Immigrant women,domestic and family violence and the state: A contextual global analysis of the United States and Australia

Abstract

Researchers, activists, community organizations, and other stakeholders have worked across the globe to ensure that the problem of domestic and family violence remains a public issue. Using a contextual global approach, this article examines the framing of domestic and family violence in the United States and Australia, focusing on the critical issue of citizenship status. We draw attention to immigration policies and processes and the types of factors that can compound the violence women experience in their intimate lives to make them vulnerable. We focus specifically on the need to pay attention to the precarity of citizenship or visa status in both contexts over the past two decades and draw on state responses to the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of these processes. We conclude by emphasizing the importance of collaborative and interdisciplinary research for a more comprehensive contextual global understanding of domestic and family violence to enhance policies and practices for immigrant women.

Introduction

In highlighting a spectrum of inequalities and injustices, researchers have provided important theoretical frameworks, methodologies, and practices for social change. Researchers, activists, practitioners, and other stakeholders in different contexts have challenged dominant structures and types of systemic discrimination in different parts of the globe. As part of this, they have worked in global, regional, transnational, national, and local contexts to ensure that the problem of gender-based and intersectional violence remains a public issue and on the policy agenda. Regarding domestic and family violence (DFV), researchers and community-based organizations have sought to acknowledge and document the gendered impact of policies and laws and the ways these disadvantage different groups of women, including those who experience multiple forms of marginalization. ¹ They continue to push for systemic reform and structural change.

Although DFV is a worldwide problem, cutting across cultures, boundaries, time, and political systems, addressing the social, economic, and political contexts does matter (Abraham, 2016, 2019a). This is also key to dealing with issues of violence in society, of equality and social justice. DFV can manifest in various ways and while it occurs in all communities, it cannot be generalized (Sokoloff and Dupont, 2005). Complex commonalities and differences of experiences exist based on the intersections of, for example, race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, caste, culture, age, region, religion, and immigration or citizenship status (Crenshaw, 1991; Sokoloff and Dupont, 2005). Research indicates that DFV has a disproportionate impact on marginalized groups at the micro, meso, and macro levels, and connecting these is also important (Abraham, 2019a). Intersectionality provides analytical tools for framing social justice issues to reveal how social exclusion and privilege occur differently in various structural positions, and it does this by focusing on the intersections of multiple systems of oppression (Romero, 2025). In this article, we examine immigration and citizenship to show how citizenship is socially constructed and how different statuses are linked to power systems that interact with forms of racial, class, gender, and sexual domination, which is critical to understanding DFV (Romero, 2023, 2025).

Drawing upon a contextual global sociology (Abraham, 2016, 2019a; Abraham and Purkayastha, 2012; Aulenbacher and Riegraf, 2016), we examine the framing of DFV in the contexts of the United States and Australia with a focus on the issue of citizenship status. We draw particular attention to the nature and dynamics of women’s immigration to these destination countries and use this contextual examination to demonstrate how the precarity of citizenship or visa status has emerged as an important factor that has framed immigration policies and processes, becoming increasingly institutionalized in recent years. Our analysis shows how precarity is created through the structural and systemic factors connected to state policy and the practice of citizenship that can compound vulnerability to DFV. We argue that the concept of precarity can provide a useful way to conceptualize the specific situation of immigrant women who experience DFV in both contexts, including the types of constraints that restrict their freedoms and how limited access to social services and supports can limit their pathways to safety. We also show how this situation can be both exacerbated and ameliorated by the state through law, policy, and practice in times of crisis, and use the COVID-19 pandemic as an exemplar. The article highlights the ways that citizenship is conceived, pursued, secured, and unsecured over time and how this has a disproportionate and enduring impact on the specific context of DFV for immigrant women. We argue that connecting the state, citizenship, and precarity enables us to focus attention on legal, social, economic, and cultural marginality and the vulnerabilities associated with DFV. We demonstrate how the complex dimensions of citizenship and their intersections have produced various challenges and exclusions that exacerbate inequality, precarity, and violence (Abraham, 1995, 1998, 2000a; Vasil, 2021, 2024).

After outlining our methodological approach, we examine how the state has responded to DFV in both contexts. In doing so we focus on the problem of DFV in the United States and Australia and consider similarities and differences in the framing and conceptualization of these issues. As part of this, we focus on the reliance on criminalization as a predominant state response to DFV, as well as the influence of the neoliberal policy agenda in defining the forms and flows of funding to address the issue. Second, we examine the ways in which the issue of citizenship status has been framed in research and in policy on DFV in both contexts. Third, we explore the precarity of citizenship or visa status, and the implications this has for women’s ability to access safety. In the fourth section, we build on our argument around the impact of precarity for immigrant women experiencing DFV and use state responses to the COVID-19 pandemic as an exemplar to explore how policies around citizenship can limit women’s freedom from violence, including in times of crisis. We conclude the article by emphasizing the importance of collaborative and interdisciplinary research for a more comprehensive contextual global understanding of DFV for immigrant women to ensure more meaningful and inclusive citizenship policies and practices that can contribute to reducing precarity and vulnerability to violence.

