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Sexual violence along migration routes: A qualitative systematic review and evidence synthesis

While all types of violence happen in the context of migration without state authorization, states have no directly tangible and clearly articulated incentives to protect migrants who travel in this way from violence. Migrants in transit, particularly those who travel informally without documents, are exceptionally vulnerable to exploitation from criminal gangs and smuggling networks, abuse by border forces, corrupt policing, and exposure to petty crime and violence during the journey.

The systems and structures that govern international migration without state authorisation create conditions of vulnerability for migrants, and sexual violence requires separate attention. Sexual violence in any context has unique causes and consequences and reporting follows distinct patterns, linked to different social meanings and gender dynamics. Thus, there is good reason for treating sexual violence differently from other more general forms of violence.

There is little or limited incentive for states to prevent sexual violence against migrants who might be travelling without authorization or be in the process of escaping adversity in their home state. These individuals who are not part of citizenry cannot easily call upon available mechanisms to report and seek support and retribution for crimes of sexual violence perpetrated against them. Yet, there is precedent to consider sexual violence an international ‘wrong’ and to advocate for the consolidation of action against it (for example in United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1825, which established sexual violence in conflict as warranting consolidated international action).

VISION researcher Alexandria Innes and Merili Pulleritis (City St George’s, University of London) conducted a systematic review and evidence synthesis to systematise and synthesize qualitative evidence of sexual violence experienced by migrants travelling without state authorization, during the course of their journeys.

Their article, Sexual violence along migration routes: A qualitative systematic review and evidence synthesis, finds that sexual violence is widespread in the context of migration without state authorisation, and structurally embedded feature of undocumented migration. Findings were grouped around the six themes of agency, economics, climate of violence, normalisation of violence, perpetrators, and gender.

Data showed that migrant women expressed agency by adopting preventative or protective measures against expected sexual violence, at times including engagement in unwanted sexual contact. Economic deprivation intersected with sexual violence during migration journeys, increasing risk of sexual violence. The most severe cases of sexual violence were not mitigated by money. In some cases sexual violence victimisation was considered to be the only available way to prevent deportation or death.

Sexual violence was severe and indiscriminate, and included forced witnessing, and forced sex act perpetration on other migrants. Sexual violence along migration routes is executed by various types of perpetrators, including organised and systematic perpetration by state agents such as border guards and police, and by smuggling and trafficking gangs. Sexual violence is also carried out by opportunists who are often migrants in transit, or people who reside along the route. Sexual violence is used against men, women, trans and non-binary migrants, and people of all ages, but there are important gendered differences in the experience of sexual violence before and during a migration journey.

Sexual violence along irregular migration routes is an urgent issue demanding a response. Sexual violence is structurally embedded in the governance of international migration, suggesting the need for significant systemic change. This problem requires dedicated attention and resources directed towards prevention and protection.

To download the article: Sexual violence along migration routes: A qualitative systematic review and evidence synthesis

To cite: Innes, A., & Pullerits, M. (2026). Sexual violence along migration routes: A qualitative systematic review and evidence synthesis. PLOS ONE, 21(8), e0355474. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0355474

For further information: contact Andri at alexandria.innes@citystgeorges.ac.uk

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Upcoming event – Black and minoritised ‘by and for’ VAWG sector and the funding inequality

Right to resist: The power and resilience of the Black and minoritised ‘by and for’ VAWG sector in a state of funding inequality

Monday 7 September 2026, 10:30 am – 2:00 pm

Northampton Suite, University Building, City St George’s University of London EC1V 0HB

To register: Right to resist

This event is in person only and catering will be provided

Imkaan, the UK’s only national umbrella organisation for Black and minoritised ‘by and for’ VAWG (violence against women and girls) organisations and the UK Prevention Research Partnership VISION consortium warmly invite you to a showcase of ground-breaking research that brings into sharp focus the stark inequalities faced by Black and minoritised women and girls subjected to violence and abuse — and the vital role of specialist ‘by and for’ Black and minoritised VAWG organisations in supporting them.

Chaired by Professor Ravi Thiara from the VISION consortium and the University of Warwick and featuring the London Victims’ Commissioner, Andrea Simon, the event will bring together voices from academia, VAWG sector policy research and specialist frontline practice. Together, we will launch a new report from Imkaan’s research team —exploring the current state of the specialist ‘by and for’ sector, the life-saving support it provides, and the funding inequalities, sustainability challenges and barriers it continues to face, alongside examples of promising practice.

We are pleased to welcome Shaminder Ubhi, Executive Director of Ashiana Network, a pioneering ‘by and for’ organisation with over three decades of experience providing intersectional, holistic and trauma-informed VAWG support to Black and minoritised women and girls. We will also be joined by Dr Hannah Manzur (VISION consortium and City St George’s), who will share innovative research synthesising key findings on the harms, challenges and barriers faced by Black and minoritised women who have experienced VAWG, as well as the role of specialist ‘by and for’ organisations.

The programme will be added to this page very soon.

For more information about the event please contact Rani Selvarajah, Research & Policy Manager, Imkaan at rani@imkaan.org.uk.

