At the borders: Exploring migrant women’s experiences of precarity, family violence and help-seeking in Victoria, Australia

Abstract

Addressing the problem of family violence has received significant attention among governments at a range of levels in Australia, with researchers, practitioners, and advocates highlighting the need to tailor policy and service responses in ways that address the diversity of women’s lived experiences. In recent years, Australian feminist researchers have also contributed to understandings of the ways that migrant women experience and seek help for family violence, drawing attention to the influence of factors such as migration policies on the nature of women’s experiences. This presentation reports on findings from an empirical study that examined how migrant women living in Victoria, Australia experience and access support for family violence. Drawing on interviews with victim-survivors and professional stakeholders, the presentation explores how women’s insecure migration status intersected with family violence and uses precarity as a lens to interpret women’s experiences. The presentation examines how precarity functions as a structural condition that has implications in terms of various forms or patterns of inequality that heighten women’s vulnerability to violence and undermine their efforts to ensure their safety and survival. It suggests that for government approaches to be effective in their efforts to address violence against all women and children, further recognition of the diverse ways in which women’s experiences are impacted by the structure of the migration program is required.