Mónica and Bianca’s experiences are just two of the painful incidences of intimate partner violence that occur within the home in Maré and London. Until recently, gender-based violence in the private domain in cities has tended to be normalised, routinised and largely invisible. However, urban households are primary sites of violence and the most likely arena where intimate partner violence occurs, as well as other forms of intra-family abuse. To a lesser extent, non-family violence also takes place in the private domain, especially state and police violence (McIlwaine, 2023). Women’s intimate lives in the household cannot be divorced from their public and transnational experiences. Furthermore, as we have noted elsewhere in the book, violence in the private sphere is not an individualised occurrence but is bolstered by indirect structural, symbolic and infrastructural violence, as shown in the translocational gendered urban violence framework. Yet, here we suggest that it is heuristically useful to consider the private sphere of the household as an important site for understanding some key dimensions of gendered urban violence. This chapter therefore explores the nature of gendered urban violence in the private domain in relation to its prevalence, diversity and the core drivers underlying its incidence. It explores, in greater depth than outlined in Chapter 3, how women experience multiple and overlapping types of violence in the home that are embedded within wider gendered and intersectional power relations. Again reflecting the components of the framework, the chapter considers structural drivers of violence in this sphere, showing how the violence of the city, wider society and the state percolates destructively into this domain. In Maré, we foreground the ways in which private sphere violence is reinforced by state neglect and public insecurity on the part of the police and armed gangs. In London, we highlight the role of immigration status, racialised state control and how this is mobilised as a tool for manipulation and control by intimate partners and others.

Drawing from many of the methodologies and creative engagements that are also dimensions of the translocational gendered urban violence framework, this chapter highlights how gendered urban violence is embodied through direct forms of violence in the home, often but not exclusively at the hands of intimate partners and reinforced through the indirect structural and symbolic violence of racialised states. Violent structural insecurity underpins violence in the private space, enabling it to emerge translocationally both figuratively and literally across borders. As captured in the creative encounters in particular, women’s experiences are also inspirational in their resilience, bravery and dignity in the face of such cruelty, insecurity and neglect.

Prevalence of gendered urban violence in the private sphere

Gendered violence in the private sphere does not equate directly to domestic violence. Instead, it refers to different types of intimate partner and non-intimate partner violence across the whole range of psychological, sexual, physical, financial and technology-facilitated abuses that are bolstered by structural, symbolic and infrastructural violence. This reflects wider critiques of how the term domestic violence has been used to denote intimate partner violence between individuals on an interpersonal basis within the home, rather than acknowledging broader structural power relations (Lopes Heimer, 2022). This is especially important when analysing excluded groups on the urban margins given a damaging tendency to blame individual behaviour and pathologies as a reason for violence perpetration. Often, these tropes are erroneously used to explain potentially high levels of gender-based violence among certain ethnic, racial and/or migrant groups, thus making incorrect assumptions about certain cultures being more inherently violent (Dominguez and Menjívar, 2014; Erez et al., 2009). While we still refer to domestic violence, we tend to avoid it in order to capture the full spectrum and complex drivers of abuses that are perpetrated in the private domain.

Until recently, there has been limited research on the experiences of gender-based violence in the private sphere among marginalised women in cities. For favela residents, much work focused on the structural violence exercised by the state and especially on police violence (Garmany, 2014; Garmany and Richmond, 2020; Nunes and Veillette, 2022), while work on migrants has tended to focus on domestic abuse in general without reference to the urban context (Anitha, 2008; Cassidy, 2019). Yet, the importance of researching the urban setting for understanding gender-based violence in the home has been increasingly recognised as part of wider efforts to challenge dichotomies of the public–private reflecting danger–safety (McIlwaine, 2013; Piedalue, 2022). Gender-based violence is not just situated within urban areas with cities as ‘containers’ (Pavoni and Tulumello, 2020) but is an intrinsic part of urban fabric (McIlwaine, 2021a). Living in cities can allow women greater freedom to act as they wish (Bradshaw, 2013) as well as opportunities to develop forms of resistance to gender inequalities and gendered urban violence. In turn, violence against women in the private sphere can be more productively seen to traverse into the city, beyond the confines of the home (Datta, 2016; Datta and Ahmed, 2020), and is a key element in understanding women’s wider rights to the city (Fenster, 2005; McIlwaine et al., 2021). In London and Rio de Janeiro, we have identified domestic violence, intimate partner violence, intrafamilial abuse, sexual abuse and rape, emotional abuse, financial subjugation, verbal aggression and coercion as the main types.

