Between A Rock And A Hard Place: Access To The Justice System By Abused Refugee Women In Canada

This paper reviews literature about the Canadian justice system’s responses to woman abuse in general, with a particular focus on abused refugee women. Due to the complexity of the issue of woman abuse, this topic is examined using the following theoretical frameworks: Systemic Racism Theory, Cultural Racism Theory, Social Ecological model and the hindrance put forward by the Neo Liberalism ideology. A general overview of the Canadian immigration and refugee system is necessary, in order to systematically contextualize current and former policies and practices. The impact such policies have on refugee women when accessing the justice system can be severe, firstly due to current justice systems’ intersectionalities, secondly due to the lack of coordination between the criminal, family and immigration justice systems, and thirdly due to barriers in services. Furthermore, alarming recent changes in Canadian immigration legislation, will create further difficulties in access to justice by refugee women experiencing violence.

Between A Rock And A Hard Place: Access To The Justice System By Abused Refugee Women In Canada

This paper reviews literature about the Canadian justice system’s responses to woman abuse in general, with a particular focus on abused refugee women. Due to the complexity of the issue of woman abuse, this topic is examined using the following theoretical frameworks: Systemic Racism Theory, Cultural Racism Theory, Social Ecological model and the hindrance put forward by the Neo Liberalism ideology. A general overview of the Canadian immigration and refugee system is necessary, in order to systematically contextualize current and former policies and practices. The impact such policies have on refugee women when accessing the justice system can be severe, firstly due to current justice systems’ intersectionalities, secondly due to the lack of coordination between the criminal, family and immigration justice systems, and thirdly due to barriers in services. Furthermore, alarming recent changes in Canadian immigration legislation, will create further difficulties in access to justice by refugee women experiencing violence.

Improving the Quality of Survey Data on College Campus Woman Abuse: The Contribution of a Supplementary Open-Ended Question

Obtaining accurate survey data on the prevalence of woman abuse in institutions of higher education continues to be a major methodological challenge. Underreporting is difficult to overcome; yet, there may be effective ways of minimizing this problem. One is adding a supplementary open-ended question to a primarily quantitative questionnaire. Using data derived from the Campus Quality of Life Survey (CQLS), this article examines whether asking respondents to complete such a question increases the prevalence rates of four types of woman abuse and provides information on behaviors that are not included in widely used and validated measures of these harms.