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Mental health service responses to violence: VISION symposia at the European Psychiatric Association

An aim of the VISION programme is to examine the nature and extent of contact that people with experience of violence have with various health and justice services.

Findings on mental health services were presented in a series of symposia at the European Psychiatric Association’s Section on Epidemiology and Social Psychiatry this year.

The first brought together six studies on experiences of violence and adversity and implications for mental health service use. These included King’s College London’s Anjuli Kaul presenting on Sexual Violence in Mental Health Service Users and Sian Oram on Mental Health Treatment Experiences of Minoritised Sexual Violence Survivors, with further contributions from Emma Soneson (Oxford), Maryam Ghasemi (Auckland), and Ladan Hashemi and Sally McManus (both City St George’s).

A second symposium highlighted the value of the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey to violence research, with Sally McManus presenting on Threatening or Obscene Messages from a Partner and Mental Health, Self-harm and Suicidality.

Finally, a third symposium featuring VISION researchers Angus Roberts, Rob Stewart and others and highlighted how natural language processing can be used with information collected in mental health settings. Sharon Sondh (South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust) presented on classifying experiences of violence in mental healthcare records.

Un-Siloing Securitization: An intersectional intervention

By Dr Alexandria (Andri) Innes, VISION researcher and Senior Lecturer in International Politics at City, UoL

This research makes a case for shifting how we use and think about securitization theory. Securitization theory conventionally offers some insight into how certain issues are brought under the umbrella of security – normally state security – rather than sitting in normal political debate. When something is securitized more extreme or authoritarian policies that would normally be controversial in liberal democracies can be used. This might include things like removing civil liberties such as freedom of speech or freedom of assembly, or indefinite detention, or even policies that we’re all familiar with from 2020 and 2021, prohibiting freedom of association and freedom of movement in public space.

Securitization theory has focused on process (how something becomes securitized), object (what is securitized), and subject (who is being protected). The latter is generally the state and/or society. The process works through a meaningful speech act suggesting something is a security issue or framing it in security language (think about the war on drugs or the war on terror). The speech act then has to be accepted by an audience, who might be society at large, or the public, but also might be specialist practitioners, policy makers, think tanks, civil society, educators and so on. And the object of securitization is anything where this type of totalising discourse is evident. Examples include health, transnational crime, climate change, religion, humanitarianism, terrorism, particular ethnic identities, and immigration along with plenty of other things.

In this article, I argue that we should consider inequality when deconstructing and attempting to understand the process and practice of securitization. I suggest that racialization, ethnicization, and gendering create structural inequality in the ordering of what we think of as international – a world composed of equal state units. The nation state relies on these processes to function as an identity unit in the way that it does (with passport carrying, rights-bearing citizens and the right to deny rights to people who are not in the correct in-group). I propose that securitization theory might do better at dealing with inequality of we focus on the experience of being securitized, more so than the speech acts that make that securitization happen.

The article functioned more as a review of this sub-paradigm, and turns attention to the way the ‘object’ part tends to be siloed into the relevant thematic areas. So we look to just one securitized object at a time. Here, the article looks instead at three processes of securitization, to show that the siloing means the forms of inequality inherent in the nation state and national security are reproduced rather than reckoned with.

I look at the securitization of health, the securitization of immigration, and the securitization of gender-based violence. I suggest by mapping these objects of securitization together, we can better see the intersectional violence of inequality played out, and make visible the vulnerability, inequality and violence that pre-exists securitization, but is also enhanced, aggravated and at times hidden by it.

For further information please see: Un-siloing securitization: an intersectional intervention | International Politics (springer.com)

Or contact Andri at alexandria.innes @city.ac.uk

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Measuring ethnicity and the implications for violence inequalities

The question of how we measure, categorise, and represent ethnicity poses a growing challenge for identifying and addressing ethnic inequalities. Conceptual critiques and qualitative studies highlight the complexities and challenges of measuring ethnicity, yet there remains a lack of quantitative studies investigating the implications of these complexities for inequalities research.

VISION researchers, Hannah Manzur, Niels Blom, and Estela Capelas Barbosa, address this gap by scrutinizing methodological processes and analysing the implications of measurement and categorisation in the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), critiquing the UK’s standardised measurement of ethnicity in national survey data and government statistics.

Based on their comparative quantitative analysis of standardised ethnicity categories and regional origins and their evaluation of the CSEW and census’ methodologies, they propose an alternative categorisation of ethnicity, focusing on the ‘Mixed’, ‘Asian’, and ‘Latinx/Hispanic’ ethnic groups.

Using adjusted crosstabulations and logistic regression models, they found variations in ethnic patterns of violence victimisation based on standardised measures and their alternative recategorisation, particularly relating to the distinction between ‘Asian’ sub-groups, the recategorisation of ‘Mixed’ ethnicities, and the inclusion of ‘Latinx/Hispanic’ as a distinctive ethnic group.

Their findings reveal valuable insights into the implications of ethnic categorisation for understanding violence inequalities, with significant implications for further policy and research areas.

