In the theatrical performance ‘Cris d’Exil’, produced by the women’s commission of the Association de Solidarité avec les Travailleurs Immigrés (ASTI) of Valence, Marie-Claire, a 30-year-old woman from the Democratic Republic of Congo is dumped with her toddler at a mainline station in Paris by a people-smuggler. Marie-Claire had escaped what has been called Africa’s first world war (1998–2004), having suffered the loss of family and friends and rape at the hands of soldiers and security servicemen of the Kabila government. Marie-Claire’s torment does not end with her arrival in France. She has no money, no shelter and no...

International, European and national policies and practices on refugee status determination and settlement/integration have changed over time in response to broader economic, political and social stimuli. Refugee and asylum policy is not simply a response to a recognised need on the part of those fleeing persecution; it is intricately connected to broader international politics (for example, during the Cold War, it played a part in asserting the ideological superiority of the West), to domestic concerns with migration control, to local racism and xenophobia, heightened by competition for scarce resources.Asylum and refugee policy is currently high on the political agenda in...

This chapter introduces the reader to the landscape of international migration within which female refugee migrants are positioned. Its aim is twofold. First, it gives an overview of inward migration flows into Britain and France while bearing in mind both the general European context and processes of feminisation which have occurred over the last 50 years. Second, it presents, as fully as available data allows, the demographic and sociological characteristics of female refugee migration to the two countries concerned. Information about these characteristics is important in that it provides statutory and voluntary agencies dealing with female refugee populations with the...

Research that focuses on the lives of refugee women in Britain is recent: one of the first studies of their specific needs and experiences was published in 1996 (Ahmed 1996). Such research is important in identifying and raising awareness of experiences of asylum which may differ from the assumed male norm. Whilst they share the difficulties all asylum seekers face in Britain, women asylum seekers experience additional problems often overlooked by policy-makers (Dumper 2002a: 20). Research on the lives of refugee women in the UK is valuable, because it informs policy-makers and service providers about the experiences, needs and resources...

In France, as in other EU states, the spotlight on asylum issues and the country’s diverse refugee communities has increased over the past 15 years. This focus on refugee migration and asylum rights is due to several factors; for example, the expansion in numbers of those seeking asylum in France and the fact that many of them arrive from zones of conflict and disaster (Kosovo, Chechnya, Rwanda, DRC, Iraq and others) where traumatic events and acts of extreme violence impact severely on their basic human rights. It is also due to the realisation, on the part of politicians, statutory and...

This chapter explores the question of citizenship-building processes in relation to women asylum seekers and refugees and their civic participation not only in discrete refugee women’s community associations or organisations (RCOs) but also in (longer established) migrant women’s community associations.¹ Its aim is fourfold: first, it discusses the relationship between the question of citizenship, refugee women and their associations; second, it presents an overview of the establishment and development of refugee women’s associations in Britain and France; third, it examines the forms of activities and activism in which refugee women engage; and finally, it asks what conclusions can be drawn...

This chapter begins from the hypothesis that refugee women, politically active in their countries of origin, will be motivated to participate in their country of destination, but that their opportunities to participate may be constrained by institutional/organisational, social and cultural barriers. It highlights refugee women’s agency, countering the perception that they are passive victims, and describes their individual motivation and resources, and their experiences of NGO participation.

As Chapter 5 has shown, some studies have focused on refugee women’s activism in refugee community associations. There has been less interest in refugee women’s participation in other political or civil society organisations....

Women asylum seekers and refugees make up a third of the refugee migrant population in Britain and over half the population group in France. Nevertheless they remain largely invisible within both refugee communities and the female migrant population. One of the main aims of this book has been to place their story at the centre of accounts of refugee migration and migrants in Britain and France in order to increase our knowledge and understanding of their place and role in these two countries and to highlight their agency rather than present them as passive victims or accompanying dependants.

First, it...