Media Releases

Researcher calls for national plan to address violence against immigrant and refugee women

November 17, 2014

TORONTO, ON — Recent changes to Cana­di­an immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy mean few­er social and health sup­ports for immi­grant women with a pre­car­i­ous immi­gra­tion sta­tus – putting them at an increased risk of vio­lence, researchers say.

“Between 2008 and 2013, the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment intro­duced an unprece­dent­ed num­ber of leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry changes that have affect­ed immi­grants’ and refugees’ access to legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, access to social and health ser­vices, and path­ways to per­ma­nent res­i­dence,” said Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Rupaleem Bhuyan of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Fac­tor Inwen­tash Fac­ul­ty of Social Work. 

Bhuyan is the lead author of Unpro­tect­ed, unrec­og­nized: Cana­di­an immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy and vio­lence against women, 2008–2013. The study is part of the Migrant Moth­ers Project, a col­lab­o­ra­tive research project led by Bhuyan in part­ner­ship with a net­work of com­mu­ni­ty groups work­ing to address vio­lence against immi­grant women.

The report calls for a nation­al plan to address vio­lence against immi­grant and refugee women and immi­gra­tion poli­cies that bet­ter sup­port immi­grants in pre­car­i­ous cir­cum­stances. It calls on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to abol­ish the two-year con­di­tion­al sta­tus for spon­sored spous­es, rein­state access to the Inter­im Fed­er­al Health pro­gram to all refugee claimants and uphold the pri­va­cy of all peo­ple who have access to social and health ser­vices.

More than one mil­lion peo­ple live in Cana­da on a tem­po­rary visa, as inter­na­tion­al stu­dents, tem­po­rary for­eign work­ers or refugee claimants, Bhuyan said. They are reg­u­lar­ly turned away by ser­vice providers in health care, women’s shel­ters and oth­er sup­port ser­vices because they are not per­ma­nent res­i­dents or con­ven­tion refugees and, there­fore, not eli­gi­ble for ser­vices.

At the same time, strin­gent new poli­cies have been intro­duced, such as the two-year con­di­tion­al per­ma­nent res­i­dence for new­ly-spon­sored spouses/partners, bring “undue hard­ship for new­com­ers who are fac­ing domes­tic vio­lence,” said Bhuyan.

“For women who are fac­ing vio­lence, access to shel­ter, income sup­port and legal assis­tance can often be the dif­fer­ence between return­ing to an abu­sive sit­u­a­tion and inde­pen­dence from a vio­lent rela­tion­ship.”

The project also includes a col­lec­tion of dig­i­tal sto­ries by migrant women and their advo­cates, doc­u­ment­ing their per­son­al strug­gles first hand: Till Immi­gra­tion Tears Us Apart: Sto­ries of Strength through Strug­gle.The threat of deten­tion and depor­ta­tion is poignant­ly described in the dig­i­tal sto­ry Leav­ing my child behind, Bhuyan said.

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For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact:

Rupaleem Bhuyan
Fac­tor Inwen­tash Fac­ul­ty of Social Work
Tel: 416–910-8205
r.bhuyan@utoronto.ca

Harmy Men­doza
Woman Abuse Coun­cil of Toron­to: Wom­e­n­ACT
Tel: 647–501-0984