Immigrant Women and Partner Violence
KUUSELA, HANNA (2011)
KUUSELA, HANNA
2011
Sosiaalityö - Social Work
Yhteiskunta- ja kulttuuritieteiden yksikkö - School of Social Sciences and Humanities
This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2011-05-11
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:uta-1-21350
https://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:uta-1-21350
Tiivistelmä
Violence against women is a global problem, which can be recognized in every society and culture. Both in Canada and Finland the research about violence against immigrant women has begun quite recently and therefore, there is still a lot we do not know about this phenomenon and thus a demand for research. Immigrant women face unique circumstances and are in a vulnerable position of being abused. They are not a homogeneous group, on the contrary, they have individual life experiences but they all have been born outside the country of immigration and are so part of the minority. Family violence is a gendered issue even though many researchers tend to use neutral terms and so to let the readers understand that both men and women can be equally violent. The reality is, nonetheless, unbalanced and it has been suggested that ”family violence” should be called ”male violence” since males are largely responsible for most of the domestic violence. This is the reason why in this thesis I focus only in the abuse against women, and especially against immigrant women.
My main question for this thesis is: what are the societal risk factors which make immigrant women vulnerable to partner violence. I believe that knowing an answer to this question might make it possible to help abused immigrant women in better way and gives information about what kind of changes should be done in the society so that immigrant women could free themselves from violence. To get more information about the topic I interviewed abused immigrant women and the workers who meet these women every day. I have used four major themes: racism, immigration status, social welfare and legal systems and collision of the cultures and built a semi-structured interview around them. The interviews were done in Canada but I write from a Finnish perspective so that the gained information could be used in Finland.
The literature review and interview data describe quite similar risk factors and reasons for abuse. A big difference between Canada and Finland is that the education and knowledge of those workers who work with immigrant women: in Canada there is a lot more experience and training about immigration issues. Finland has less immigrants and the awareness of the special needs of immigrants is quite new. There is a lack of culturally sensitive services and in my opinion, to improve the situation culturally sensitive work should be taught already during the social work university studies.
Asiasanat:partner abuse, immigrant women, Canada, society, risk factors
My main question for this thesis is: what are the societal risk factors which make immigrant women vulnerable to partner violence. I believe that knowing an answer to this question might make it possible to help abused immigrant women in better way and gives information about what kind of changes should be done in the society so that immigrant women could free themselves from violence. To get more information about the topic I interviewed abused immigrant women and the workers who meet these women every day. I have used four major themes: racism, immigration status, social welfare and legal systems and collision of the cultures and built a semi-structured interview around them. The interviews were done in Canada but I write from a Finnish perspective so that the gained information could be used in Finland.
The literature review and interview data describe quite similar risk factors and reasons for abuse. A big difference between Canada and Finland is that the education and knowledge of those workers who work with immigrant women: in Canada there is a lot more experience and training about immigration issues. Finland has less immigrants and the awareness of the special needs of immigrants is quite new. There is a lack of culturally sensitive services and in my opinion, to improve the situation culturally sensitive work should be taught already during the social work university studies.
Asiasanat:partner abuse, immigrant women, Canada, society, risk factors