Addressing Family Violence Experienced by Ethnic Migrant Women in Aotearoa/New Zealand: A Critical Consideration of Community‐Based Approaches

Safe and ethnic‐specific strategies for addressing family violence (FV) remain an underdeveloped area in FV studies about ethnic communities in Aotearoa–New Zealand (ANZ). The limited existing research shows a tension between two perspectives. The first is the culturalization approaches, which tend to overemphasise cultural worldviews as the root of the problem, often concentrating efforts on correcting what they perceive as ‘oppressive’ aspects of victim‐survivors’ cultures. The second is an emerging body of scholarship on mobilising rather than erasing culture within strategies for addressing FV. Resolving this tension is beyond the scope of this paper. However, it provides evidence that several challenges intricately linked to their experiences of being ‘migrants’ exist within and outside these communities, affecting how they respond to FV. These issues must be addressed before cultural mobilisation, and ‘culturalization’ approaches can be safely used. The data used were drawn from a narrative inquiry‐based study with 10 ethnic women victim‐survivors and 10 supporting nonmedical practitioners examining their engagement with the Victims of Family Violence (VFV) Visa policy in ANZ. The issues identified include the small and dispersed size of the communities, which impacts support networks and conditions created by immigration visa status, a critical factor linked to reporting, help‐seeking, and support offered to victim‐survivors by the community members.