Immigrant Women and Family Violence

Family violence is a pervasive problem that affects us all.  Even if you have not personally been the victim of abuse, it is a problem that exists in all of our communities and has touched the lives of women we know:  our sisters, mothers, co-workers, and friends.  Victims of abuse often endure in silence, afraid to speak out for any number of reasons.  Some women fear they would simply not be believed; others worry about how the news might devastate and tear apart their families, while others live in fear of what their attackers would do to them if they spoke out.  Violence against women occurs in all socio-economic classes and is not solely the result of patriarchal power.  The interplay of race, class, and gender mediates women’s experiences of violence and shapes the resources available to women to deal with their abusive situations. 

In recent decades, feminists have worked to bring greater awareness of family violence.  We now know that for many women, the home is a dangerous place.  In most cases, the abuser is not a stranger, but someone known to the woman, a boyfriend, a husband, a trusted relative, etc.  We’ve also seen improved resources for abused women and their children and more aggressive criminal intervention in cases of wife abuse.  Yet men continue to abuse their partners.  For immigrant and refugee women living on the margins of society, racism, classism and sexism all operate to limit their opportunities and contain them within vulnerable positions where they have little power. 

There are many structural barriers that marginalize immigrant women and make it difficult for them to leave abusive relationships.  Canada’s adoption of the Point System in 1967 transformed Canada’s immigration policy from an explicitly racist policy to one based on an objective set of criteria, yet racism and sexism continue to pervade Canadian immigration policies.  Indeed, the criteria for entrance do not take into account global gender inequalities which deny women access to educational and employment opportunities.  These inequalities make it difficult for women to qualify for entrance in the economic class as ‘independents’ and therefore most women are only eligible for entrance into Canada under the family class category as ‘dependents.  The consequence of this legal status is that these women are denied federally-sponsored language training and employment assistance programs (Arat-Koc, 1999; Dua, 1999).  Without access to English or French language training, immigrant women are severely restricted in terms of the employment they make take.  Unable to speak English, immigrant women are relegated to low pay, low status jobs in the lowest echelons of the labour force (Menjivar & Salcido, 2002).  Immigrant women become financially dependent on their husbands, which becomes much more problematic in cases of spousal abuse. 

In addition to trapping women within the lowest economic levels of society, the inability to communicate effectively in English also isolates women within their homes, making them dependent on their children to act as translators and mediators for them into Canadian society.  For those women who cannot speak English and therefore would be unable to find alternative social networks, the fear of ostracism by their ethno-racial community effectively immobilizes them from reporting the abuse (McDonald, 1999).  Already excluded from Canadian society, abused immigrant women are reluctant to report their abuse for fear that they may not be believed and therefore may be excluded from the one community they feel they belong (Jiwani, 2001).  Abused immigrant women’s lack of English language skills also restricts their access to social service agencies and to the justice system, making them dependent on an interpreter for translation (Shirwadkar, 2004).  Often the interpreters are members of the woman’s cultural community.  This compromises confidentiality and can engender feelings of shame and embarrassment for the abused woman (Jiwani). 

As I’ve already mentioned, women’s limited language and job training relegates them into low pay, low status work.  This racialized and feminized job ghetto ensures women’s dependency on their husbands.  Because they are financially dependent on their husbands, abused immigrant women fear that if they leave their husbands, they are their children will be completely destitute (Martin & Mosher, 1995).  Many immigrant women are not well informed about financial matters and seldom have their own bank accounts.  Because many of these women are sponsored by their husbands, they are not entitled to receive welfare or other forms of government assistance, and therefore finding good affordable housing is particularly difficult.  Moreover, immigrant women who do leave abusive relationships often report being exploited by their landlords, a situation exacerbated by language barriers and immigrant women’s unfamiliarity with Canadian law and tenants’ rights. 

For many immigrant women, the fear of deportation causes further submission to abuse.  Because immigrant women are usually sponsored by their husbands, they fear that if they report the abuse, the separation from their husbands may be grounds for deportation (McDonald, 1999).  Unlike other Canadian women who are privileged in their citizenship status, immigrant women are often unaware of their legal rights and therefore continue to endure the abuse. 

Many immigrant women are unwilling to report their abuse because they fear racism from the police (Shirwadkar, 2004).  Das Gupta (1998) points out that many abused immigrant women believe that if they disclose their experiences of violence, this will solidify Canadians’ already negative perceptions about their own community, which will serve to further marginalize all members of their community.  Studies also suggest that women in the Caribbean community in Toronto feel particularly trapped by racist discourse.  These women are discouraged by their own community from reporting the abuse to the police because black men ‘already have a hard time’ (Paredes, 1992).  These women are expected by their community to protect black men from further racism by keeping silent and enduring the abuse.  Because racism is so pervasive at all levels of Canadian society, including the police and the judiciary, women who report violence are perceived by their community as ‘race traitors’ (Jiwani, 2001).