Method: A contextual global approach

DFV can manifest in various ways and while it occurs in all communities, examining the complex commonalities and differences based on the intersections of, for example, gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, caste, culture, age, region, religion, and immigration or citizenship status is important (Crenshaw, 1991; Sokoloff and Dupont, 2005). DFV has a disproportionate impact on marginalized groups at the micro, meso, and macro levels, and understanding the contexts and connecting these levels are needed (Abraham, 2000a, 1995). Feminist research in particular has highlighted the significance of examining the context of immigration and citizenship and its impact on the nature and dynamics of DFV to more accurately understand immigrant women’s lived experiences in different local, national, and transnational settings (e.g. Abraham, 2000a; Abraham et al., 2010; Erez et al., 2009; Kapur and Zajicek, 2018; Villalón, 2010). Our collaboration stems from a shared commitment to understanding DFV and immigrant experiences and advocacy in the contexts of the United States and Australia. It builds and connects with some of the issues in our previous research (see Abraham, 2000a; Vasil, 2024). Our interest centres on furthering understanding of the influence of citizenship status and its intersections with other social inequalities on immigrant women’s lived experiences, including the shifting role of the state and responses of community-based organizations in this context. This helps frame our understanding of the persistence and change of state policies and advocacy and activism to address the specific situation of immigrant victim-survivors over the past two decades. Stemming from this, we have identified the commonalities and differences in our analyses and came together to expand our understanding of this from a contextual global perspective by focusing on two countries of immigration destination. This article is based on an analysis of both contexts through a review of the scholarly and grey literature, media, and policy documents over the past two decades. Our collaboration entailed two key aspects, first, to consider how the problem of DFV has been conceptualized in both contexts with a focus on the framing in state policy documents and relevant legislation that seek to address the issue. This includes the complex commonalities and differences of experiences based on the intersection of gender and other aspects of social location such as immigration or citizenship status. Second, to consider how immigrant women are positioned in relation to state policy responses on DFV before considering how the policies, processes, and practices of immigration and citizenship have changed over time.

As previously noted by Abraham (2016, 2019a; see also Abraham and Purkayastha, 2012; Abraham and Vasil, 2024; Aulenbacher and Riegraf, 2016), a contextual global approach recognizes the global prevalence of phenomena and processes but also emphasizes the need to examine and consider the specific historical, spatial, economic, social, political, structural, and cultural contexts and their connections in our analysis. We know DFV can manifest in various ways and occurs in all communities. This requires us to acknowledge that although violence in our society is a global problem, contexts matter. Hence, we need to examine and explain its causes, manifestations, and outcomes by also considering the historical, spatial, economic, social, political, structural, and cultural contexts and connections for a stronger global analysis. This can help avoid monolithic constructions and false universalization, but also emphasizes connecting the global in different contexts without siloing. The specificities pertain to multiple levels – at the national level as well as at the meso and micro levels – and are highlighted by the lived experiences of individuals who bring in their specific experiences and situatedness in these local contexts as they encounter state practices.

Adopting this contextual global approach in the article enables us to better understand the gains and setbacks in addressing DFV for immigrant women in both contexts. This includes how the structural situation of immigrant women is exacerbated and ameliorated by changes in the ways that citizenship is conceptualized, contextualized, contested, and connected by the state (Abraham, 2019b; Abraham et al., 2010 see also Aulenbacher and Handapangoda, 2025; Ghaderzadeh and Moghadam, 2025). In the sections that follow we explore some of the commonalities and differences as they relate to immigrant women, DFV, and the state in the contexts of the United States and Australia, focusing on the problem of violence and the critical issues of citizenship status and precarity for women.

DFV and the state

In the United States and Australia, significant attention has been devoted among state and non-state actors to addressing the problem of DFV and this has remained an important feature of state policies and law making in both countries for some decades (Abraham, 2000a; Fitz-Gibbon, 2021). In the United States, since the 1980s, increasing attention by social scientists, social workers, and policy makers helped shift domestic violence from a private problem to a public issue, with many advocates and organizations criticizing police departments, courts, and the legal system for lack of enforcement of the law. The state responded through legislation and policies, primarily emphasizing the criminal justice system, with funding channelled through organizations (e.g. to rape crisis centres, organizations, and shelters). This resulted in mainstreaming via state regulation. It also contributed to the compartmentalization and addressing of single issues based on state funding priorities. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994 was the first major federal legislation that aimed to address the issue of violence against women due to increased pressure from various organizations, especially women’s groups, and particularly the public recognition of the pervasiveness of DFV. Despite some benefits of VAWA, it has limitations and disproportionately relies on criminalization with funding flows primarily allocated to the criminal justice system that have negative consequences for marginalized communities (e.g. Goodmark, 2021). Although there were provisions for abused immigrant women (Hass et al., 2000), the stringent regulations and requirements as well as the denial of access to certain public benefits showed the limits of state support, deterring abused immigrants from seeking legal recourse. The passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996, and the establishment of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency following the attacks of September 11, 2001, also saw a significant increase in detention and deportation activity. This deterred abused women from seeking assistance for fear of heightened profiling, deportation, and reduced trust in mainstream service institutions (Hacker et al., 2011).

In the Australian context, responding to and reducing the rates of violence against women and children also remains a key feature of government policy (Commonwealth of Australia, 2022). Since the 1980s, considerable effort, advocacy, and attention has focused on ensuring that all forms of violence against women, including DFV, are recognized as a public issue across the community and in civil and criminal law in state and territory jurisdictions (State of Victoria, 2016). The implementation of various laws and action plans for reform have had some success but have also had their limitations with consequences for victim-survivors including immigrant women (Ghafournia and Easteal, 2017; Murdolo and Quiazon, 2015; Segrave and Vasil, 2025).

At the federal level, the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children sets out a framework for action and co-ordinates efforts across jurisdictions. The plan is governed by a range of intersecting principles, which include the need to ensure that the expertise of victim-survivors informs policies and solutions, that efforts are taken to address the inequality experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, that there is coordination and integration of efforts and multiple stakeholders, and that attention is given to difference via a commitment to intersectionality (Commonwealth of Australia, 2022). Despite the emphasis given to addressing the problem of DFV and attending to the ‘diverse’ experiences of victim-survivors, rates of violence continue to remain high. Research has also found that policy documents about DFV in Australia tend to ‘pay lip service’ to diversity, without meaningfully engaging with the ‘complexities of the intersection of gender and other social categories’, including the ways that ‘race, ethnicity, culture and immigration status’ shape women’s experiences of violence in Australia and their ability to seek help (Ghafournia and Easteal, 2017: 1; see also Murdolo and Quiazon, 2015).

