Jenna Baker Macro/Exosystems Paper 11/17/2017

Domestic abuse in immigrant families: A Human Ecological Model approach

Two summers ago and into the fall I spent over 6 months working at Asian Women

United of Minnesotas House of Peace domestic violence shelter. This was an eye-opening

experience. Here, I was exposed to the stories of some of the most resilient women and children

I have ever met. Hearing their stories and watching them survive in this space made me hopeful

and thankful for such services and resources but it also made me highly critical of many of the

forces that led these women to this point in their lives. In this paper, I will discuss domestic

violence as a womens issue and especially how a persons immigrant experience can exacerbate

the negative impacts of domestic violence. I will also discuss how this issue truly exemplifies

Bronfenbrenners Human Ecological Model in the way that each level of the environment affects

the womens experiences as survivors of domestic abuse.

The House of Peace

The shelter I worked at was a private sanctuary in a residential area of Minneapolis. Its

location is kept secret to protect the women who flee there as most are still in direct danger from

their abusers. The House of Peace takes in women fleeing from violent homes and primarily

take in women of racial and ethnic minorities and/or have immigrant or refugee status. Some

women have uncertain citizenship status. Some womens citizenship status is linked to their

abuser. Women find themselves at the House of Peace in various ways. Most often, women call

hotlines, either House of Peaces hotline or another domestic violence hotline that connects them

with the House of Peace, when they decide to flee. Sometimes it is an immediate process, other

times they schedule a time that they will leave and there is a pickup arranged. Another way

women find themselves at the shelter is after a 911 call or a trip to the hospital. For frequently

dealing with crises such as this, the House of Peace remains, as its name would entail, a peaceful
Jenna Baker Macro/Exosystems Paper 11/17/2017

sanctuary to these women. The space itself feels welcoming and open. Its slow and quiet most

of the time; a place of healing.

Most women stay between 3-6 months. The goal is for women to stay no longer than 6

months and to find their own housing by then. Still, there are some women who have been in the

shelter for over a year. The shelter is always a revolving door of families and stories. When I

was working there, about half of the women had children, many had more than one. About 75%

of the women were Asian, some Asian American, most immigrants or refugees. The rest of the

families represented many different ethnicities and immigration statuses. Though the stories of

each of these women varied vastly, there are certain commonalities and themes regarding

domestic violence among immigrant families, especially Asian immigrant families, that raised a

lot of critical questions for me.

Bronfenbrenners Human Ecological Model

Bronfenbrenner argues that to understand human experience one must take into account

an individuals experience in context with the environment in which the individual grows and

learns. In his theory, he also holds that the environment everyone lives in can be understood at

different levels of interaction and each level, whether proximal or distal, affects the individuals

experience reciprocally as they interact. Bronfenbrenner developed these levels or spheres of

influence and labeled them (from the most proximal to the most distal from the individual) the

microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, macrosystems and chronosystems. Each system more

proximal is embedded in the next more distal system, graphically depicted below (included as an

abbreviated model example) and is influenced by as well as influences the surrounding systems.

The key to understanding this model is recognizing how each sphere interacts with the others and
Jenna Baker Macro/Exosystems Paper 11/17/2017

that no individual experiences any event or phenomenon without creating a ripple effect

throughout the whole model.

Ecological Model on Domestic Abuse of Immigrant Women

Mesosystem
Familial
- Language barriers to
- Psychological/emotional distress accessing resources
- Attachment issues with children - Attitude toward
after trauma community accessibility
of its resources
- Children still including abuser as
family - School and home
interaction
Societal
- Patriarchal Ideologies
- Stigma and prejudice
of immigrants/refugees
in America
- Job opportunities for
immigrant women

TIME

In the human ecological model, Bronfenbrenner defines the microsystem as the

immediate patterns, activities, social roles, and interpersonal relations experienced by the

developing person in a given face-to-face setting that affect their engagement with their

environment. This can be family or a classroom or a close-knit spiritual group. This system is

the one the developing person interacts with most and from where much of their worldview is

shaped. The mesosystem comprises the relations between two or more microsystemic settings a

developing person engages in. This system describes the processes of how two specific systems

interact and communicate for decision-making and problem-solving purposes. This could be

interactions between school and home life, like a parent-teacher conference, something that was

a big obstacle for many of the women at the House of Peace in being active and seen as active in
Jenna Baker Macro/Exosystems Paper 11/17/2017

their childs life. The exosystem refers to the relations between two of more settings when one

does not directly include the developing person. This is the first level which looks at indirect and

more distal influences in a persons life. For example, the interaction between home life and the

therapeutic work a mother engages in with a therapy group for her trauma is an exosystem of her

child. Macrosystems refer to the surrounding culture of the developing person. This includes

their cultural experience as well as the mainstream culture within which they are embedded,

beliefs systems, institutional structures, values, and norms. Bronfenbrenner calls this a societal

blueprint. A salient example of something from the macrosystem would be the gender roles and

expectations of immigrant women, both in a receiving country and country of origin context.

The last system is the chronosystem and this extends the model into a third dimension including

how the passage of time affects these relations. This could be time in the day, seasons a person

experiences, as well as era or generation they live in (Bronfenbrenner, 1994).

