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Research

Our research

Violence against women and children affects everybody. It impacts on the health, wellbeing and safety of a significant proportion of Australians throughout all states and territories and places an enormous burden on the nation’s economy across family and community services, health and hospitals, income-support and criminal justice systems.

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

News and events

ANROWS hosts events as part of its knowledge transfer and exchange work, including public lectures, workshops and research launches. Details of upcoming ANROWS activities and news are available from the list on the right.

ANROWS

About ANROWS

ANROWS was established by the Commonwealth and all state and territory governments of Australia to produce, disseminate and assist in applying evidence for policy and practice addressing violence against women and their children.

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

Resources

To support the take-up of evidence, ANROWS offers a range of resources developed from research to support practitioners and policy-makers in delivering evidence-based interventions.


EXTERNALLY FUNDED RESEARCH PROJECTS

Preventing coercive control for migrant and refugee women

Background

This project is designed to lead the development of the evidence base on the specificity of domestic and family violence (DFV) experienced by migrant and refugee women, with a focus on coercive control. Coercive control is an area of policy that is attracting increasing attention across Australia and elsewhere, with specific interest in the value of criminalising this practice specifically (or, as is the case in Tasmania, criminalising related behaviours such as intimidation and emotional abuse). Coercive control is understood to be a key feature of DFV, with research (e.g. Ptacek, 1999; Stark, 2007) pointing to the long-term, ongoing and pervasive nature of practices that are often not physical and compound to have a devastating and controlling impact on the individual. What is less well known about coercive control is the extent to which it may manifest in specific and particular ways in different communities, including among women who identify as migrants and refugees.

Recent research has demonstrated that migrant and refugee women experience specific forms of DFV (e.g. Boxall & Morgan, 2021; Segrave et al., 2021), but there is limited research specifically on coercive control. This research seeks to contribute to understandings of how these practices may be identified, understood and responded to by those who are the target of such actions but also by the wider community. Ensuring there is clarity in understanding is an important first step as this can help to inform efforts to prevent these practices.

Aim

The project is designed to achieve the following aims:

1. To review the extant research on coercive control for migrant and refugee women.
2. To explore experiences and understandings of coercive control with a sample of men and women from migrant and refugee backgrounds across Victoria.

Methods

This research has two key phases:

Phase one: Expert desk review. We undertook a comprehensive desk review (approximately 12,000 words) of existing academic and grey literature on migrant and refugee women’s experiences of coercive control and prevention. We found that while research on coercive control against migrant women is emerging, evidence on the effectiveness of prevention efforts remains limited.

Phase two: Qualitative research with migrant and refugee women and men.

Funding Body

Respect Victoria

Project start date

August 2022

Expected completion date

May 2023
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