The Continuum of Gender-Based Violence Across the Refugee Experience

Adopting a structural violence approach, this article explores, with survivors and practitioners, how early coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic conditions affected forced migrant sexual and gender-based violence survivors’ lives. Introducing a new analytical framework combining violent abandonment, slow violence, and violent uncertainty, we show how interacting forms of structural violence exacerbated by pandemic conditions intensified existing inequalities. Abandonment of survivors by the state increased precarity, making everyday survival more difficult, and intensified prepandemic slow violence, while increased uncertainty heightened survivors’ psychological distress. Structural violence experienced during the pandemic can be conceptualized as part of the continuum of violence against forced migrants, which generates gendered harm.

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Antidemocratic and Exclusionary Practices: COVID-19 and the Continuum of Violence

Politics & Gender ◽

10.1017/s1743923x2000046x ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 16 (4) ◽

pp. 1150-1157

Author(s):

Summer Forester ◽

Cheryl O'Brien

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Empirical Evidence ◽

Gender Based Violence ◽

Exclusionary Practices ◽

Neoliberal Capitalism ◽

Gender Based ◽

And Gender ◽

Systems Of Domination ◽

The U.S ◽

The Continuum

AbstractThe global coronavirus pandemic has reified divisions, inequity, and injustices rooted in systems of domination such as racism, sexism, neoliberal capitalism, and ableism. Feminist scholars have theorized these interlocking systems of domination as the “continuum of violence.” Building on this scholarship, we conceptualize the U.S. response to and the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic as reflective of the continuum of violence. We argue that crises like pandemics expose the antidemocratic and exclusionary practices inherent in this continuum, which is especially racialized and gendered. To support our argument, we provide empirical evidence of the continuum of violence in relation to COVID-19 vis-à-vis the interrelated issues of militarization and what feminists call “everyday security,” such as public health and gender-based violence. The continuum of violence contributes theoretically and practically to our understanding of how violence that the pandemic illuminates is embedded in broader systems of domination and exclusion.

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Drawing on the continuum: a war and post-war political economy of gender-based violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina

International Feminist Journal of Politics ◽

10.1080/14616742.2019.1692686 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 22 (2) ◽

pp. 250-272

Author(s):

Denisa Kostovicova ◽

Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic ◽

Marsha Henry

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽

Gender Based Violence ◽

Gender Based ◽

Post War ◽

The Continuum

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What’s in a name? Theorising the Inter-relationships of gender and violence

Feminist Theory ◽

10.1177/1464700118754957 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 19-36 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

Karen Boyle

Keyword(s):

Sexual Violence ◽

Violence Against Women ◽

Gender Based Violence ◽

Contemporary Theory ◽

Women’S Experiences ◽

Women's Experiences ◽

Representational Practices ◽

Gender Based ◽

Gendered Patterns ◽

The Continuum

This article explores the representational practices of feminist theorising around gender and violence. Adapting Liz Kelly’s notion of the continuum of women’s experiences of sexual violence, I argue that ‘continuum thinking’ can offer important interventions which unsettle binaries, recognise grey areas in women’s experiences and avoid ‘othering’ specific communities. Continuum thinking allows us to understand connections whilst nevertheless maintaining distinctions that are important conceptually, politically and legally. However, this is dependent upon recognising the multiplicity of continuums in feminist theorising – as well as in policy contexts – and the different ways in which they operate. A discussion of contemporary theory and policy suggests that this multiplicity is not always recognised, resulting in a flattening of distinctions which can make it difficult to recognise the specifically gendered patterns of violence and experience. I conclude by considering how focusing on men’s behaviour might offer one way of unsettling the contemporary orthodoxy which equates gender-based violence and violence against women.

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