Between Systems and Violence

State-Level Policy Targeting Intimate Partner Violence in Immigrant and Refugee Lives

Julio Montanez, Amy Donley, Amy Reckdenwald

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367763763
• eBook ISBN: 9781000580853
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Between Systems and Violence offers a compilation and analysis of state-level statutes targeting intimate partner violence (IPV) in immigrant and/or refugee (IMR) lives. The book analyzes such statutes' legal language via various theoretical lenses, as well as provides a discussion of implications for research, prevention, intervention, and public policy.

Some IMR victim-survivors of IPV, such as those who are undocumented, may be pinned "between systems and violence" as violent partners use the immigration system as a mechanism of power and control. While protections are available for these victim-survivors, the story told about the encompassing legal landscape remains incomplete and relegated to federal law.

Graduate students, as well as scholars and practitioners, will acquire an in-depth understanding of this important nexus.

1Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/​9781003167044-1

Intimate partner violence (IPV) includes “physical violence, sexual violence, stalking, and psychological aggression (including coercive tactics) by a current or former intimate partner” (Breiding, Basile, Smith, Black, & Mahendra, 2015, p. 11). In addition to including various types (e.g., physical, sexual) and relationship classifications (e.g., spousal, dating), IPV also includes other dimensions. According to Montanez, Donley, and Reckdenwald (2020), this means that each episode or pattern of IPV has:

• A severity through which violence hurts.
• A frequency through which violence recurs.
• A duration through which violence lasts.
• A number of perpetrators through which violence can reappear across the lifespan.

These factors combine to form multidimensional violent constellations (see Hamby & Grych, 2013; Scott-Storey, 2011; Thompson et al., 2006; see also Montanez et al., 2020).

The extant IPV figures are staggering. In 2018, 3 out of every 1000 people aged 12 and older in the United States (U.S.) experienced IPV in the past year (Morgan & Oudekerk, 2019). Across the lifespan, intimate partner physical violence, contact sexual violence, and/or stalking have befallen approximately 80 million¹ men and women (Smith et al., 2018). Included in these statistics are immigrant and refugee (IMR) populations. Indeed, for some IMR victim-survivors of IPV, the tug-of-war between staying in an abusive relationship and facing potential legal consequences, like deportation, reveals a difficult reality (see, e.g., Erez & Harper, 2018). In the U.S., the national-level policy has been implemented in an attempt to lessen these difficulties and help IMR victim-survivors of IPV attain freedom from abuse (see Erez & Harper, 2018; Orloff & Kaguyutan, 2002). Left undiscussed within the extant literature is policy targeting IPV against IMR persons across the U.S.’s major subnational units. Accordingly, the present research analyzes state-level statutes targeting IPV against IMR persons.

The present research contributes to a better understanding of IPV in IMR lives through multiple avenues. First, the research provides an interdisciplinary and theoretically grounded analysis of the intersection of two phenomena: IPV and immigration systems (for a discussion of the intersection, see, e.g., Erez & Harper, 2018). Second, looking at state-level policy in general can reveal the interaction between societal attitudes and government outputs (see, e.g., Lax & Phillips, 2009). Third, individualist attitudes that separately target battered women and immigrants (e.g., “Go back to your country!” or “Why does she stay?”; Aratani, 2019; Kelly, 2011), like stereotypes, redirect attention away from the system level (Davies et al., 2015). Accordingly, such an analysis presents an opportunity to treat systems, not victims (Pence & Paymar, 1993). Thus, interrogating structures can help to expose the broader forces that construct status. In this way, the present research obtains an understanding of how policy shapes the statuses of IMR victim-survivors of IPV.

Intimate Partner Violence

Statistics

Gender and Violence Types

The story of physical IPV in national-level statistics is complicated. Indeed, early extant research galvanized a debate between (a) finding equal spousal physical IPV rates between men and women (see Straus & Gelles, 1989; Straus, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1980) and (b) women’s victimization at higher rates than men (see Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). However, nuanced explanations for the role of gender in IPV arose over time, including the implications of coercive controlling violence and the varied detection of certain violence configurations across general survey and agency samples (see Johnson, 2008; Kelly & Johnson, 2008). More recent research shows physical IPV dynamics to be more complex. While in general physical violence seems to be gender symmetric, severity and overlap with other violence types paint a more nuanced picture. At the national level, the prevalence of actions such as slapping, pushing, and shoving tends to be roughly more similar between genders than in other forms (see Smith et al., 2018). For example, 2010 national-level data show that slapping was reported among a slightly greater percentage of women (20.4 percent) than men (18.3 percent). On the other hand, women experience higher rates of more severe physical IPV (Breiding et al., 2014; Smith et al., 2018). For example, 9.7 percent of women versus 1.1 percent of men reported experiencing choking (i.e., strangling) or suffocating by an intimate partner; 17.2 percent and 2.7 percent of women and men, respectively, reported being slammed against something; 10.4 percent and 2.9 percent of women and men, respectively, reported experiencing hair-pulling (see Breiding et al., 2014). Looking more intricately, research has shown that experiencing physical violence alone overwhelmingly features male victimization (92 percent) when compared to female victimization (56.8 percent), and more women than men experience the intersection of physical violence and stalking (14.4 percent and 6.3 percent, respectively; see Breiding et al., 2014). As an unwanted and fear-inducing pattern, stalking involves the harassment and threatening of a partner. According to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), intimate partner stalking affected 10.4 percent and 2.2 percent of women and men, respectively (Smith et al., 2018).

