Why exclusionary migration policies are not a legitimate response to tackling gender-based violence
Samantha O’Donnell
Family violence is a primary consideration in the Australian government’s exclusion of non-citizens, many of whom are refugees/people seeking asylum. Migration policies that expand the Australian state’s power to refuse and cancel non-citizens’ visas are heralded by both major Australian political parties as ensuring the safety of victim-survivors of family violence.
In my recently published article, I provide evidence that challenges this framing. I argue that visa cancellations, immigration detention, and deportations harm migrant and refugee women who are victim-survivors of family violence with a temporary migration status. These policies have particular and disproportionate impacts on women, as we know that this form of violence is gendered whereby women are most commonly victim-survivors.
We must, therefore, challenge the exclusion of non-citizens as a legitimate response to tackling gender-based violence.
The political landscape in Australia
Political language around visa cancellations highlights how punitive migration policies are framed as ensuring the safety of victim-survivors of family violence. In Australia, a visa may be refused or cancelled if the applicant is ‘not of good character’. If a non-citizen’s visa is refused or cancelled, they are at risk of detention and/or deportation. This risk arises as non-citizens without a valid visa must be mandatorily detained and in certain circumstances deported.
The policy guidance that accompanies visa cancellations in Australia, establishes family violence as a ‘primary consideration’ for decision-makers when refusing or cancelling a visa on character grounds.
This guidance was introduced by the Liberal Party in 2021, in the form of policy directive Direction 90. The accompanying ministerial announcement noted that family violence has ‘no place in Australia and will not be tolerated.’ The language of family violence was used to justify the strengthened cancellation mechanisms.
The Labor Party used similar wording when they released a revised but substantively similar version of the guidance last year, in the form of policy directive Direction 110. This direction revoked the previous directions and is currently in force. The accompanying ministerial announcement described how this approach ‘elevates the impact on victims of family violence and their families … reflecting the Government’s zero-tolerance approach to family and domestic violence.’
These framings, from both major political parties in Australia, evidence a bipartisan approach. What this position ignores is the harmful impacts of these policies on victim-survivors of family violence when their migration status is temporary.
The harms of exclusionary migration policies
There is no consideration of how visa cancellations, immigration detention, and deportations harm victim-survivors of family violence with a temporary migration status. I conducted interviews with 12 practitioners and 1 woman with lived experience, which provided evidence of both primary and secondary harms.
When migrant and refugee women are directly exposed to immigration detention, visa cancellations, and deportations, their experiences of family violence play a central feature in how they experience punishment.
As an example of these primary harms, women may be exposed to interpersonal forms of violence and abuse in detention, but they are not offered adequate support. Additionally, we know that many women who are criminalised and imprisoned have experienced family violence. Yet these experiences of family violence, that might be considered mitigating circumstances in a criminal law context, are not ‘given the same weight’ in a subsequent visa cancellation matter.
Even when women are not directly impacted by these policies, migrant and refugee women’s interests may ‘converge’ with the interests of the person who used violence, resulting in a secondary experience of harm.
As examples of these secondary harms, I spoke to practitioners who described the chilling effect of these policies on broader reporting of family violence within the community. Women are forced to make an impossible choice. They can report family violence and risk having their partner detained and/or deported. Alternatively, if they do not report, then they remain in an unsafe situation. Additionally, if a victim-survivor is a dependent on a perpetrator’s visa that is cancelled, there are not adequate supports in place to prevent the victim-survivor from having her own visa consequentially cancelled.
Interrogating the Australian state’s weaponisation of family violence
In light of these primary and secondary harms, I challenge the exclusion of non-citizens as a legitimate response to tackling gender-based violence.
Visa cancellations, immigration detention, and deportations impact women who experience family violence while on a temporary visa in harmful and gendered ways. We must, therefore, interrogate political language that asserts that these approaches increase the safety of victim-survivors of family violence.
In recognising the harmful consequences of these policies on migrant and refugee women with a temporary migration status, these women’s experiences of state violence are brought into focus. In bringing state violence into focus, we thus see the gendered and racialised consequences of Australia’s exclusionary and punitive approach to migration.
In calling for the elimination of gender-based violence, we must also call for the abolition of immigration detention and violent practices of immigration restriction in Australia.
Samantha O’Donnell is a PhD Candidate and Research Fellow with the Centre for the Elimination of Violence Against Women at the University of Melbourne. Her research examines gendered violence, bordering, and state violence. Samantha can be contacted at samantha.odonnell@unimelb.edu.au.