In both contexts, activists, researchers, and community-based organizations have made great strides in addressing DFV but have also run the risk of it being reduced solely as a criminal justice issue without adequately addressing the other institutionalized social, economic, and political vulnerabilities in the lives of marginalized groups. Since the passing of VAWA in the United States, the largest funding programmes have been designated and allocated to courts, prosecutors, police, and non-governmental agencies that support criminal legal responses. While the provision to require mandatory arrest was amended in 2003, and more recently, more funds allocated to enhance support for survivors and marginalized communities, criminalization continues to be a significant framework. For example, the STOP (Services, Training, Officers, and Prosecutors) Violence Against Women Program designates to states and territories a sizable percentage for law enforcement (Office on Violence Against Women, Department of Justice, 2021). The collateral negative consequences of criminalization and the disproportionate impact of incarceration on communities of colour and marginalized groups is a problem that requires much more attention (see Morrison et al., 2024). For example, the problem of mandatory reporting statutes, including mandatory reporting of DFV to law enforcement by health providers, was initially put in place to enhance patient safety, improve health care providers’ response to violence, and hold batterers accountable, however, this does not achieve its goals and can create additional barriers to disclosure and formal help-seeking (Kimberg et al., 2021). Criminalizing legislation has also resulted in a legislative ‘tunnel vision’ and a ‘cookie cutter’ approach that has failed to account for the economic, social, and political barriers and disparities that needed to be considered for victim-survivors to navigate the criminal justice system (Abraham and Tastsoglou, 2016). Criminalization as the primary approach also leaves much power and control with the state and takes away the decision-making power of people who experience abuse to decide whether and how the state should intervene in their relationships. This approach has been found to dissuade abused women from seeking help through the state for other much-needed supports (Abraham, 2000b; Erez and Belknap, 1998; Goodmark, 2021; Novisky and Peralta, 2015). In particular, VAWA changed how the justice system handled DFV through the creation of major funding flows to criminal justice agencies. In its current form, the federal government channels funding to states via a neoliberal framework to support law enforcement, health care providers, victim services, educational systems, and community-based partners to receive funds to protect victims and ensure perpetrator accountability. It is the overreliance on criminalization that scholars, practitioners, activists, and community-based organizations have challenged, highlighting the compounding vulnerabilities and ongoing forms of violence and harm experienced by racialized, marginalized, and minoritized groups seeking pathways to safety, including immigrant women. The trend towards increased criminalization has led to community-based organizations and coalitions advocating for the need for a more nuanced approach that considers the influence of structural impediments on lived experiences. This has entailed looking at alternatives to criminalization, including by drawing upon restorative justice practices and community-based models for prevention and response. These efforts have sought to prioritize survivor wellbeing and support service utilization to address DFV vulnerability (see Abraham and Vasil, 2024).

The state’s policy agenda in Australia is directed by the objectives outlined in the National Plan. These objectives inform decisions about funding; the total investment (since 2022) towards the plan at the last budget (2024–2025) measured close to $3.4 billion (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2024). Experts have continued to call into question whether existing funding commitments are commensurate with the scale of the problem especially when it comes to the issue of primary prevention (Fitz-Gibbon, 2021). Across the country, state and territory governments oversee the family violence system, which is governed by law and policy that differs within each respective jurisdiction. This system is generally composed of specialist victim support services, including refuges and outreach services, social housing, legal services, the police, courts, child protection services and other social services, which are supported via a combination of state, territory and federal government funding. Although considerable advocacy and reform has focused on establishing frontline victim support services across the country, criminalization has also featured as a key aspect of the state’s response to the problem. The policing of DFV and the adequacy of the police response have been the subject of considerable debate within and across communities in Australia with persistent questions about the capacity of existing laws and practices to keep victims safe and prevent further harm (e.g., Segrave et al., 2018). First Nations scholars, practitioners, activists, and other stakeholders continue to problematize carceral responses to DFV, highlighting the known consequences of criminalization and incarceration for Indigenous women and the ways in which this can compound harm, leading to ongoing forms of violence, misidentification, child removal, and premature death (e.g., Watego et al., 2021; see also Buxton-Namisnyk, 2022). Recently, debate focused on the introduction of a standalone offence of coercive and controlling behaviour has resulted in mixed responses at the community level (see Fitz-Gibbon et al., 2020) with many state and territory jurisdictions now moving toward criminalization.

Notwithstanding policy-level efforts across jurisdictions, experts, practitioners, activists, and other stakeholders in the United States and Australia continue to draw attention to issues with the state response to DFV, including the impacts of policing and criminalization. In both contexts, they have shown that it can lead to an over-simplification of the issue, which is compounded by the allocation of state funding to criminal justice institutions. This has implications for different groups of women, including immigrant women who may fear the impact of reporting to state authorities. This may also impact access to services given the ways that police can be gatekeepers of both the criminal justice and social support systems (Buxton-Namisnyk, 2022). As such, there has been growing recognition in both national contexts of the need to attend to the specificity of citizenship status and how this plays a role in shaping the nature of DFV for different groups of immigrant women and their capacity to seek help in these settings. As we explore in the next section, both the United States and Australia have political, legal, structural, and cultural similarities. This includes migration laws and policies based on the demands of labour and forms of family migration, with various conditionalities and processes that determine potential pathways to permanent resident status and citizenship but vary in terms of criteria. Both also have varying eligibility requirements that determine access to or denial of certain public benefits, resources, and services, particularly for non-citizens with consequences for those who experience DFV.

The issue of citizenship status

The contours of citizenship vary across time, space, relationships, and contexts. Scholars and activists have highlighted and challenged exclusionary aspects of citizenship that do not consider the reality of unequal power relations and their implications. Globalization, neoliberalism, colonial histories, migration, identity politics, gender relations, and geopolitics demonstrate how citizenship is continuously contested, navigated, and negotiated at the micro, meso, and macro level (Abraham et al., 2010). Citizenship is often central to policy debates within and across borders and in relation to practices regarding immigrants and gender-based violence, including DFV. Discussions of the role of the state, its relationship to citizenship policies and practices, as well as the tensions and struggles for inclusive citizenship, continue to be debated and discussed by social scientists, policy makers, and activists. For immigrant victim-survivors of DFV, the status of non-citizenship can operate as a distinct form of subordination, which works to construct them as less than full members of society through limits on legal membership, rights, participation, and belonging (Bosniak, 2000). This intersects with existing status inequalities related to gender and cultural heritage, as well as race and class hierarchies in destination contexts, which can exacerbate vulnerabilities (Abraham, 2000a; Abraham and Tastsoglou, 2016; Erez et al., 2009; Freedman et al., 2022; Hulley et al., 2022; Tastsoglou et al., 2021). In the United States and Australia, the ways that citizenship is conceived, pursued, secured, and unsecured over time, has a disproportionate and enduring impact on the specific and intersectional contexts for victim-survivors of DFV and particularly for immigrant women (Abraham, 2000a; Vasil, 2021, 2024).

