So, I'm still workshopping my character. I'm going to assume there are asteroid mining colonies that might just be built into the asteroid itself. Thinking of making my character originally from such an asteroid colony that ended up providing lower yield than the Earth-based corporation expected, so to cut their losses, the corporation just abandoned the colony and all the workers, leaving them stranded in space. The colonists cobbled together an escape vessel and what fuel they had left and launched themselves towards the moon, where they were picked up as refugees.