Access to Justice for Immigrant Women Facing Domestic Violence in Sweden

Victimized immigrant women in Sweden encounter multifaceted barriers when seeking justice for intimate partner violence. Utilizing justice management from below as a methodological approach, this study adapts a two-fold model of challenges these women face in pursuit of justice. While action-based challenges, such as lack of legal awareness and access to language, isolation, insecure residency, and integration impede women from reporting incidents of domestic violence to the police; the process-based obstacles, including difficulties in proving violence and navigating legal proceedings and lack of trust in authorities hinder immigrant victimized women even after they have reported their cases. As a result, the majority of these women abandon their cases in the pursuit of justice. The findings of the study also underscore the importance of employing a bottom-up approach to understand the challenges faced by immigrant women who are victims of domestic violence within the Swedish justice system for access to justice.