Corrosive Control: State-Corporate and Gendered Harm in Bordered Britain

As gendered discourses around migration proliferate, focus is often trained on experiences of women in interpersonal capacities, primarily regarding subjections to predominately male violence. Drawing from research in Britain and activist participation with women seeking asylum, this article expands this focus into the realm of state-corporate harms against women.

As previous research evidences (Author 2017), immigration law and policy often work to minimalise autonomy at ground level, and dependence on spousal visas or housing/finances can exacerbate dependence on men, including violent men. This article argues that this punitive landscape of Britain’s asylum system facilitates further violence against women seeking asylum, rather than ensuring protection. Moreover, harm is inflicted by the structures of coercive control set out by the state and its amorphous relations with corporations. Such structures are largely manufactured by the British state, but increasingly enacted by its corporate allies. These environments, I argue, mirror those of domestically violent perpetrators and work to gradually corrode women’s autonomy and indeed sense of safety.