Multidimensionality of gender-based violence in the private sphere in Maré

In Maré, urban conflict acts as both backdrop and driver of gendered urban violence that manifests in the home. As noted in Chapter 3, our survey revealed that 47 per cent of all gender-based violence perpetrated was in the private sphere. More specifically, physical violence was especially dominant in the private domain, which is where two-thirds of all incidents took place. Within this, physical aggression was the type of violence most commonly experienced (78 per cent of the total across both spheres). The private sphere was the setting for the vast majority of all violent control (80 per cent), almost all strangulation and stabbing (90 per cent respectively) and five of the six cases of burning. While only 27 per cent of all sexual violence occurred in the private sphere, 69 per cent of all unwanted sexual acts were perpetrated there and 65 per cent of all rapes (thirty-two cases out of a total of fifty-nine). In turn, 41 per cent of all psychological violence was perpetrated in the household, including 56 per cent of all threats of physical aggression and 37 per cent of all verbal abuse. In terms of perpetrators across all spheres, most were intimate partners (47 per cent) acting within the home (Krenzinger et al., 2018a).

While this provides the broad context, the interviews and focus groups revealed a complex and disturbing portrait of intersecting and regular forms of violence. A clear theme that emerged was how violence in the home had occurred throughout their lives at the hands of parents, stepparents and other relatives. Six of the twenty women interviewed in stage one of the research spoke of being sexually abused by stepfathers or uncles in the home. For example, Dora, who was in her fifties, spoke of being sexually and physically abused by her stepfather for six years (between the ages of seven and thirteen), including rape and stabbing. He convinced her that all fathers did this to their children and so she must tell no one about it. Dora eventually spoke to her cousin who told her grandmother. However, her grandmother persuaded her not to report it to the police, saying: ‘Look, I have fourteen children. I won’t tell her to go to the police station because otherwise who is going to provide for your siblings?’ In a similar manner, Juliana, who was thirty-two and a trans woman, spoke of being sexually abused by her uncle from the age of ten. Although she told her mother when she was thirty, her mother would not listen and refused to believe that her brother was the perpetrator. Juliana felt that her transgender status meant that her abuse was taken less seriously. This also emerged in discussions in the focus group with LGBTQI+ people, where all of them spoke of violence perpetrated by members of their own families.

Physical abuse on the part of parents was not uncommon. Leila, twenty-eight, spoke of how both her parents drank excessively, which contributed to her father beating her and her brother on a regular basis, even hitting her once when she was showering. This abuse led her to flee home at fourteen and move in with a forty-three-year-old man who was her ‘boyfriend’ and her escape route. Luciana, who was forty, discussed how her mother would physically hit her, even when she was seven months pregnant with her first child. Luciana’s mother also abused her emotionally; her mother would stamp on clean clothes that were not dry enough and make her wash them all over again. Siblings were also violent. Inês, fifty-one, was physically beaten by both parents for being naughty, while her sister placed a hot iron on her bottom, burning her to stop her bothering her with ‘nonsense talk’. Two women spoke of being put into an orphanage and convent by their mothers who could no longer care for them. While not family households, these were violent places, as reported by Lúcia, fifty-two, who spoke of how the nuns beat them with palm canes and refused to give them food. Daniela, thirty-four, was also beaten and starved at an orphanage where she learned to smoke at the age of nine.

Although these are stories of parental neglect and violence, these were not universal. In the digital storytelling, many of the women artists interviewed had extremely fond memories of their mothers and fathers. Rafaela, forty-one, a clothes-designer, freelance artisan and producer of sustainable fashion for the brands By Rafa and Made in Maré, spoke of how her mother, a seamstress, had inspired her. While initially her mother dissuaded her from moving into the same profession because it was a ‘very exhausting and painful job’, she supported her to set up her own business, commenting that her embroidery skills were in her blood, inherited from Ceará where she had been born. Her mother also supported her pregnancy at sixteen: ‘My mother gave me what I needed. I did not ask him [the child’s father] for anything … But as I was raised by a woman who didn’t ask for anything from anyone, my mother also hoped that I wouldn’t ask either; she would provide it herself’. Rafaela’s story can be watched in the Museu da Pessoa online exhibition Female Lives (see also Figure 4.1).¹