The issue of immigration and its intersections with DFV has been on the research and policy agenda since the 1980s. There have been concerted efforts by feminist scholars and activists to complicate understandings of the nature and dynamics of DFV in women’s intimate lives and the intersecting structural and cultural factors that exacerbate women’s vulnerability in the context of immigration (Abraham, 1995, 2000a; Dasgupta and Warrier, 1996; Murdolo and Quiazon, 2015; Segrave, 2018, 2021; Segrave and Vasil, 2025; Villalón, 2010). These stakeholders have continued to point to the influence of state law and policy on the vulnerabilities women experience in their intimate lives as well as the racialized and gendered nature of immigration policies and practices (Dasgupta and Warrier, 1996; Narayan, 1995). In the 1990s and 2000s, feminist scholars and activists drew attention to the nature of legal dependency that can arise when a woman’s right to remain in a country of destination is tied to her relationship (usually with a spouse who is also the visa sponsor). In the United States, scholars such as Calvo (1991) argued that immigration law perpetuates the domination of spouses and the legacy of coverture, while Loke (1996: 589) pointed out that women often become ‘trapped’ due to the threat of deportation and the way this is also influenced by mistrust of authorities, language issues, and cultural barriers, as well as conflicting laws and policies that undermine existing legal protections. In a similar way, Australian multicultural feminist research on DFV in the 1990s focused on the patterns of spousal migration to the country. Iredale (1994: 547) found that repeat and serial sponsorship of primarily Asian women by Anglo-Australian men was common and that these men ‘demonstrated a high level of perpetration of various forms of domestic violence’, which contributed to women’s loss of residency status, deportation, and death. Subsequent research also examined how the Federal Government has addressed issues of legal dependency in the immigration context and argued that while some changes have been made to enhance the accessibility of migration-related protections for victim-survivors (known as the family violence provisions – see, for example, Gray et al., 2014), women continue to be disadvantaged because of their social, cultural, and economic position in Australian society (Ghafournia, 2011; Segrave and Vasil, 2025).

The United States is a country built on immigration, which is the outcome of state policies and laws closely connected to concepts of citizenship. Three fundamental ideas – economic worth to American businesses, family unity, and racial/ethnic selectivity – are often interrelated in immigration law and have played a pivotal role in shaping US immigration policies and practices with enduring consequences for abused women’s lives (Abraham, 2000a). The last decades have witnessed some changes in the immigration system, yet problems persist, including for abused immigrant women. In 2000, Abraham highlighted the need to address the influence of citizenship status as a sociological category in the analysis of DFV. In her qualitative analysis of the lived experiences of South Asian immigrant women in the United States, she made the point that immigration policies can create a specific form of legal dependency in intimate relationships whereby the husband is placed in a position of dominance and control over his wife. Through male centric immigration policies, the state indirectly ensured that minority women were subject to a racist patriarchal order and thus were made more vulnerable to the power exercised by an abusive spouse (Abraham, 2000a, 2000b). Research continues to demonstrate how immigrant women’s limited rights and restrictions on access to support can exacerbate their vulnerability to different forms and patterns of DFV, including violence that is immigration-related, as well as economic exploitation and deprivation (Menjívar, 2013; Pfitzner et al., 2023; South Asian SOAR, 2022; Segrave, 2017; Vasil, 2021, Vishnuvajjala, 2012).

Attempts by the state to provide better legal protections and pathways for citizenship have not been entirely effective due an over emphasis on criminalization without considering the collateral consequences for immigrants. One of the most important immigrant-related components of VAWA 1994 was the ‘self-petition’ provision, which allows an immigrant spouse to petition on her own for an unconditional permanent resident status on behalf of herself and her children without depending on the sponsorship of her citizen or legal permanent resident (LPR) spouse. This could be done under two conditions: (1) if she or her children are battered or subjected to extreme cruelty by the citizen or LPR spouse during a bona fide marriage, and (2) if she has been married and resides with the citizen or LPR spouse for at least 3 years and he has failed to file a petition on her behalf. To do this, an immigrant/non-citizen spouse must show that she is a person of good moral character, has lived in the United States with her citizen or LPR spouse, is currently residing in the country, married in good faith, was subjected to extreme cruelty, and would face extreme hardship as a result of deportation. The restrictive nature of the regulations placed a burden on women, making the legislation ineffective such that the proof clause and parameters around eligibility for benefits can leave many without the assistance they need (Abraham, 2000a). Additional changes in the Immigration Act of 1990 combined with the 1996 welfare reform legislation allowed for battered immigrant women, previously unqualified to get aid, to become eligible to receive benefits within the parameters defined by each state. However, the process of receiving Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) itself placed a considerable burden on the battered immigrant woman, and thus for many the process to receive this assistance became another impediment in women attaining the aid they desperately needed. In October 2000, Congress established the U-Visa with the passage of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TPVA) (see also the Battered Immigrant Women’s Protection Act 1999) to assist victims of crime. The U-Visa includes protection from domestic violence, stalking, sexual assault and felony assault, among other crimes and is a pathway way for undocumented victims of crime to obtain legal status and a pathway to citizenship if they meet the criteria of victims of the qualifying crimes. However, the limit of U-visas is only 10,000 a year, with the state creating a waiting list for eligible principal petitioners. Among other requirements, a U-Visa petitioner must ask a federal law enforcement agency or official to complete a certification form affirming that they cooperate in the investigation or prosecution of criminal activity. While it has helped some immigrant victim-survivors, the stringent requirements as well as the small quota, combined with huge processing delays, have led to a backlog of several years in obtaining the visa (Gelatt and Chishti, 2022). This serves as a structural impediment for immigrant women and their families. It also places an immense burden on community-based organizations and service providers in their capacity to help victim-survivors file for U-Visas as they navigate through a cumbersome immigration system (Gelatt and Chishti, 2022).

