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