The gendered harms of 'voluntary return': women's experiences of disrupted relatedness, bodily precariousness, and gender-based violence in the UK and Punjab

This research will trace women's experiences of 'voluntary return' - where an undocumented or asylum-seeking migrant ostensibly chooses to return to their country of origin - from the UK to Punjab. While previous research on return practices has mostly centred men's experiences of enforced removal, voluntary return is statistically and conceptually significant to the UK's 'hostile environment' immigration regime, and affects more women than deportation. I will explore undocumented and asylum-seeking South Asian women's experiences of intimate and family relationships, poverty, illness and gender-based violence in the UK, and women voluntary returnees' experiences of the same in Indian/Pakistani Punjab. I will consider whether voluntary return's impacts for women's health, safety, wellbeing and relationships can be conceptualised as gendered harms, and their implications for voluntary return's acceptability. This research will constitute an important window into migrant women's lived experiences, and may inform humane, empirically-grounded immigration practices within and beyond the UK.