We see similar patterns in Australia with slight variation, where immigration has featured as a central component of modern nation-building. With the dismantling of the White Australia Policy and the rise of multiculturalism in the 1970s, individuals and families from a variety of ethnic, national and religious backgrounds have continued to migrate to Australia for the purposes of work, study, family unity and citizenship on temporary, provisional and permanent visas. However, the Australian state continues to maintain a high degree of control over who can move and under what circumstances (Vasil, 2024; see also Segrave and Vasil, 2025). Although the country’s Migration Program has changed over time, two specific shifts are of significance (Vasil, 2021). First, the prioritization of skilled forms of immigration in Australia since the 1990s has seen successive governments select permanent immigrants according to their potential contribution to the national economy. Second, the rise in temporary migration for the purposes of work and study, has emerged as a key feature of the Australian policy landscape. The Australian Government’s shift in priorities towards non-permanent forms of migration is underpinned by the drive for human capital and a flexible workforce (Tazreiter, 2019). While not all migrants who reside in Australia will go on to apply for or be granted permanent residency, limits on legal membership and the uneven distribution of social and economic rights, have specific implications for victim-survivors of DFV.

Since the 1990s in Australia, specific groups of women in DFV situations have been protected by migration provisions, which provide a safety net in specific circumstances. The family violence provisions were put in place by the Federal Government in 1994 to address the experiences of sponsored partners and their dependent children (Gray et al., 2014). The provisions came into effect following a successful campaign by grassroots activists, which gave voice to community concerns about immigrant women’s safety and the ways it was compromised by laws that made a woman’s right to remain in the country dependent on her relationship status (see Ghafournia and Easteal, 2017). The provisions provide an alternate pathway to permanent residency for migrants on specific visas who would have obtained a permanent visa had their relationship not broken down due to DFV. To exercise their rights under the provisions, a victim-survivor must provide evidence to prove that their relationship with their sponsor was genuine and continuing before it broke down. They must then prove that they are a genuine victim by providing different forms of evidence (see Gray et al., 2014). Currently, the provisions are only available to holders of specific visas, including partner and prospective marriage visas, who would have obtained residency had it not been for the breakdown of their relationship. Notably, other migrants, such as students, temporary workers, undocumented migrants, and some secondary applicants, are excluded from access (Vasil, 2021).

While all victim-survivors are entitled to seek help from frontline services in different state and territory jurisdictions across Australia, restrictive migration and welfare policies, including visa conditions that limit citizenship rights and access to services, reduce the type and degree of support that immigrant women can practically receive (see Jelinic, 2019; Segrave, 2017; Vasil, 2021). More recent efforts to address the specific experiences of women with temporary migration status who are excluded from existing protections have resulted in targeted advocacy around reform of the migration and social security systems, supported housing options, and the accessibility of legal support (see National Advocacy Group for Women on Temporary Visas Experiencing Family Violence [NAG] 2020, 2022). Advocacy from community-based organizations, practitioners, advocates, researchers, journalists, and other stakeholders has documented concerns about the impact of visa conditions and the fear surrounding a woman’s right to remain in Australia, which can prevent victim-survivors from coming forward (Rushton, 2020). This advocacy has been effective in getting these issues back on the agenda and has resulted in some gains, including recent changes to migration law (see Migration Amendment (Family Violence Provisions and Other Measures) Regulations 2024). Despite this, there continue to be gaps in the suite of migration-related protections afforded to immigrant women. As in the United States, this has been shown to compound women’s vulnerability to violence in intimate relationships and complicate their ability to navigate systems of support (e.g. Segrave, 2017; Segrave and Vasil, 2025).

In both the United States and Australia, state responses to DFV, while well intentioned, tend to fall short of substantive reform that can address the complexities of context for immigrant women. In particular, we see differences in immigration status-related protections afforded to victim-survivors. In the United States, VAWA provides specific protections for a broader cohort of immigrant victim-survivors, including for women who are undocumented. Migration-related protections in Australia are currently limited to those who are already on a pathway to permanency. Despite these differences, we see similarities in terms of the patchwork of protections that are afforded to immigrant women experiencing DFV. In practice, this creates division between different cohorts of victim-survivors, providing a pathway to safety for some and excluding others from protection. This has flow-on effects for access to DFV services, including housing, legal, and financial support, which differs according to visa status and is tied to ideas of citizenship in the form of access to social rights and entitlements. For example, in Australia, we see patterns in terms of granting short-term funding for financial, legal, and case management support to assist temporary migrants who continue to be excluded from welfare systems owing to visa conditions that limit their social rights (see Segrave et al., 2023; see also Segrave and Vasil, 2025). In the United States, additional funding is allocated through the Office of Violence Prevention and Services (OFVPSA) to organizations to provide culturally relevant and linguistically appropriate DFV services for children, individuals, and families from underserved and historically marginalized communities. However, such services have limitations as they often necessitate the organizations to work within state stipulations in shaping support and resource allocation priorities. This evidences that greater recognition of the ways the system itself can entrap women in violence is required so that all victim-survivors who lack formal standing as citizens are included in whole-of-government efforts to end violence (Segrave and Vasil, 2025; Vasil, 2024). As we explore in the next section, this involves attending to the precarity associated with women’s lack of citizenship, which is produced by state policies, and how it can compound vulnerability to DFV for immigrant women in both contexts. We then explore how some of these structural insecurities associated with visa status, citizenship, and precarity played out in specific ways in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vulnerability and precarity

