Domestic violence and minoritisation: Legal and policy barriers facing minoritized women leaving violent relationships

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlp.2004.12.004Get rights and content

Abstract

This article on service responses to women of African, African-Caribbean, Irish, Jewish and South Asian backgrounds facing domestic violence draws on our recently completed study based in Manchester, UK (Batsleer et al., 2002) [Batsteeler, J., Burman, E., Chantler, K., McIntosh, S.H., Pantling, K., Smailes, S., Warner, S., et al. 2002. Domestic violence minoritisation: Supporting women to indepence. Women's Studies Centre: The Manchester Metropolitan University]. We frame our analysis of domestic violence and minoritisation around the question that is frequently posed in relation to women living with domestic violence: ‘why doesn’t she leave?’ In response, we highlight the complex and intersecting connections between domestic violence, law, mental health provision, entitlement to welfare services, which function alongside constructions of ‘culture’ and cultural identifications, structures of racism, class and gendered oppression. All these contribute to maintain women, particularly minoritized women, in violent relationships. Further, we illustrate how leaving violent relationships does not necessarily guarantee the safety of women and children escaping domestic violence.

Despite many recent legal and social policy initiatives in the UK that have usefully brought domestic violence into the public domain, there have also been counter-measures which have made leaving violent relationships correspondingly more difficult, in particular for women from minoritized communities. We offer an analysis of how state practices, particularly facets of immigration law in the UK (although Bhattacharjee, 1997, provides an equivalent U.S. analysis), interact with domestic violence. These not only equip perpetrators with a powerful tool to oppress minoritized women further, but it also indicates how state structures thereby come to impact directly on women’s distress (Chantler et al, 2001). In addition, we highlight how other aspects of state policy and practice which enter into the material well-being of survivors of domestic violence, for example, housing, levels of state benefits, and child-care also pose significant obstacles to minoritized women leaving violent relationships. Whilst women from majority/dominant groups also face many of these barriers, we illustrate how the racialized dimensions of such policies heightens their exclusionary effects. It is argued that legal and psychological strategies need to address the complexity of how public, state and institutional practices intersect with racism, class and gender oppression in order to develop more sensitive and accessible ways of supporting minoritized women and children living with domestic violence.

Section snippets

Context and rationale for the study

This paper draws on our recently completed locally based study1 of service responses to minoritized2

Design and methodological issues

The study was qualitative in design, aiming to amplify available epidemiological and statistical analyses that have documented how minoritized women are underrepresented within domestic violence (and related e.g. homeless, housing) services by providing some indications of the meanings of such patterns (Burman, 2000). Interviews with both survivors and workers were oriented around the following five areas: eliciting accounts of experiences of identifying and using services; barriers to

Beyond individualist explanations

The popular refrain ‘why doesn't she leave’ is often asked of women in violent relationships. This question both frames individual responses to such women and informs service responses and even models of service provision. A panoply of legal, psychological, psychiatric, and medical practices bolster this approach (e.g. British Medical Association, 1998) with local and central government policies on domestic violence following suit). They explicitly draw on notions of ‘learned helplessness’, and

Immigration and no recourse to public funds

The issue of how immigration status connects with domestic violence emerged as a key theme in our study on domestic violence and minoritisation (Batsleer et al., 2002), as well as in our previous study on service responses to South Asian women around attempted suicide and self-harm (Chantler et al., 2001). Immigration and its impact loomed large in many of the survivors' efforts to access services, and in particularly distressing ways. Yet, significantly, while immigration was pivotal in many

‘No recourse to public funds’, racism, and refuge provision

As indicated, the British Home Office one-year rule states that women who have entered Britain as spouses of British citizens do not have recourse to any public funds should the marriage break up within one year. This rule has particular impact for South Asian, non-EEC European women and African women (since economic union has extended national rights to welfare to encompass EEC members). Indeed currently there are government proposals to extend this period to two years. Extending the period to

Domestic violence, employment, and poverty

Modern western individualism values economic and psychological independence highly (Hare-Mustin & Marecek, 1986; Pederson, 1987). This is intensified within neoliberal ‘free market’ capitalist policies emphasising not only flexibility of labour but also economic and affective self-sufficiency. This is reflected in the current British government strategy emphasis on promoting a specific type of economic independence, in the form of welfare to work initiatives such as New Deal, and the recent Job

‘Once you leave you are safe’

Implicit within the question of ‘why doesn't she leave?’ lies the assumption that women will be safe if only they would leave abusive relationships. As we have already illustrated, the material disadvantages of leaving can be significant. Even beyond this, in this section we challenge the assumption that women are safe when they leave. The 1996 British Crime Survey, which is generally regarded as the best estimate of domestic violence for England and Wales, indicated that women currently

The need for gender sensitive anti-racist analysis

Many people from minoritized communities are understandably wary of accessing mainstream services, and minoritized women because of both language and cultural barriers as well as experiences of racism, may be particularly reluctant or unable to approach services. Similarly, any investigation of domestic violence within minoritized communities faces charges of fuelling racism by perpetuating widespread cultural stereotypes that these groups are more oppressive to women than the dominant culture.

Conclusions

In this paper we have discussed some major structural obstacles faced by minoritized women surviving domestic violence that, we contend, play a key role in sustaining oppressive relationships, including the state-level practice of immigration legislation as well as health and social service policy and provision. Hence explanations in terms of particular cultural practices and norms relating to gender relations can be seen to commit an equivalent error of cultural pathologisation that obscures

Acknowledgements

In addition to gratefully acknowledging the funding of this project from the European Social Fund and Manchester Metropolitan University, we thank Paul Morris and Nadia Siddiqui from South Manchester Law Centre for useful discussion and information about the one-year rule and the domestic violence concessions to it.

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