A headline in the New Statesman 29 October 2009 reads: ‘Home is where the heartbreak is. Asylum-seeking women are especially vulnerable to persecution, but the British immigration system does little to help’:

As Sales (2007) states, knowledge about the feminisation of migration grew largely out of feminist work that explored migration and changing migration flows from a gendered perspective. Contradicting the mainstream view of chain migration (the man would migrate and then be joined by his wife, family and others in his social network), feminist analysis explored women's lives and women's experiences of migration (Phizaklea, 1983; Gray, 2000; Koffman et al, 2000). Research on women who migrate into domestic service (Anderson, 1993) or who migrate to work in the sex industry (Aoyama, 2005; Agustin, 2007; Mai, 2009) show the agency and complex lives of the women involved, contesting simplistic notions of the migrant domestic service worker or sex worker as victim. Women may experience victimisation on the journeys and in their working roles, but this research shows the intersecting oppressions and structural forces that create conditions where pragmatic choices are made to seek a better life and for many to send remittances home to enable families living in absolute poverty to survive.

The people and families seeking refuge as asylum seekers have undergone the most traumatic and life-changing events one could imagine. As discussed in previous chapters research shows that there are multiple reasons for mobility within the context of globalisation (linked to modernity and humiliation), global inequalities and a combination of honour codes and human rights, leading to an increase in cross-border flows of people from South and East to North and West (see Bloch, 2002a, 2002b; Castles, 2003; Marfleet, 2006; Sales, 2007; Castles and Miller, 2009).