Figure 4.1Rafael Feistosa speaking about her life in Maré as part of the Female Lives Exhibition by the Museum of the Person (credit: Paula Santos; adapted from McIlwaine et al., 2022b)

For many women, however, the trauma of their early years continued as they established their own independent households. Women spoke of how intimate partners did not appear to be violent at first but that emotional abuse began incrementally, often leading to physical and sexual violence. Speaking about her violent ex-husband, Odete stated that after five good years, ‘I saw the transformation of this man, who had been a wonderful person, a great companion, turning into a monster’. She commented on how he drank excessively, used drugs and gambled, which led initially to economic abuse as he no longer contributed financially to the household. He then began to insult her, calling her fat and ‘an icebox’ when she refused to have sex with him, but these became death threats: ‘I am going to set you alight; I’ll douse you in alcohol and set you on fire … to watch you die slowly’. He was also physically abusive towards her, throwing things at her; once, he threw a melon at her head which knocked her out.

The majority of women interviewed reported having suffered some form of psychological violence at the hands of intimate partners. As well as verbal abuse, women spoke of partners preventing them from going out, working or studying. For example, Marina, fifty-one, discussed how her ex-husband, whom she had married under pressure from her parents after she got pregnant at fifteen, did not want her to study or work. Yet, Marina studied without his knowledge, faking his signature to get back into school. She pretended to be out delivering Avon products when she was actually working as a cleaner at a private home and going to school. When he found out, he threatened to beat her but eventually agreed to her continuing. This type of emotional violence created severe health problems for some women; forty-year-old Mariana ended up with severe migraines as a result of continual psychological abuse perpetrated by her ex-partner. He did not want her to study for the university entrance exam and on the first day of her course, he turned up and made a scene, threatening to break things in the classroom if she did not leave with him; when she left the classroom, he told her: ‘You choose: either me or the course’. She chose the course, and he acquiesced, but he kept harassing her and would not let her study in peace. He undermined her self-esteem through saying things like: ‘You will not achieve anything in life; if you leave, nobody will want you because you have four daughters; what man will want to be with you with four daughters?’ (see also McIlwaine et al., 2020).

Sexual violence was also frequently discussed. Teresa, a twenty-year-old student, spoke of how the first time she had sex with a controlling former boyfriend, she was forced to do so. Women often discussed how male partners felt it was their right to have sexual relations with them regardless of whether they wanted to. Silvia, fifty-six, for example, stated that her husband constantly harassed her for sex, demanding it as ‘her duty’. Similarly, Odete discussed how her ex-husband would demand sex and if she refused, he would become aggressive and push her, break doors and throw things.

Much of the violence experienced by women in Maré was exceptionally severe, with many women having near-death experiences due to physical abuse. Adriana, thirty-nine, spoke of the violence she suffered at the hands of her ex-husband. After being together for ten years, he developed an alcohol addiction and started to abuse her. One night, he got home drunk and punched her in the face. She grabbed a knife to defend herself, but he took it off her and beat her, threatening to kill her. Vanessa, thirty-one, told of the horrific abuse she experienced from her former partner. He constantly insulted her, telling her: ‘You are worth nothing’. One time, he punched her and beat her after she fell over. He also tried to break her arm on the edge of the door and to break her leg, punching her in the stomach, all in front of their six-year-old son who began to cry. Vanessa said that he would probably have killed her if her neighbour had not intervened to stop him strangling her.

Several of the transgender women included in both stages of the research spoke of intimate partner violence. For instance, Ileana, thirty-two, who had suffered a lot of trauma in her life including working as a sex worker and being addicted to crack cocaine for ten years, spoke of how her husband of twenty years, who had initially stood by her, became violent towards her after becoming addicted to drugs. She felt she could not leave him because he ‘protected her from the streets’. Celine, thirty-five, another transgender woman included in the second stage of the research, spoke of physical and psychological violence she suffered from her partner, who tried to hang her: ‘he hung me until I lost my breath and left me lying there, in a situation where I was trying to get my breath back’. She said that he blamed her gender identity for his violence towards her, saying: ‘I’m doing this because you’re wrong; you have to get better or I’m going to kill you’.

