Punishable victims: interrogating intersections between gender-based violence and punitive migration policies in Australia

Family violence is a primary consideration in the exclusion of non-citizens through Australian immigration law and policy. What this engagement of family violence by the Australian state obscures, is the impact of exclusionary mechanisms, specifically visa cancellations, immigration detention and deportations, on women who are victim-survivors of family violence with a temporary migration status. Drawing on interviews with 12 practitioners and one woman with lived experience, I explore the primary and secondary harms of punitive migration policies on migrant and refugee women who have experienced family violence. I focus on five harms: immigration detention as gendered punishment, the positioning of criminalisation above victimisation, hidden harms, ‘undeserving victims’, and consequential visa cancellation. In exploring these harms, I argue that the interests of women with a temporary status often ‘converge’ with the interests of perpetrators, which results in experiences of punishment because of their victimisation. I, therefore, make a new contribution through the framing of victim punishability , and interrogate the Australian state’s co-option of family violence in support of the exclusion of non-citizens. In so doing, I challenge state rhetoric that positions these policies as a legitimate response to tackling gender-based violence.