To effectively deal with wife abuse, we need to look beyond individual instances of violence and address the structural inequalities that pervade society.  Part of the solution involves providing women with access to English and employment training, affordable housing and quality, affordable childcare.  We also need to provide services that can meet the specific needs of immigrant women.  Ethno-racial specific organizations that are equipped to provide linguistically appropriate and culturally sensitive services are a must.

June 17, 2008 | Filed Under family violence | Leave a Comment 

Asia Minor Catastrophe

I’ve been doing some research recently about the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922 and I’ve started reading some of the narratives of the refugees who were forced to flee Smyrna and escape to mainland Greece.  I’m really interested in how memories of that event have shifted over the years and how the children and grandchildren of those refugees remember (and also forget) this tragic history.  My grandfather’s family was originally from a town just outside of Smyrna.  They left when he was just a small child and eventually settled in Mytilini.  My mother left Lesvos when she was in her 20s; she came to Canada and married my father who is from Cyprus.  I’m really interested in this history and I’m considering doing this subject for my dissertation, specifically how  personal and collective memories of the Asia Minor catastrophe have shaped the identities of Greeks in the larger diaspora.  I’m going to begin posting more detailed blogs as I learn more about this history.  If anyone would like to share family memories and personal stories about the expulsion and resettlement of Asia Minor refugees I would love to hear from you.   Please post your thoughts and stories and perhaps we could build a sort of community.  Thanks!

May 28, 2008 | Filed Under Asia Minor Catastrophe, Family histories | Leave a Comment 

Aboriginal Women in Canada

Throughout Canada’s history – and even before Canada became a nation – government officials, social reformers and various middle-class professionals have attempted to regulate the personal lives of individuals in an effort to create a particular version of Canada. Indeed, a major focus of Canada’s colonial project was not simply to dispossess Aboriginal people from their lands, but also to dehumanize them by constructing Aboriginal people as ‘savage’ and the ‘other’, while at the same time normalizing white Europeans as ‘civilized’. Interestingly, the treatment of Aboriginals by Indian agents and European settlers was clearly gendered. The particular means of confining women on reserves and the use of legislation (the Indian Act, 1876) to deny women and their children Indian status if they married a white man, quite clearly demonstrates the gendered regulation of women and the attempts by Euro-Canadians to contain women and remake Aboriginal women according to dictates of Victorian domesticity.

October 1, 2007 | Filed Under Aboriginal Women | Leave a Comment 

Provincial Leadership Debate

I actually laughed out loud a few times last night as I watched the provincial election debate. Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty’s visible frustration (shaking his head like a little schoolboy), his repeated references to the mistakes of the NDP over 15 years ago, and his inability to adequately address the broken promises his party had made under his leadership, provided some of the most comical and disappointing moments of the night. While PC leader John Tory may have presented himself rather well, much of his strategy focused on attacking McGuinty, often relying on anecdotal evidence to counter McGuinty’s problematic statistical evidence. NDP leader Howard Hampton also attacked McGuinty, however, he provided much more factually based arguments and proposed several clear and concise commitments that he believes will strengthen Ontario.

This morning I was absolutely shocked when I saw the front page of the Metro: a full-page advertisement authorized by the Liberals – and which looked deceptively like a newspaper column - declaring, “McGuinty Liberals the Clear Choice.” But what bothered me even more was the news that despite the barrage of critical challenges made by Tory and Hampton, as well as McGuinty’s inability to satisfactory address those criticisms, not much has changed in the minds of the voters. Thanks to the faith-based school issue, the Liberals will probably win the upcoming election.

While I do not agree with John Tory’s promise to provide government funding for faith-based schools, nor do I agree with Howard Hampton’s commitment to dramatically increasing the minimum wage, I do not believe that McGuinty is the alternative. As voters, we need to hold our elected leaders accountable. McGuinty has consistently failed us with his broken promises and his later denial of those failures. In the upcoming election, we have an opportunity to show not only McGuinty but all politicians that we will not stand for corruption in government and that we want leaders who are responsible, accountable, and represent the interests of Ontarians.

