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This critical review of Ireland's policy response to gender-based violence as it affects migrant women contributes to recent literature that focuses on how states' legal and policy regimes can be part of the problem, in this case adding to rather than reducing GBV related vulnerabilities experienced by migrant women. Through a review of key policy, law and NGO documents, the report foregrounds the significance of context-specific framing and interpretation of influential ideas in shaping the horizons of possible policy action. The review is contextualized in relation to developments in Ireland concerning migration, citizenship and racialisation and more broadly vis-a-vis the nexus of migration governance and gender based violence. The authors trace the development of dominant ideas that shape policy practice with a focus on their interpretation in the Irish context—namely, vulnerability, intersectionality, and interculturalism. Four particular areas of policy response are identified, which reveal a pattern of policy failure on the part of the Irish state characterized by exclusion, minimization, and/or inaction. These relate to assessment of vulnerability of applicants for international protection; addressing gender-based violence in the context of direct provision accommodation; identification and referral of trafficking victims; and response to domestic violence linked to dependent migration status. The authors find that the pattern of failure identified is linked to the current dominance of an ever narrowing and individualized framing of vulnerability found in EU migration regulations, a lack of application of an intersectional gender perspective, the diminished influence of indivisible human rights norms requiring attention to economic, social and cultural rights, as a well as a wider national context of declining resource allocation to addressing gender-based violence and integration, including anti-racism initiatives, for over a decade.

Studies of young Western-born/raised Muslims show the multiple, complex and changing relationships they have with their religion, and what freedom and autonomy might mean in this context. Despite such evidence, popular and academic discourses of the emancipated and free female subject of neoliberal society eclipse such important themes for Muslim youth. Using qualitative evidence from a study of young Muslim women in Ireland, we identify how religio-cultural dimensions are central within young women's social lives and personal worlds. Our analysis of these young women's narratives draws on structuration theory to examine what can be described as their circumscribed choices and freedoms. Focusing on the gendered norms, meanings and sanctions that circulate within family and community, we suggest that their social and personal worlds reflect a gendered responsibility and agency, as structured through their religio-cultural system. Maintaining religious integrity is a key dimension, reinforced through close interactions, relationships and identity performances at home and with friends. The research was conducted with both female and male teenagers using participant-led interviews and a range of other qualitative methods. From a total 33 Muslim participants, this paper draws on the narratives of 15 young women, aged between 12 and 19 years.