While all this brutal intimate partner violence occurred in the private sphere of the household, former intimate partners were also perpetrators. Often, men could not cope with the rejection of a break-up, especially if this was instigated by their female partner, and so continued to harass them. One particularly severe case was of Cátia, twenty-nine, who spoke about how the father of her daughter, who had previously tried to kill her, continued to follow her when she went out. Once, when he picked up his daughter from her house, he raped her. When Cátia’s current husband found out about the rape, he left her. Just as Mariana suffered from migraines, the effects of such violent relationships took their toll on women’s mental health. Silvia, fifty-six, had been married for forty years to a jealous and controlling man. Following the separation, he continued to follow her, making her permanently afraid and causing her to suffer from panic attacks:

While most violence in the home space was perpetrated by intimate partners and other family members, the state, through the police, also (illegally) entered homes in Maré and committed violent acts against women. As noted in Chapter 3, violent police incursions are a regular occurrence in Maré, with severe ramifications for women residents in terms of their experiences of violence, fear and mental health (Sousa Silva and Heritage, 2021). Police incursions were repeatedly discussed in interviews and the body-territory mapping workshops, with several women speaking about having their houses invaded. Elsa, forty-seven, for example, had her house raided by the police twice, making her feel powerless, angry and oppressed by the state authorities. In her body map, she discussed how the fear she felt affected her stomach. Women spoke of the police presence as a literal invasion of their territory and of their bodies. For example, Katia, twenty-five, said: ‘I feel violated, really, I feel it in my body, I feel my body shaking, you know? When there are operations, when I see the police’. Women also spoke of how they felt that the police targeted women in their homes. For example, fifty-year-old Priscila, who identified as preta, stated that the police targeted women living alone, suspecting them of hiding drug traffickers in their home. She felt further targeted by her racial identity:

Although these violent invasions of homes are a recurring problem in Maré, the house can also be a sphere of safety where people flee incursions. Many women spoke of staying at home when incursions began, often hiding in kitchens, under beds and in bathrooms. Silvia, fifty-six, stated: ‘When there’s an operation … I’ll stay indoors. I lock the gate. Preferably, I don’t even go near the window, because once I was by the window, a bullet came in and almost hit me’ (see also Chapter 7).

Another form of non-family violence within the space of the home is the exploitation and harassment of women working as domestic servants. Roberta, forty-seven, commented on how she was abused by her former male boss when she worked as a housekeeper in the apartment of a wealthy family. She said that he would remove his shirt and ask for massages and would try to get into her room at night (which she had to keep locked). The concierge of the building would let her know when the male boss was arriving from work, allowing her to avoid him by taking the baby and the dog out for a walk. Roberta told her boss’s wife, but she refused to do anything about it.

Gender-based violence in the home was therefore multidimensional and extremely severe. While most of it was committed by current and former intimate partners and other family members, strangers – mainly in the form of the police – were also perpetrators. Focusing on partners and relatives, the diversity, severity and overlapping nature of much violence experienced in the private sphere of the home was portrayed in the multimedia installation SCAR (see Chapter 2). The multiple layers of the SCAR video editing conveyed the endemic, interrelated nature of the violence that was experienced by all the women, as shown in the following sequence that ends with ‘I came home’ (see Heritage, 2018b).

SCAR was exceptionally powerful in portraying stories of domestic violence that were, according to audience members, ‘unbearable and unfathomable’. However, its success was being able to also communicate survivors’ resilience and power, as noted by another audience member: ‘This sense of resilience that comes from seeing all their stories … is what made it finally life-affirming’ (Tiller, 2018: 5).