September 21, 2007 | Filed Under Ontario, Provincial Election | Leave a Comment 

21st Century Slavery

Foreign domestic workers are among the most vulnerable and exploited group of workers in Canada. Despite the tremendous demand for their labour, these women are unable to enter Canada through the points system because the state does not define childcare as skilled labour. Through the Live-in Caregiver policy (LCP), women from the developing world are able to apply for entry into Canada, but while Citizenship and Immigration Canada celebrates this program as being beneficial to women from the Third World, in reality it is the Canadian state and Canadian families who benefit most from this supply of cheap labour. Although these women are fulfilling important economic demands, they are not entitled to the same rights as landed immigrants who enter through the points system. As temporary workers these women are subject to the rules and regulations of the Canadian collective, at the same time that they are denied fundamental rights. The fact that these women are not accorded landed immigrant status and are required to live in the home of their employers leaves them highly vulnerable to abuse.

Foreign domestic workers were not always defined simply as cheap labour. When white British women first began to come to Canada to work as domestics and to help settle the land, these women enjoyed a privileged position. They were identified as civilizers of the nation-state and recognized as ‘daughters of the empire’ and future ‘mothers of the nation.’ Today, most of the domestic workers who come to Canada are women of colour, and consequently are excluded from membership within the Canadian collective. But because of the poverty in their home countries, these women continue to come to Canada, often leaving behind their own families in order to take care of the children of white, middle- and upper-class Canadian parents.

The vast discrepancy of wealth between first and third world countries has created an opportunity for the Canadian state to benefit from the exploitation of skilled female professionals, while at the same time presenting itself as a benevolent government interested in the well-being of these workers.

The Live-in Caregiver program is an exploitative government policy that must be abolished. Live-in domestic workers in Canada are essentially indentured servants.

As Canadians, we should be ashamed of ourselves for sitting back and allowing our government to continue this policy of abuse.

September 16, 2007 | Filed Under Live-in Caregiver Policy | Leave a Comment 

Division and Exclusion: The Problem of Faith-Based Schools

By now we’ve all heard the arguments for and against public funding for faith-based schools in Ontario. While John Tory has tried to position himself as a champion of equality, Dalton McGuinty has recently denounced the idea, arguing that it will lead to segregation and threaten the current stability of Ontario’s public education system. For a moment, let’s try to push aside the rhetoric of this election campaign and focus on one important question: what kind of Ontario do we want to live in? While I do agree that our current system is unfair, in that public funds support the Catholic school board but none of the other faith-based schools in Ontario, I worry about the potential consequences if John Tory’s Conservatives are elected in the upcoming election. Although I don’t believe that Ontario schools will be entirely ‘sequestered and segregated,’ a government policy for faith-based schools will indeed create divisiveness among Ontario’s school children and, ultimately, within Ontario communities. I would hate for my future children to go to a public school where the only other faces they see, are those that look like theirs. Another issue, of course, is the practical application of this system. While we would all agree that faith-based schools must use certified teachers and follow provincial curriculum, will these schools also be forced to abide by other rules and regulations that directly conflict with their religious values and beliefs? Will homosexual students, for example, be excluded by religious schools because they have chosen to live their lives in ways that challenge the doctrines of religion? Although funding for faith-based schools would certainly pacify religious and ethnic leaders in Canada, I think this policy would ultimately result in the substitution of one inequality for another.

September 11, 2007 | Filed Under Equality, Faith-Based School, Ontario, Toronto | Leave a Comment 

New Direction for Women’s History

Within the last thirty years, feminist researchers and historians have attempted to recover the histories and experiences of marginalized and silenced women. Many of these scholars have attempted to challenge dominant stereotypes of woman as passive and docile, and have focused on redefining women as active actors in history. Numerous studies have underscored the point that although women were forced to contend with patriarchal dictates that limited their power as individuals, these women have also contributed significantly to the survival of their families and to the strength of their communities. Of course, a major problem of this research was its emphasis on ‘sisterhood.’ Feminist historians tended to focus on women’s subjugation under patriarchy, assuming that women shared a common oppression that transcended class, ethnic and racial differences. But by focusing on women’s commonality, these researchers homogenized women, ignoring the reality that race and class create unequal relationships of power. Indeed, by celebrating sisterhood, we obscure the social processes that operate to privilege some women while racializing others. Rather than simply recognizing racial diversity or celebrating multiculturalism, we need to also critically examine how difference operates to mediate women’s experiences and their interactions with others. Instead of simply locating women’s agency, new research needs to examine the ways in which discourses of race and class have constructed some groups of ‘white’ middle-class women as legitimately belonging to the Canadian collective, while excluding and demonizing others. Any discussion of women – even white, middle-class women – needs to critically examine not only gender oppression, but issues of race and class as well.

September 7, 2007 | Filed Under "Sisterhood" vs. Difference, Class, Gender, Race, Women's History | Leave a Comment