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Language, Culture and Context: Perspectives of Canadian Service Providers on Immigrant Women's Understandings and Experiences of Violence within Intimacy
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- Author / Creator
- Rajan, Nirupama
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Immigrant women from ethnocultural communities often have differing definitions and experiences of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and Domestic Violence (DV), and these processes are heavily influenced by language, culture and political contexts. However, the dominant conceptions of partner or family violence and the responses deemed appropriate to it within mainstream Canadian discourses do not account for this diversity. In turn, this creates a gap between the nature of services that many of these immigrant survivors have access to and those that they actually desire, thereby frequently discouraging them from seeking formal support. This thesis uses the framework of feminist standpoint epistemology to explore the various linguistic, cultural and contextual factors (such as immigration itself) that play overlapping roles in determining how immigrant women understand and respond to violence in diverse ways. Through interviews of six service providers from Edmonton who engage with immigrant survivors, it also shines a light on what many immigrant women look for when they approach support workers, why the existing system is not set up to cater to their specific needs, and how this creates a situation where immigrant survivors do not have equitable access to quality care and support within Canada. Finally, it suggests several areas for future research that could contribute towards more culturally-informed understandings of violence and offers some recommendations for improvements that can be made within the existing support system.
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- Graduation date
- Spring 2024
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- Type of Item
- Thesis
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- Degree
- Master of Arts
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- License
- This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.