Understanding Intimate Partner Violence among Immigrant and Refugee Women: A Grounded Theory Analysis

ABSTRACT

Immigrant and refugee women may experience considerable multifaceted and interrelated barriers that place them at heightened risk for intimate partner violence (IPV). The objective of this analysis was to increase our understanding of immigrant and refugee women’s responses to abuse. We conducted in-depth interviews with 84 women who immigrated from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Engendering Resilience to Survive emerged as the core category explaining women’s strength to stay safe and survive IPV experiences. In the face of the violence they experienced, women in this sample demonstrated remarkable resilience and the ability to harness their strength to survive. Resilience as a process and outcome could facilitate empowerment, and self-directedness to access health services and resources to stay safe. The developed Engendering Resilience to Survive Model can be utilized as a framework to inform research, policy, and practice to support abused women.

KEYWORDS:

• Acculturation
• domestic violence
• resilience
• safety

Acknowledgments

We are particularly grateful to the survivors who shared their stories and our community partners for their support and work on this project.

Disclosure of interest

All authors, VNC, BS, JTM, CS, AWL, CF, and JC, declare they have no real or perceived conflicts of interest to report.

Ethical standards and informed consent

“All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation [institutional and national] and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.”

Additional information

Funding

This research project is supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Grant Award Number 1 R01 HD081179 01A1