Precarity is a concept used to describe a historical moment in time characterized by insecurity and a lack of predictability (see Vasil, 2024). It has been used to describe insecurity in employment and labour relations as well as the rise in economic inequality in societies of the global North (e.g. Standing, 2011). Precarity is understood to be the product of structural forces, such as globalization, privatization, and datafication and the rise in neoliberal governance, which has changed the nature of work (Kalleberg, 2018). Social scientists, including migration scholars, have adopted a broader theoretical perspective, using precarity to describe the uncertainty and unpredictability of everyday life (e.g. Paret and Gleeson, 2016). Scholars have argued that it provides a way of speaking about a particular form of vulnerability that is heightened under structural conditions (Butler, 2009). While variations of precarity exist on a global scale and experiences differ depending on social context, individuals who are exposed to it share ‘common features in terms of conditionality and a contingent disposition for agency’ (Schierup and Jørgensen, 2017: 2). In this way, as Vasil (2021, 2024) has previously argued, precarity provides a way of speaking about the denial of citizenship under contemporary capitalism and has specific implications for immigrant women experiencing DFV in countries of destination (see also Reilly et al., 2022).

As immigration is a key component and a consequence of contemporary capitalism, immigrants are disproportionately affected by increasing precaritization (Schierup and Jørgensen, 2017). Although not used as frequently in the international literature that focuses on DFV, in this article we consider the precariat (Standing, 2011) as a useful concept, based on how the term helps situate the precariousness that abused immigrant women encounter in their everyday lives. Here the forms of structural barriers through state systems, including legal and migration systems, as well as health and welfare systems, play a role in exacerbating DFV and preventing women from being safe from violence (see Segrave and Vasil, 2025). For women experiencing DFV whose status is insecure, the precarity they confront in their daily lives can be characterized as legal (relating to the uncertainties that stem from an immigrant woman’s right to remain in the country), social (relating to non-citizen women’s sense of belonging to society), and economic (relating to the nature of an immigrant’s access to public goods and services, which is often contingent and uncertain) (Vasil, 2021, 2024). These components of precarity play out in different ways depending on citizenship or visa status. Immigrant women are differently positioned when it comes to the rights and entitlements they are afforded as non-citizens, which differs depending on whether they have a form of status that is dependent or conditional, temporary, undocumented, or in transition.

For immigrants, fear of deportation is a key factor in DFV (Erez et al., 2009; Segrave, 2017; Vaughan et al., 2016). In contexts such as the United States and Australia, immigrants continue to be subject to restrictive and regulatory systems that limit legal, social, and economic rights and entitlements and facilitate different intrusions into the ‘private’ sphere of the family (Abraham, 2000a; Vasil, 2021). This restricts mobility and freedoms in ways that can differ considerably from the experiences of citizens. As is well documented in the literature on DFV for immigrant women in both the United States and Australia, although immigrant women and their children resist DFV, they must also contend with the justice system, as well as a range of structural and institutional factors, such as anti-immigrant sentiment, alienation due to poverty, economic insecurity and unemployment, housing issues, status inconsistencies, and limited or lack of state protections, which all have implications for women’s experiences of and help-seeking for DFV (see Erez et al., 2009; Gurung, 2015; Maher and Segrave, 2018; Panchanadeswaran and McCloskey, 2007; Vaughan et al., 2016). These structural factors play a role in compounding violence and vulnerabilities and how this is experienced in everyday lives (Abraham, 2000a; Vasil, 2024). Although there have been attempts by governments to provide better legal protections, we find that the experiences of community-based organizations, service providers, and victim-survivors still point to considerable structural impediments that exacerbate gendered and structural vulnerabilities (NAG, 2022; South Asian SOAR, 2022).

To understand how immigration and citizenship contribute to vulnerabilities for DFV, precarity is important in examining the contexts of the abrogation of state and social responsibility. The uncertainties that stem from a woman’s right to remain present in a particular jurisdiction or citizenship community can provide opportunities for perpetrators to control, isolate, and exploit women and can reduce the degree of control women have over their own lives (Vasil, 2024; see also Alsinai et al., 2023; Segrave, 2021; Segrave and Vasil, 2025). Connected to this is the financial impact of DFV, which has deleterious consequences, moving victim-survivors into poverty and economic instability (Tripathi and Azhar, 2022). Victim-survivors’ financial insecurity is partly due to the impacts of economic abuse, which occurs in most instances of DFV and was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic (Doyle et al., 2020). Legal systems tend to create barriers to leaving an abusive relationship when access is made difficult in matters including obtaining protection orders against an abuser or filing for divorce, custody or visitation with minor children (Shah et al., 2023; South Asian SOAR, 2022; Tambasco et al., 2024). DFV among women with insecure immigration status is thus in some ways similar to the experiences of abuse of migrant domestic workers. They are denied fundamental necessities including food, shelter, clothing, and access to labour saving technology, are denied access to their income or financial resources, and frequently encounter various forms of fiscal deprivation at the hands of the perpetrator but also from the state and other institutions due to perceived and actual barriers. However, what is specific for victim-survivors of DFV is the way that legal, social, and economic precarity can converge to shape DFV and perpetrator tactics of control in women’s intimate lives, including in the context of marriage with implications for women’s ability to seek help outside the home (see Abraham, 2021; Segrave, 2021; Segrave and Vasil, 2025; Vasil, 2024). These experiences differ depending upon factors, such as the nature of legal dependency with a perpetrator, women’s social ties, and the social resources they can draw on in destination contexts, their extent of access to public goods and services, as well as the right to work outside the home. Despite these differences across the immigrant cohort, this highlights the ways that immigration policies create a set of conditions and processes that complicate the problems experienced by victim-survivors of DFV. As we go on to explore, the experience of legal, social, and economic precarity was exacerbated for victim-survivors in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic (see also Pfitzner et al., 2023).

COVID-19 context: DFV, citizenship and precarity

In this final section, we look specifically at the COVID-19 context as an exemplar to consider the specificity of precarity and the resulting impact for immigrant victim-survivors of DFV. Although COVID-19 can be seen as exacerbating the specific context of DFV for immigrant women, we note that this crisis also created unpredictable circumstances, including situations where women were locked in the home with a perpetrator and delays in the processing of visa applications, which led to some victim-survivors fearing that they would fall out of status, compounding the impacts of DFV and precarity.

