Navigating migrant infrastructure and gendered infrastructural violence: reflections from Brazilian women in London
Author(s)
McIlwaine, Cathy
Evans, Yara
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
This paper explores some of the institutional and theoretical silences within debates on infrastructural violence with reference to migrant women survivors of gendered violence. Drawing from feminist thinking around structural and symbolic oppression, it develops the notion of gendered infrastructural violence to help understand how migrant women survivors navigate statutory and non-statutory institutions when seeking support. Empirically, the paper elucidates how diverse Brazilian migrant women in London negotiate multiple forms of passive and active infrastructural violence played out in terms of xenophobia, discrimination and a hostile immigration environment. Such experiences can dissuade them from reporting due to actual and perceived fear of further violence being perpetrated against them. While infrastructural violence perpetrated by an oppressive racial state can exacerbate Brazilian migrant women’s suffering of direct gendered abuse, migrant and/or feminist organisations provide invaluable support and an essential protective bulwark. Yet these experiences are mediated differently depending on women’s social locations in terms of intersecting race, class, occupational and immigration status and language competencies.
Date Issued
2023-03-04
Date Acceptance
2022-04-10
Citation
Gender, Place and Culture: a journal of feminist geography, 2023, 30 (3), pp.395-417
ISSN
0966-369X
Publisher
Taylor and Francis Group
Start Page
395
End Page
417
Journal / Book Title
Gender, Place and Culture: a journal of feminist geography
Volume
30
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2022-06-05