This qualitative study conducted in Johannesburg and Pretoria, explores the effect of migration
on domestic violence. Drawing on the social constructionist and feminist theory, the study
investigates how migrant women understand and explain the effect of migration on domestic
violence. Participants were identified using purposive and snowball techniques and narratives
of fifteen migrant women were employed in data collection using a semi-structured interview
guide. Data for this study was analysed using a combination of content, narrative and discourse
analysis.
Analysis of the data revealed that the context in which domestic violence is experienced greatly
shaped how urban migrant women understood and explained domestic violence. Participants
explained the meaning and effect of migration on domestic violence mainly drawing on
discourses related to their experiences of migration. In addition, their definitions of domestic
violence differed from the classical definitions that group domestic violence in categories;
given that they drew on actual experiences in the context of migration as opposed to their home
country to explain what domestic violence meant and how migration affected it.
Further analysis, shows that broader factors in the context of migration including migrant
women’s legal status, xenophobia, poverty, unemployment as well as immigration policies,
intersected broadly with gender and unequal power relationships to increase migrant women’s
vulnerability to domestic violence. Migrant women in this case, drew mainly on such migration
related discourses to explain reasons that they felt led to increased domestic violence and to
show how and why they endured domestic violence for survival in the absence of love for their
spouses.
2
Factors including being migrants, women’s legal status, xenophobia, lack of networks,
dependency caused by poverty and high crime rates in South Africa were also seen by migrant
women as heightening their fear of public violence leading to the tolerance and preference of
private violence as the only available option.
Migrant women also idealised their home country as safer from domestic violence to show the
negative consequences of migration on women and how it increases domestic violence. In
doing so, they drew on the discourse of culture which they understood as tied to place to
explain its role in prohibiting and minimising domestic violence, and to justify not using
available services for responding to domestic violence in South Africa. In employing such
discourses, they intended to show how services for responding to domestic violence in the host
country1 were culturally inappropriate for migrant women and the attachments they held
towards their home country and culture.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/6042 |
| Date | 11 February 2009 |
| Creators | Kiwanuka, Monica |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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