Multidimensionality of gender-based violence in the private sphere in London

Turning to consider gender-based violence in the private sphere among Brazilian migrant women in London, according to our survey, 22 per cent occurred in the private domain (see Chapter 3). While this was mainly in the survivor’s home in London (22 per cent of all violence experienced), 8 per cent occurred in someone else’s house, although this was mainly perpetrated by intimate partners (74 per cent of all such abuse in the home). While most physical violence was perpetrated in public spaces, the most dangerous forms of violence were typically committed by intimate partners within the home. This included physical aggression, which constituted slightly over half of all instances, as well as cases involving burning, strangling and cutting. Most psychological violence also occurred in the home, especially threats (67 per cent of all threats) and controlling behaviour (82 per cent). As for sexual violence, most was perpetrated by intimate partners (81 per cent) and happened in the home (53 per cent). Just as in Maré, these were not isolated acts; women who were surveyed had experienced between one and fifteen different forms of violence over their lifetime, with the majority (61 per cent) experiencing three or more different forms. This emerged in many of the interviews; Cristina, thirty-seven, originally from São Paulo and who arrived in London in 2009, spoke of how she had experienced twenty-one different types, including being kicked, slapped, throttled, controlled, defamed, stalked and threatened with a knife and scissors, all by her former partner (McIlwaine and Evans, 2018; also, McIlwaine and Evans, 2020).

While the focus here is on women’s experiences of gender-based violence in the private sphere in London, 77 per cent of women surveyed had experienced violence prior to leaving Brazil (see Chapter 3). As noted in Chapter 1, there is a transnational continuum of gendered violence that highlights how abuse occurs not only over women’s life courses but also spatially as they move from one place to another. Therefore, women in London also reflected on the violence they had suffered in Brazil. Overall, the survey showed that physical violence was the most common type experienced in Brazil (42 per cent), with 36 per cent experiencing emotional abuse and 22 per cent sexual violence (contrasting with their experiences in London where almost half was psychological violence). Acknowledging that some women had moved to London when they were younger and/or prior to setting up their own households, the survey revealed that the most frequently identified space where violence was experienced was the workplace, particularly in relation to unwelcome physical contact and physical and sexual assault. In the home, non-intimate partner violence was more common than that perpetrated by partners. However, this often involved family members abusing women, with a quarter of women identifying male relatives as perpetrators, especially fathers, stepfathers, uncles and cousins. Among the twenty-five women interviewed in stage one of the research, eight discussed being subjected to incestuous sexual abuse. For example, Paula, thirty-six, from Curitiba, Paraná, and who arrived in London in 2015, remembered how her uncle abused her as a child:

Paula had subsequently had two violent relationships, one lasting twelve years and involving near-death experiences on the part of her former partner. While it is very important not to assume that gender-based violence only occurs in Brazil or that it is culturally specific, women like Paula carry their trauma with them when they migrate.

Gaël Le Cornec included sexual abuse by an uncle as a key scene in Efêmera (2018a: 15–16), giving prominence to the issue and highlighting how the memories of trauma linger for many women. The character Ana speaks about her uncle going to their family home to sell them clothes. When her mother encouraged them to try them on in front of him, Ana said: ‘But behind her back, while we’d be getting changed, he would be staring at us and licking his lips. And my mother let him’. She went on:

This was a key dramatic moment in the play which resulted in almost complete silence in the audience, made especially shocking by the attitude of Ana’s mother – something that emerged in interviews in London and Maré. It also highlights the importance of memories in influencing women’s experiences throughout their lives (McIlwaine, 2021b). Together with physical abuse that Ana experienced at the hands of her mother, this was a key reason why she wanted to leave Brazil. Gender-based violence was a common reason why Brazilian women decided to migrate more generally (McIlwaine, 2023), a pattern commonly identified elsewhere in Latin America (Menjívar and Walsh, 2017). However, according to the survey, more women thought that gendered violence occurred just as frequently in London as in Brazil (44 per cent), although the difference was minimal (43 per cent thought that it was perpetrated less frequently).

Violence in the private sphere of the home in London was therefore just as complex as in Maré, entailing overlapping forms of trauma, abuse and fear. Focusing on the violence of intimate partners, emotional abuse was widespread and often acted as the foundation for other forms of violence. Ana Clara, thirty-six, from São Paulo, who arrived in 2010 on her husband’s work visa and who had worked as a teacher in Brazil, discussed how he controlled everything that she did. He prevented her from going out without him and once threatened to lock her out of their house and take her children from her if she went out alone. He once got into their car and sped at her, trying to run her over (ending up causing an accident and fleeing the scene).