The human ecological model can help us understand how domestic violence is a

pervasive issue in all spheres of human experience. It can also help point out systemic issues

that perpetuate this problem and highlight vulnerabilities that leave immigrant women and

families without as many resources to succeed as other families and how the resources that do

exist fail to provide what these women need. Next we will discuss the specific ways domestic

violence is problematic within the immigrant and refugee community in the U.S. and how these

problems permeate each system in this model.

Domestic Violence Among Immigrant Populations

There has been disappointingly little research done on the unique experiences of

immigrant populations and domestic violence, but the research that does exist shows that

negative outcomes are exacerbated when women face the difficulties of living as a recent
Jenna Baker Macro/Exosystems Paper 11/17/2017

immigrant or refugee in a new country as well as violence in the home. Although domestic

violence does not appear to be more common among immigrant families, the research agrees that

the outcomes can be far more negative when compounding these difficult experiences. In

addition to the distress a domestic abuse situation causes an individual, immigrant women are

dealing with a number of other factors that I saw play out at the House of Peace. These factors

include but are not limited to language barrier issues, isolation from family and other support

systems, changes in economic and social status, and citizenship issues. Last, immigrant women,

especially from Asian countries, come from societies where domestic violence is more common

and less frequently reported. Coming from this frame of reference, many women stay in

dangerous situations for longer than women who were socialized in the U.S (Menjivar &

Salcido, 2002).

Many women in the shelter faced language barriers that made them feel very isolated

even when surrounded by the amount of support that the staff provided. At a family level, or a

microsystem level from Bronfenbrenners Human Ecological Model, language was a resource

and something that held moms and children together in the family. It was something that

bonded a family when they were the only people in the building that spoke their language as they

really had to lean on one another. But at the mesosystem level, as soon as the women needed to

interact with other systems and access their resources, language quickly became a barrier. Most

women were able to speak with the staff advocates maybe once a week when their translator

would come into the shelter. This means that one hour a week was all the women were able to

have to put concentrated effort toward filing paperwork for work visas, citizenship, navigate a

job search and skill-building classes, apply for housing, etc. This hindered the process of

figuring out already confusing and time-consuming systems.

Jenna Baker Macro/Exosystems Paper 11/17/2017

Another factor that exacerbates negative impacts of domestic violence against immigrant

women is the isolation women experience from their family and community support systems

they left behind in their countries of origin. Without these support systems, women often feel

alone. Many of these women spoke about what they felt like they could and could not tell their

family back home. One women shared how she did not want her family to worry about her

because there was nothing they could do as they did not have the money to visit or travel to the

U.S. and the woman did not have the ability to leave her house without permission let alone

attempt to figure out a way back home. So for 2 years she remained in an abusive relationship

and her family did not even know. This is just one of many stories that illustrates how

devastating this separation can be. Being isolated from these factors also makes it easier for

husbands to control their wives and keep them isolated from accessing other resources. Lack of

interaction means that the husband has control over a wifes entire mesosystem and exosystem

access making him a very powerful abuser.

Another power imbalance many immigrant women report is the change in economic

status. In a study interviewing battered women on their experiences, many spoke about the

challenges of finding work to support the family not always because work was hard to find but

because their abusers had certain expectations about women and a mans responsibility to

provide. One women said,

If a spouse did not have work in home country, family or relatives would

extend him money and help him. Here in U.S., there are many bills to pay;

there is no one to give you a hand. One gets embarrassed.

Jenna Baker Macro/Exosystems Paper 11/17/2017

She then spoke about how this embarrassment led her husband to beat her especially when she

would seek work herself (Erez et al., 2008). Another economic challenge is that women in many

countries of origin had very valuable community skills that would contribute to the overall

operation of a community and a family but are not translated well to holding a job in the U.S.

especially with limited English proficiency. This issue points out ways that macrosystems level

thinking in both the culture of origin and U.S. culture interact and create toxic belief systems that

lead to the over-control of these women. It also shows how institutions make it difficult for

women to empower themselves and perpetuate their status as second-class subordinates.

Finally, many immigrant women have citizenship or stay-visa status that is linked to their

abuser. One woman said of her circumstance, he has had more power to manipulate in the U.S.

because I am illegal and depended on him and I didnt have any rights here. Another says, he

used my immigration status against me. He would tell me that without him, I was nothing in this

country. These women illustrate how far our immigration system and legal system fails to

protect women or even give them the tools to protect themselves in situations of abuse (Erez et

al., 2008). For a woman who is unfamiliar with the many levels of government and institutions

here in the U.S., does not speak the language proficiently, is emotionally traumatized, has

children to take care of, and is isolated from resources available to her as well as family and

community support systems, breaking out of this cycle of violence would be like hitting one

barrier after another. These women have become disenfranchised in every level of their

environment, from microsystem to macrosystem. The House of Peace provides them with great

services but there needs to be more action and more attention to the specific needs of battered

immigrant women.
Jenna Baker Macro/Exosystems Paper 11/17/2017

References

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1994). Ecological models of human development. International

Encyclopedia of Education, 3 (2), 37-43.

Erez, E., Adelman, M., & Gregory, C. (2008). Intersections of immigrant and domestic

violence: Voices of battered women. Feminist Criminology, 4, (32). doi:

10.1177/1557085108325413

Menjivar, C., & Salcido, O. (2002). Immigrant women and domestic violence: Common

experiences in different countries. Gender and Society, 16, (6). 898-920.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3081940