Sexual violence constitutes another IPV type. Tactics utilized in these situations can include coerced sexual activities based on force or threatening harm on a person the victim knows (see Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). Experiences of intimate partner sexual violence have affected 18.3 percent of women and 8.2 percent of men, according to the NISVS (Smith et al., 2018). National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data show that over the course of 10 years, rape/sexual assault against intimates has plagued 9.6 percent of women and 1.2 percent of men (Catalano, 2013). Moreover, sexual IPV is often accompanied by other violence types (Krebs, Breiding, Browne, & Warner, 2011), such as psychological violence.

Psychological aggression can be divided into two subtypes: expressive aggression and coercive control (Smith et al., 2018). A great deal of the IPV literature has historically focused on topics of power, control, and coercion. Grounded in the Power and Control Wheel, these constructs revolve around forceful imbalances of influence within a relationship, such that physical and sexual violence can form perpetuating points for tactics, like isolation, that systematically dismantle personal autonomy (Pence & Paymar, 1993). According to the 2015 NISVS, coercive control rates against women and men were roughly equal (30.6 percent and 29.8 percent, respectively). However, breaking down the statistics further shows that women experience more victimization that includes control over money, not being allowed to see family and friends, and threats of physical harm. Men experience more controlling victimization that includes being monitored by the violence-perpetrating partner (Smith et al., 2018).

Intersecting Violent Dimensions, Violence Tools, and Violent Death

IPV is also an example of “intersecting dimensions of violence, abuse, and victimization” (see Figure 1.1; Montanez et al., 2020). That is, IPV’s contributing parts, like severity and frequency, form cross-sections that multiply to form violent constellations (see Montanez et al., 2020; Thompson et al., 2006). One example of this concept is the interconnection of IPV types (e.g., physical and sexual violence) together. For example, a pilot study for the NISVS documented a higher number of total IPV types experienced among intimate partner stalking victims (3.4 types, on average) than sexual, physical, and psychological IPV victims (on average, 3.0 types, 2.5 types, and 1.9 types, respectively; Krebs et al., 2011). However, types are not the only IPV dimensions that intersect. The intersection of quantity and frequency of abuse plagues IPV victims at a rate of 26.2 percent, specifically when looking at multiple rounds of victimization by intimate partners; that is, 26.2 percent of IPV victims experience revictimization (Oudekerk & Truman, 2017). In terms of severity, 21.4 percent of women and 14.9 percent of men have experienced severe physical IPV at some point in their lifespan (see Smith et al., 2018). Dutton, Kaltman, Goodman, Weinfurt, and Vankos (2005) found longer abuse duration in violent configurations of severe overlapping violence types than overlapping violence types of lesser severity.

Figure 1.1 Depiction of intersecting dimensions of violence, abuse, and victimization.

Long Description for Figure 1.1

A figure shows five ovals intersecting into a star-like pattern. There is an oval that extends from the middle of the figure to the top of the figure; it is labeled “type.” There is an oval that extends from the middle of the figure to the left-hand side of the figure; it is labeled “severity.” There is an oval that extends from the middle of the figure to the right-hand side of the figure; it is labeled “quantity.” There is an oval that extends diagonally from the middle of the figure to the lower left-hand side of the figure; it is labeled “frequency.” There is an oval that extends diagonally from the middle of the figure to the lower right-hand side of the figure; it is labeled “duration.”

Violence-perpetrating partners also use various harmful tools, as well as hybrid forms of abuse. For example, firearm violence constitutes a subsect of IPV that is particularly harmful and potentially lethal. In addition to firearms being used in 4.2 percent of all IPV victimizations, as well as in 4.7 percent of all female IPV victimizations (Catalano, 2013; Planty & Truman, 2013), over four million women have been threatened with a gun, with one million women shot or shot at (see Sorenson & Schut, 2018). Moreover, the presence of a firearm results in more than a 500 percent increase in the associated odds of transitioning from abuse to intimate femicide (Campbell et al., 2003). Non-fatal strangulation, what some researchers call a “hybrid” form of abuse (see Montanez et al.,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Methodology
• 3 State Statutes, Identity, and Federal Policy
• 4 Extending Surveillance and Social Control
• 5 Constructing Resource Provision
• 6 Fostering Inclusion
• 7 Cultivating Empathy
• 8 Shifting Power
• 9 Shaping Status
• 10 Conclusion
• Appendix
• Index