The coronavirus global pandemic is an example of the ways that shifts in conceptualization and operation of citizenship, including where funding was directed and the pressure on organizations, had implications for victim-survivors of DFV and for immigrant women specifically (Abraham and Vasil, 2024; see also Pfitzner et al., 2023). We argue that the pandemic is a useful exemplar bringing to the surface the structural situation of immigrant women, their relationship to the state, and how precarities associated with status were compounded in both contexts to increase isolation, deprivation, insecurity, and vulnerability to DFV.

As in the case of natural disasters and times of crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated inequalities and, in some places, saw an increase in cases of DFV (Parker and Leviten-Reid, 2022; Pfitzner et al., 2023). Not only was there the persistence of known forms of violence, but subsequent research also points to the emergence of new manifestations of DFV over this period (e.g. Phillimore et al., 2022). Feminist research in specific local and national contexts has shown that the effect of the pandemic has been to intensify the lived experience of DFV and social exclusion for different groups of women, including immigrant women, many of whom faced pre-existing structural barriers to support owing to limits on citizenship, rights, and access to services that predated the onset of the pandemic (Cleaveland and Waslin, 2021; Pfitzner et al., 2023; Piquero et al., 2021; Segrave and Pfitzner, 2020).

In the United States, institutional and state support mechanisms shifted, including on how to deal with citizens and immigrants and many immigrants found themselves fearing their legal status compromised due to shutdowns and delays. For example, workers who had come to the United States under the H-1B visa programme and were sponsored by their employers found that when they lost their job, their visas were cancelled unless the employee was able to find a new job with a company willing to take over the sponsorship. The executive orders by Trump suspending green cards and limiting H-1 visas for immigrants added to the legal precarity experienced by immigrants under such visas with potential implications for immigrant families from the stress of loss of jobs and mobility (Garcini et al., 2024; Rai et al., 2020). For a period, COVID-19-related travel bans also created challenges, initially separating and preventing families who were outside of the United States (some of whom helped with familial and childcare support in the United States) from migrating, thereby exacerbating vulnerabilities for many immigrant families (Chishti and Pierce, 2020; Gelatt and Chishti, 2022). The shutdown had an impact on accessing essential services such as schools for children, legal services, shelters, court assistance, support groups, and health services thereby compounding stressors.

The precarity for immigrant women experiencing DFV during the pandemic was palpable, legally, politically, and socially. This included key issues, such as isolation, economic deprivation, employment, loss of jobs, food scarcity, lack of access to medical products, and lack of safe access to services and technology. The small quota of U-Visas, including the long wait to file applications and the lack of a wide network of support all exacerbated precarity for immigrant victim-survivors. While the federal and state response to the pandemic in the United States did provide some support (though state approaches varied), the lack of information or knowledge and complexity of processes to access some of these services compounded fears regarding insecure immigration status and led to situations where victim-survivors stayed within abusive relationships (Huang and Pyo, 2020). In response to restrictions such as stay at home orders, Congress enacted, increased, and extended various economic stimulus measures. Importantly, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020 included several provisions aimed to aid those struggling because of the pandemic. It had some provisions for victim-survivors of DFV. For example, $45 million was allocated in funding for DFV victim services. Although Congress passed various stimulus measures, these bills did not offer real, meaningful support to the many immigrants and mixed status immigrant families. Some immigrants received assistance (direct payments, access to medical treatment, and unemployment benefits); however, many immigrants and their families were excluded from support. Non-citizens who did not have Social Security numbers, including vast numbers of ‘lawfully present non-citizens’ and their families, as well as citizens with mixed status families, were ineligible for some of the money and benefits from provisions under the CARES Act (Abraham and Vasil, 2024). For victim-survivors who worked in mixed status households, this exacerbated vulnerabilities with some immigrants finding themselves locked in and locked out from economic and medical aid and with no safety net (Loweree et al., 2020). For organizations primarily serving abused immigrant women, issues of isolation and limited accessibility to services were compounded with issues associated with immigration status and health care. Despite the multiple challenges, COVID-19 also led some community-based organizations to begin thinking creatively about new ways to reach out and deliver much-needed support services (Gelatt and Chishti, 2022; Lovato et al., 2024; Rai et al., 2020; South Asian SOAR, 2022).

In Australia, the exclusion of specific groups of immigrants, including temporary workers and students, from access to pandemic-specific support measures reinforced existing status-related insecurities. From the outset, immigrants on temporary and provisional visas were deliberately excluded from pandemic-specific protections, including income support payments that were delivered by the Federal Government and designed to help keep people in work and support businesses (see Abraham and Vasil, 2024). In 2020, the decision was also made to increase the national unemployment allowance; however, this form of financial support was limited to citizens and some permanent residents, with other immigrants excluded from access. In practice, the policy position of the state in relation to immigrants was one of exclusion and destitution, with very limited support options for those who opted to remain in or were unable to leave the country prior to border closures. Many relied on donations and waited to access other forms of emergency relief (e.g. one-off payments administered by the Red Cross, which were put in place following the distribution of federal funding to citizens and permanent residents) and as such became reliant on family support. The situation was particularly difficult for those who relied on their income to support family members overseas and as Berg and Farbenblum (2020: 6) noted, many were already in ‘vulnerable situations’ prior to the onset of the pandemic (see also Pfitzner et al., 2023). This was made worse by the over-representation of different immigrant cohorts in precarious work, particularly for international students (Berg and Farbenblum, 2020).

