At the Bar, April 2024, 10-15

This article summarises some of the critical barriers
ethnic and migrant women face when trying to leave
a violent relationship. The article also discusses
some of the specific ways in which immigration policy
intersects with other jurisdictions to suppress help-
seeking behaviour by victims and deter them from
leaving abusive relationships. The article draws on
the writer’s experience working through Community
Law Wellington & Hutt Valley with ethnic and migrant
victim survivors of FVSV and also victims of migrant
workplace exploitation where cultural-based power
dynamics are also observed but in the context of
employment relationships. While the focus in this
article is FVSV, the writer has observed that in both
contexts, (FVSV and migrant exploitation):
(a) immigration policy is failing vulnerable people in
migrant and ethnic communities;
(b) structural, bureaucratic and other barriers are
furthering victims’ entrapment, preventing them
from accessing support, and failing to hold
perpetrators to account; and
(c) there are gaps in understanding intersectional
barriers and challenges, and decisions in one
domain such as employment, social welfare or
criminal or family jurisdictions are often made
with seemingly little awareness of either cultural
factors or immigration-related consequences, and
this can have devastating impacts on victim-
survivors of violence. (From the article). Record #8693