coverage, we make the case that the NRPF extension was – and continues to be – intentionally subjugating and punitive, most aptly understood as a policy of enforced destitution and debt imposed on negatively-racialised post-colonial subjects. In drawing out the implications of our argument, we point to time, destitution, and debt as core technologies of the UK’s migration regime, alongside everyday bordering, detention, and deportability. Denying support through NRPF serves to exclude putatively included migrants while normalising conditional approaches to social support. Our article reveals why moral arguments against NRPF based on destitution fail and suggests that challenging welfare bordering requires a more systemic appraisal of policy frames, intentions and effects.
... This fear is inflated if a person does not have a secure immigration status in this country (for example, if they are seeking asylum). There are additional challenges for women who do not have a secure immigration status as they are therefore unlikely to be able to access the same levels of support if they do not have access to public funding (Anitha, 2011;Dudley, 2017). If the abuser is from a BME background, the victim/survivor might not want to speak out in order to protect them from institutional racism, particularly if this has underpinned a prior experience. ...
DVA affects many people irrespective of their social characteristics, backgrounds and experiences. Despite this diversity, many people are often absent from mainstream discourse, research, policy and practice on domestic violence and abuse (DVA) because of processes of invisibilisation or systemic exclusion that result from practices or structures that uphold systemic exclusion (Wilkerson et al., Qual Health Res 24:561–574, 2014). This chapter turns the lens towards some of these hidden, and hard-to-reach, communities, to enable the reader to see beyond the dominant picture of DVA to illustrate that DVA is a complex global phenomenon affecting a concerningly high number of individuals and families, occurring across cultural, ethnic, religious, age and gender boundaries. The chapter sets out knowledge about DVA in relation to the following groups of people who can be considered to be hard-to-reach including: lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) communities; male victims; women with learning disabilities; black and ethnic minority (BME) communities.
Increasingly hostile immigration policies in the UK produce insecure immigration statuses and exclusion from public services and mainstream welfare benefits. Little is known about how this precaritization affects racially minoritized mothers with insecure immigration statuses and ‘no recourse to public funds’. The ethnographic study on which this article is based explored the impact of hostile policies on mothering, and found that precaritization increases the significance of mothers’ informal support networks, including friendships. I show how hostile policies constrain mothers’ friendship practices, shaping access to support. I argue that while mothers share diverse forms of support through their everyday friendship practices, they have to navigate dialectical tensions (contradictions) that play out in ways specific to their precarious legal and financial positioning. Applying theories of friendship and relational dialectics, I highlight the importance of safe, sociable spaces and sustained ‘friendship work’ to navigate tensions and nurture friendships as sites of support.
Based on research with Latin American women in England, this paper explores how coloniality and gendered necropower is structurally embedded into the UK immigration regime, enabling multi-scalar (re)configurations of border violence. I build on the everyday bordering literature to uncover the under-theorised intimate and embodied dimensions of border violence. Intimate border violence is coined to refer to specific forms of state-sponsored interpersonal violence stemming from immigration policies and practices. Abusive men exploit the hostile environment's logic of deputisation to perform bordering against their migrant partners through threats of deportation, destitution, criminalization and homelessness. The embodied politics of coloniality reproduces hierarchies of (in)humanity and informs the state's necropolitical management of its territory. From within the national space, border violence re-territorializes migrant women's bodies as annexed territories of exception reduced to bare-life. Legal abandonment enables sovereign power to be exerted not only by the state but also by abusive partners.
Purpose
This study aims to outlines the findings of the first qualitative evidence synthesis of empirical research on the impact of the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) rule which prevents most temporary migrants from accessing social security benefits in the UK.
Design/methodology/approach
The review used the 2020 Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses protocol guidelines. Data were analysed by using Thomas and Harden’s (2008) thematic synthesis methodology. An initial 321 articles were identified from 13 databases, of which 38 studies met the inclusion criteria.
Findings
The key insights were that NRPF causes destitution and extreme poverty and has a disproportionate impact on racialised women. Studies found that support services were underdeveloped, underfunded, inconsistent and had a culture of mistrust and racism towards migrants. Migrants were often fearful of services due to concerns around deportation, destitution and state intervention around children.
Research limitations/implications
The review focussed on qualitative research. Future empirical and theoretical research is needed in the following areas: NRPF as a practice of everyday bordering, the role of the Home Office in creating and sustaining the policy; differing gendered experiences of NRPF; and a broader geographical scope which includes all four UK nations and takes an international comparative approach.
Originality/value
Despite an estimated 1.4 million people in the UK with NRPF (Citizens Advice, 2020), there is little policy or theoretical discussion of the experience of having NRPF or the implications of the rule. This lack of analysis is a significant gap in both our understanding of the landscape of poverty in the UK, and the ways in which immigration policies create extreme poverty. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first systematic qualitative review on NRPF, bringing together the research evidence on how NRPF negatively affects outcomes for migrants, local authority and voluntary sector responses to NRPF and theoretical perspectives on NRPF.
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