Sheltering from domestic violence: Women’s experiences of punitive safety and unfreedom in Cambodian safe shelters

Abstract

This paper explores the experiences of Cambodian domestic violence survivors who have fled their abusive partners to live in NGO-run safe shelters. Through in-depth interview research undertaken in 2016, we explore the stories of seven women whose experiences speak to tensions between having safety from violence and freedom to live as they choose. The pervasive impunity of the legal system means that Cambodian society operates as a safe space for perpetrators of domestic violence and spatially excludes survivors from it to guarantee their safety from injury and even murder. Just as violence against women has been described as a major area of 'unfreedom', we contend also that safe shelter provision in Cambodia, albeit essential, does not necessarily afford freedom from violence, but rather a punitive safety from it which can curtail women's bodily integrity. Survivors are too often being excluded from decision-making processes in the shelter and treated as passive recipients of physical safety. Making the argument that safety and freedom are not coterminous, we contribute to recent feminist scholarship in geography and aligned disciplines focused on the significance and workings of safe space for marginalised groups. As such, the paper complicates singular viewpoints of safe spaces as enabling environments which can challenge oppressive forces both inside and outside of them.

Feminization of refugee: Intersectionality, solidarity, resistance

“…In Turkey, we see that the shelter model of F‐NGOs like MorÇatı supports solidarity among women, but their feminist stance is not compatible with seeing shelters as the ultimate solution. In fact, the safety provided by shelters is actually a ‘punitive safety’ because it solely focuses on the physical well‐beings of women while confining them into an isolated place thus taking away their freedom (Graham & Brickell, 2019). We evaluate the proposition of shelters as a solution to domestic violence as an act of resilience, being used as an operational strategy for crisis response.…”

Towards Dismantling Patriarchy in the Kibera Slum, Kenya: Narrative Accounts of Victims of Intimate Partner Violence

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Geographies of hiding: power, vulnerability and agency in secret spaces

“…Analyses of agency in hiding practices need to take this caution on board, as decisions made in the course of a hiding attempt are often default choices that lead to other difficulties. Spatially restricted lives (Warrington, 2001, p. 365; Pain, 1997), feelings of disempowerment and lack of freedom (Graham & Brickell, 2019) have for instance been identified as at the core of the hiding experiences of women fleeing violence.…”