Another increasingly common form of psychological violence was online violence, also called technology-facilitated gender-based violence. This also emerged in the Step Up Migrant Women (SUMW) research, where several women spoke of how perpetrators had inserted spyware into women’s phones without their knowledge in order to keep track of their movements (McIlwaine et al., 2019). Abuse on social media was also discussed by several women. For example, thirty-six-year-old Laura spoke of how her ex-husband posted on Facebook that she was responsible for him breaking his foot after he had tried to break down her door when she would not let him see their child:

Psychological violence also intersects closely with other economic and financial abuse. This often manifests through male partners refusing to give money to their wives and children for food and rent, controlling and/or refusing access to bank accounts or welfare benefits as well as taking out loans in women’s names without their knowledge (McIlwaine et al., 2019). Valentina, who was in her mid-fifties and from Minas Gerais, recalled how her husband worked and received some state benefits, yet he refused to share this with her and their daughter, leading to severe financial hardship:

Several women spoke about how partners would steal from them. Miriam, forty-six, who migrated from Mina Gerais in 2002, commented on how her husband had never worked and instead was always asking her to earn the money for the family through her job as a cleaner. Unfortunately, she kept her money in his bank account and when their daughter was born and she was in hospital, he withdrew fifteen thousand pounds and kept it: ‘And to this day, I haven’t seen a penny of this money!’

Reflecting Bianca’s experiences at the start of the chapter, physical violence in the home was often extremely severe, with life-threatening consequences. While this mainly involved conjugal partners, children were often physically abused. For example, Carolina, fifty-three, from Paraná, spoke about how her former husband had attacked their daughter:

In turn, Laura recalled how her former Portuguese boyfriend (who was high on drugs at the time) assaulted her with a knife: ‘He pushed me against the kitchen wall with the knife at my neck’. Fortunately, the neighbours called the police, who arrived and arrested him.

This case was also included in Efêmera by Gaël Le Cornec (2018a: 19). She describes ten incidences of violence at the hands of a violent husband, two of which relate to Laura’s experiences, as shown in the script (see also Figure 4.2 which depicts this scene):

Figure 4.2Embodying intimate partner violence on stage in Efêmera by Gaël Le Cornec (credit: Luciana Whitaker Aikins)

Sexual violence was a key dimension of intimate partner violence in the home, although some women did not identify this as abuse because it was within a conjugal relationship, as in Maré. Indeed, many service providers noted that some only accepted this as violence after they had disclosed other forms. Paula told of how her partner, who drank excessively, had raped her several times:

This scene is portrayed in the video Raising Awareness of Violence against Brazilian Women in London.² The animation of Paula’s partner shouting conveys the brutality of the verbal violence prior to the sexual assault (see Figure 4.3).

Figure 4.3Animation from Raising Awareness of Violence against Brazilian Women in London video (animation by Francesca de Bassa, directed by Aida Baneres) (credit: People’s Palace Projects/YouTube)

Intimate partner violence against women tended to be especially serious when Brazilian women were in relationships with men from a different nationality or racial background to them (where ‘serious’ is defined as ‘an incident that had the biggest impact on you, either physically or psychologically’ – EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2014: 14). Indeed, the perpetrator of the violence against Bianca described in the introduction was her Portuguese ex-partner, who called her racist names (she identified as preta) and often complained that she was inferior because she was from Brazil and not from Portugal (Lopes Heimer, 2022; McIlwaine et al., 2019). This reflected damaging racialised, class and colonial discrimination where women from countries of the Global South, in this case Brazil, were treated with contempt by partners (Grosfoguel et al., 2015; McIlwaine and Evans, 2023). Intersectional racism was not uncommon among Brazilians; Bianca’s first husband, who was Brazilian, regularly insulted her skin colour: ‘On the honeymoon, when I was lying down on the sofa with him … he said, “Look how Black you are! Look at how White I am; you’re too Black!” and I would just cry and cry’.

Former partners often continued to harass and coerce women after separating. Although separated, Cristina, thirty-seven, from São Paulo, was stalked by her former husband Roberto. He would send her text messages and call her continuously, asking for her to go back to him at the same time as threatening her if she did not. He initially stated that he would never give her a divorce, although he then initiated proceedings in a bid to frustrate her efforts to obtain Italian citizenship. As Cristina observed, ‘my life was hell. I left him in 2011 but I only had peace in 2014 … when you are in the hands of the aggressor, you’re between life and death’.

