Paper short abstract:

Drawing on migrant women living in Ireland and their experiences applying a “situated intersectionality” approach, this paper aims to capture moments that reveal their agency, resilience, and self-determination to be amplified and supported in order to reduce their vulnerabilities to GBV.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on the Irish study of a seven-country project (Gender Net Plus GBV-MIG) examining the experience of migrant women for whom Gender-based Violence (GBV) is a significant concern. Based on 21 semi-structured interviews with women in Ireland, reflecting different legal, socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds, we present and analyse five illustrative stories of migrant women dealing with GBV while attempting to settle into Ireland as a "host" society and navigate the accompanying sense of loss of identity and belonging. Their accounts reveal how cumulative structural inequalities and entangled forms of discrimination operate not only to create hardships for migrant women experiencing GBV but to submerge their perspectives and voices and to obscure the nature of the hardships they contend with, as well as the moments of agency, self-determination and resilience, that are possible for them to take or to create in their respective contexts to survive. Applying a “situated intersectionality” approach, which centres migrant women's perspectives and sense of belonging, this article demonstrates the imperative of listening closely to their stories to capture moments that reveal their agency, resilience, and self-determination on their terms. In doing so, we deepen our understanding of the conditions under which such moments can be amplified and supported in order to reduce migrant women's vulnerabilities to GBV while challenging the practices of the host society and government, which reproduce the marginalisation of migrant women and the perpetuation of the GBV they experience.