For further information please see: Social Sciences | Free Full-Text | (Mis)Representing Ethnicity in UK Government Statistics and Its Implications for Violence Inequalities (mdpi.com)

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Event: Zero tolerance to female genital mutilation

This event is in the past.

The International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is 6 February every year. The United Nations Assembly designated the day with the aim to amplify and direct the efforts on the elimination of this practice.

In support to highlight the day and the horrific practice of FGM, IKWRO, a London-based human rights organisation for Middle Eastern, North African and Afghan women and girls living in the UK, is hosting Zero tolerance to female genital mutilation on 5 February 2024, 2 – 5 pm, in London at Resource for London, 356 Holloway Road, London N7 6PA.

The event brings together experts and survivors to shed light on the challenges and gaps in safeguarding women and girls globally in the context of FGM:

Payzee Mahmod, Campaign Manager at IKWRO
Naana Otoo-Oyortey, Executive Director of FORWARD, an African diaspora women’s rights organisation in the UK
Mama Sylla, an FGM survivor and chairwoman of La FRATERNITE UK, a London-based registered charity
Shamsa Araweelo, an FGM survivor and social activist
Janet Fyle, Royal College of Midwives’ (RCM) Professional Policy Advisor and a Cardiff University School of Policy Law accredited Expert Witness
Jaswant Kaur Narwal, Chief Crown Prosecutor
Aisha K. Gill, Ph.D., CBE is Professor of Criminology at University of Bristol
Detective Superintendent Alex Castle, Metropolitan Police and Lead Responsible Officer for Harmful Practices and co-chair of the London Harmful Practice Working Group

Speakers and attendees will engage in discussions about the pressing issues surrounding FGM such as the challenges and barriers to disclosure, reporting and prosecution and explore ways to bridge the existing gaps through policy changes, community involvement and institutional improvements.

For further information on the free event and to register, please see: Zero Tolerance to FGM Conference

Or please contact VISION Senior Research Fellow, Dr Ladan Hashemi at: ladan.hashemi@city.ac.uk

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New Data Assessment Tool: Mitigating Risk of Bias – Ethnicity and Migration

At UK Prevention Research Partnership (UKPRP) funded consortium VISION we have dedicated a workstream to studying the data gaps, analytical biases, and systemic blind spots that arise around questions of race, ethnicity and migration. We acknowledge that all research data is socially constructed. Asking questions about that process of construction can help researchers be aware of the biases and distortions that will arise when data are used uncritically and unreflectively.

Over the first two years of the project, we have considered the gaps in our own data, drawn on expertise and insight from our research team and associates, and drawn on a diverse array of methodological and disciplinary backgrounds. This research has allowed us to develop a tool to support researchers on our project and beyond to mitigate the risk of introducing or reproducing bias regarding ethnicity and migration in data, analysis and reporting findings. The tool initially responds specifically to administrative and survey data but can be adapted for use with any dataset.

The tool was conceived following consultation with VISION colleagues regarding the construction of ethnicity and migration data across the consortium. The objective was to produce the best quality data and analysis possible that could account for diversity and diverse experiences in the population. The VISION consortium is concerned with measuring violence: ethnicity and migration status are key areas where violence is underreported, which creates gaps in data. We found that existing datasets are unable to properly reflect diversity and inequality in the population and therefore cannot fully explain different experiences. Thus, we sought ways to prevent reproducing biases and data gaps within our analyses.

A collaborative workshop held by the Ethnicity and Migration research group initiated an iterative process of tool development. A meeting with the UKPRP Community of Practice for Race and Ethnicity specified feedback to the tool design. Extensive research of existing literature took place between September 2022 and March 2023 and was summarised into a companion document, both providing citations and further information.

A draft tool and companion document was shared with specialist service IMKAAN (a by-and-for service for minoritized women and girls at risk of violence) in July 2023 for consultative feedback.

I am pleased to announce the tool is now ready for circulation and use.

The tool comprises three parts:

The first part offers guiding questions to assess the quality of a data set at the adoption stage, with regard to how well the dataset mitigates the potential biases that may be produced during data collection regarding ethnicity and migration. Researchers can apply the questions within this section to any dataset they are adopting, although it was designed particularly with survey data and administrative data in mind because these are the main datasets used in the VISION project.
The second part of the tool guides the researcher in a reflective process that is intended to allow the researcher to assess the potential for internally held biases or structural and systemic biases to which they have been exposed affecting the data analysis.
The third part asks researchers to consider the impact of reporting findings. The wording of publications might affect how the finds are interpreted or reported in the media, cited by other researchers, or circulated. Findings might also be misused. This final section of the tool offers some techniques for mitigating the misinterpretation or misuse of findings (although we acknowledge that this is often outside of researcher control).

This document will evolve over time, therefore, we are keen for your feedback. If you download the tool and guide and use them, please let us know how you get on! Is the tool easy to use? Is the guide clear? How effective were they in helping you mitigate bias when working with your data? Please let us know by contacting Andri at Alexandria.innes@city.ac.uk. We look forward to hearing from you!

Download the assessment tool

RiskOfBias_web Download

Download the companion guide

VISION-TADRoB_web Download