In the initial stages of lockdown in 2020, different stakeholders from the family violence and community sectors in Australia voiced their concerns about the potential exacerbation of violence for immigrant women who were already in vulnerable situations owing to their impermanent status and who would be adversely affected by the challenges brought on by the pandemic (Harmony Alliance, 2021; inTouch Multicultural Centre Against Family Violence, 2020; Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health (MCWH), 2020; NAG, 2020; Segrave and Maher, 2020). Experts discussed the risks for women and children who were ‘locked down’ with a perpetrator, noting that this could be compounded for those who were already socially isolated, had limited access to digital technologies, whose regular employment had been impacted, who were excluded from pandemic-specific support measures and whose financial dependency on the perpetrator had increased (MCWH, 2021; Rushton, 2020; Segrave and Maher, 2020; see also Pfitzner et al., 2023). Specific concerns about women on temporary and provisional visas escaping violence at a point of crisis were also highlighted, given significant issues pre-crisis with women’s ability to secure access to a place in women’s refuges (see NAG, 2020; see also Pfitzner et al., 2023). Similar concerns were identified for organizations primarily serving abused immigrant women in the United States where isolation and limited accessibility to services as well as basic necessities were identified. It was during this time that organizations sought to fill support and welfare ‘gaps’ created by state policies. In Australia, this involved seeking funding from state and territory governments and the public to deliver essential items, such as food packages and medical supplies for women and children who were at risk in the community (see Abraham and Vasil, 2024). Efforts were also put towards advocating for systems reform at the federal level to promote women’s inclusion in pandemic-specific social supports to ensure access to short- and long-term housing options, as well as emergency financial and legal support (inTouch Multicultural Centre Against Family Violence, 2020; MCWH, 2020; NAG, 2020). In the United States, some nonprofit organizations established separate programmes to assist victim-survivors economically through food and health provision, but these too were limited in scope (see Abraham and Vasil, 2024; South Asian SOAR, 2022). Some community-based organizations also sought to assist through online support services and sharing pandemic-related resources, as well as pressing the government to provide additional support, including temporary alternative housing, financial assistance, and legal, medical, and mental health support. Despite the ways the specific situation of immigrant women in both contexts was highlighted in the context of the pandemic, immigrant women continue to fall through the cracks with many of the identified issues left unaddressed and community-based stakeholders continuing to perform ‘additional work’ to ensure needs are met (NAG, 2020, 2022; South Asian SOAR, 2022).

Conclusion

In adopting a contextual global approach, we have sought to demonstrate how attending to the specificity of context can help to highlight the complex ways that responses to DFV have shifted and resulted in new forms of social inequalities, as well as conceptualizations of and opportunities for citizenship, care, and support. In both contexts, we see similarities, differences, and shifts in the nature and focus of the state’s response to DFV and the way the critical issue of citizenship is framed and applied. We see commonalities in immigrant women’s experiences of legal dependency, social isolation, financial deprivation, and barriers to accessing institutional resources. Moreover, in both contexts, while there is acknowledgement of the need to expand the pathways for diversity, equality, and justice in addressing DFV, we see the persistence of the overreliance of criminalization as the main approach to tackling the problem, in framing, funding, and implementation. Both scholars and activists continue to point to the specific negative social consequences of such policies and practices for marginalized groups, including for immigrant women.

The findings from our collaborative research also show that understanding precarity in the context of DFV includes addressing the legal, social, and economic factors that contribute to DFV and exacerbate vulnerability for specific groups. Responding to this entails addressing immigration structures, policies and practices, especially in terms of citizenship, temporary, and conditional status and associated insecurities. This includes consideration of the multiple strategies and shifts in policies and practices that impede or assist more flexible and accessible paths to citizenship for abused immigrant women both in the United States and Australia. It also involves re-imagining citizenship to ensure that individuals and families are not locked into (or out of) borders due to violence, fears of deportation or not having a secure pathway to permanency or formal citizenship. The pandemic and post-pandemic periods indicate bigger structural issues that require attention by researchers, governments, institutions, policy makers, and service providers. Still, not enough has been done to address the critical issues that undermine the safety and welfare of immigrant victim-survivors of DFV that were highlighted.

While the involvement of community-based organizations is important is addressing DFV, as highlighted in the context of the pandemic, equally important is the need to critically examine the role and shifts of responsibilities of the state to communities and community-based organizations to fill service or ‘care’ gaps in the absence of structural support and adequate resourcing. This involves questioning who gets access to these services, when, how, what form such services take, and critically, how we can make the state more accountable in terms of both prevention and response, including in the context of vulnerable communities such as abused immigrant victim-survivors. As we have sought to highlight, states, through law, policy, and practice surrounding citizenship are continually engaged in the processes of differentiation, forms of restrictive inclusion, and shifting forms of social arrangements that contribute to legal, social, and economic precarity. The state’s construction of citizenship can become a key component in the social, economic, and political conditions and processes that divide, unite, or support different categories of people to access resources and pathways to reduce violence. During crisis, states prioritize protections and access to resources to some while restricting or denying this to others based on citizenship and status, exacerbating inequalities and vulnerability to DFV. It is also important to recognize the precariousness for immigrant women that stems from neoliberalism, its influence on immigration policies and the implications for understanding the connections between state citizenship and precarity in the context of DFV.

The lack of a comprehensive understanding of the matrix of power, complexity, and intersectionality in the ways DFV occurs can also lead to narrowly defined policy formulation and implementation that do not truly protect the different categories of individuals and abused groups based on their situated context. Often laws reflect and reproduce existing power relations at the inter-personal, community, and macro-institutional levels that contribute to vulnerability and precarity. Our examination shows that in both countries, there are similarities and variations for immigrants based on gender, class, race, and ethnic relations. Although violence has no geographical, socioeconomic, or cultural boundaries, DFV for immigrants is experienced differently and disproportionately based on multiple intersecting factors, including obstacles and challenges stemming from immigration status classification, insecure economic and work situations, language barriers, inability and hesitancy to access legal, medical, and other key institutions for services for fear of deportation, visa status consequences, or disruptions and delays to pathways to citizenship. The matrix of power in relation to the lived experience of DFV is also shaped through institutional responses and situational factors, including those pertaining to visa status, such as access to services and the availability of resources. The matrix of power can also be understood by how the differences in power, privilege, and control intersect on the multiple axes of citizenship at the individual, interpersonal, and institutional levels in both contexts. Future policies and practices should include ensuring more openness and cooperation within the nation and among nations in the reduction of risk of DFV, be this in the contexts of crisis, post-crisis, or non-crisis.