Promoting community-led responses to violence against immigrant and refugee women in metropolitan and regional Australia:
The ASPIRE Project

This participatory research project worked with communities in eight geographic locations (two inner-city, three outer-suburban, and three regional) across Victoria and Tasmania, to generate evidence about immigrant and refugee women’s experiences of violence. The project engaged communities through extensive consultation prior to data collection and facilitatated community members’ participation in generating and analysing data. A mix of qualitative methods was used to generate rich data about the family, cultural and place-based contexts that shape the impact and dynamics of violence against immigrant and refugee women; women’s help-seeking efforts; and participating cultural communities’ attitudes and responses to violence and its prevention.

The project also used Photovoice, a creative photographic methodology, to work with immigrant and refugee women who are leading responses to family violence in diverse cultural communities to document their perspectives on the need for, approaches to, and opportunities for supporting, community-led responses to violence against immigrant and refugee women.

The results of the research were communicated to communities, service providers and policy-makers through written, verbal and visual approaches.

This project produced evidence on violence against immigrant and refugee women that:

• encourages culturally-appropriate prevention methods and support interventions;
• supports efforts by both the family violence and the multicultural/settlement sectors to develop women-centred approaches to family violence against immigrant and refugee women; and
• supports building local communities’ awareness and capacity to respond to violence against immigrant and refugee women.