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Journal Article: Newcomer Women’s Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence

The article “I Felt Like I Was a Puppet— He’s the Master, and He’s Playing with My Life”: Newcomer Women’s Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence has been published in Violence Against Women. This article reports findings from interviews with newcomer women survivors of intimate partner violence in Saskatchewan. The journal article is online here (to receive a copy by email contact paths.research@sasktel.net). Read the text version of the article here.

This article is part of a tri-provincial research project, funded by the Prairieaction Foundation.

This study adds to a small body of Canadian literature investigating the ways that newcomer women experience, and are impacted by, intimate partner violence (IPV). The study involved qualitative interviews with 15 newcomer women who migrated to Saskatchewan, Canada, from 12 different countries. These findings provide insight into participants’ complex lived experiences and illustrate how women’s status as newcomers intersected with their experiences of IPV. As well as abuse related to language ability and immigration status, participants in our study described their experiences of physical; sexual; emotional; psychological; economic; and legal abuse; as well as coercive control; isolation; surveillance, stalking, and harassment while in the relationship and after separation; challenges with shared parenting; and the imposition of patriarchal values. Perpetrators of IPV maintained control by intentionally isolating survivors, and participants were also isolated due to their status as a newcomer and their limited English-language ability and social connections.