Immigration, Culture Conflict and Domestic Violence/Woman Battering
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Immigration, Culture Conflict and Domestic Violence/Woman Battering Edna Erez 1 This article explores the way in which immigration status interacts with domestic violence/woman battering in the lives of immigrant women in multicultural societies such as the USA, Australia, Germany and Israel. It reviews the reasons immigrant women are particularly vulnerable to battering, and discusses the reasons they stay with the batterers, avoid reporting the abuse to law enforcement authorities, and under-utilise social services. The article concludes with the implications of these issues for criminal justice policy and research. Key Words: Woman battering; immigration; patriarchy; interpreters; reporting to police Introduction The claim that the USA, Australia, Canada, Germany and Israel are multicultural societies is, on one level, merely a description of the demographic composition and the diversity of social life in these countries. Their populations encompass a variety of cultures, races, ethnic groups and linguistic communities. Substantial numbers come from non-English (or non-Hebrew, or non-German) speaking backgrounds from Europe (Eastern and Western), the Middle East, other parts of Asia, Central and South America, and sub-Saharan Africa. In 1990, the number of immigrants in the USA surpassed 1.5 million. Despite their diversity, immigrant communities have one thing in common with each other and with the society in which they live: the patriarchal social order supporting violence against women. In many immigrant communities, this social order tolerates and often denies the violence, protects perpetrators and silences victims. Anti-immigrant sentiments in many of these countries compound the plight of all immigrants, but have particularly harmed battered immigrant women, who are afraid of utilising social and health services, or calling the police for help. Their ‘access to justice’ is seriously compromised through the convergence of cultural, social and legal circumstances. For battered immigrant women, immigration laws, welfare laws and various legal and cultural barriers to accessing civil and criminal court assistance render almost meaningless fundamental rights and ideologies such as ‘equal protection’ or ‘equality before the law’. All immigrants suffer alienation and loneliness induced by the distance from the familiar context of their homeland, all are exposed to prejudice and discrimination, and all have to undergo the rigours of life in a foreign country. Women, however, often suffer disadvantages and hardships related to their immigrant status over and above those endured by their male
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Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal
counterparts. Male immigrants have generally emigrated to try to improve their life chances through better employment or educational opportunities. Women who emigrate to another country almost invariably do so because of their familial ties. Wives and daughters subsume their own needs and interests to those of the
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