As in Maré, in London, non-intimate partner violence also occurred in the private domain in the context of work relations. Bearing in mind the transnational continuum of gender-based violence, in London, some cases were also linked to human trafficking and modern slavery (see Chapter 3). One notable case was of Sabrina, forty-five, from Fortaleza, who worked as a nanny, cleaner and courier for a family in London. Although they recruited her in Brazil and organised her ticket, on arrival in their home, they confiscated her passport and then made her work an extra four hours per day than she had anticipated. Sabrina also entered the UK with a tourist visa which did not give her the right to work, and that she soon overstayed. At this point, her male boss began to sexually harass her, threatening her with a kitchen knife and resulting in Sabrina having to lock herself in her bedroom. She felt unable to report him because she feared deportation and was unable to speak much English: ‘I’m sure he … did this knowing that I wouldn’t go to the police, because I was an illegal [sic], as my visa had already expired. And he was right; I didn’t have the courage to go to the police’. Fortunately, she managed to escape and secure help to regularise her status and get another job.

Multiple forms of violence in the home were bolstered when intimate partners had secure immigration status, which they used as a tool of control and manipulation against women with insecure status (see below). This usually occurred where intimate partners were British or had EU citizenship and was further exacerbated when the women did not speak English. However, it also happened among those with Brazilian nationality. Drawing on several cases from the interviews, in the short film Ana, Gaël Le Cornec focused specifically on Ana’s experiences of being unable to report the violence she experienced because of her insecure immigration status and her belief that no one would believe what she had been through because her partner was British:

Women with insecure status were therefore extremely vulnerable in abusive relationships where their status depended on abusive partners in what is also sometimes referred to as ‘status VAWG’ (Violence against Women and Girls) (McIlwaine et al., 2019; see also Chapter 6). Immigration status also affected ‘marriage-related migration’ and ‘spousal migration’, denoting contexts where marriage plays a significant role in migration (McIlwaine, 2023). An issue that emerged through the service providers was that some women were developing relationships with British or European men in London via the internet which often led to abuse. One provider stated that the Brazilian Consulate had alerted them to this: ‘A great majority of [these relationships] were turning into domestic violence … they were coming over here with Prince Charming, who go over there and meet the family … and would then bring her over to live here, they’d marry, and then … disaster strikes!’ Miriam (see above) reflected on the dangers of marrying for documents. After living in London for five years with insecure status, she then met a Portuguese man whom she subsequently married and had a daughter with. She began to regret her decisions when the violence began: ‘So, if you think for whatever reason you will marry someone who has documents. You need to be aware, because at the beginning it’s a fairy tale, and after a while, they start to crush you’.

Revealing the ‘painful truths’ of abuse in the private sphere showed how multidimensional and complex the violence was, just as in Maré. Yet, women were also keen to resignify this violence. In the research with Migrants in Action (MinA), a workshop observer, Isabela Miranda Gomes, noted:

In a similar way, responses to Efêmera after the show in Brighton in 2018 reflected how audience members responded to the displays of violence as inspirational, as one person noted: ‘As a Mexican-American who has been sexually abused as a child and later on helped others deal with the same issues … I’m continually inspired by those who choose to speak out’.

Theorising translocational gendered urban violence in the private sphere in Maré and London

Returning to the translocational gendered urban violence framing, this chapter has shown how such violence is driven by individual and structural processes that stem from intersectional patriarchal hierarchies of oppression and intersect with a racialised state apparatus in both countries. These processes manifest themselves through both symbolic and structural violence. To understand how this violence affects women in Brazil and the UK, their experiences must be considered as part of unequal global systems underpinned by colonialism. Processes of urbanisation and migration are arguably inherently violent across a local, city-wide and transnational continuum of violence. The micro-drivers of direct forms of interpersonal gender-based violence, where certain factors can exacerbate abuse, are underpinned by wider structural drivers of gendered urban violence. These operate together to subjugate women into erroneous self-blame for causing the violence. For example, in Maré, forty-year-old Luciana noted that a woman she knows who suffers from intimate partner violence says:

Brazilian women in London made similar points, such as Sofia, forty, who moved to London in 1995: ‘I felt as if it was my fault, that I had provoked him, and in truth I did provoke him, because I put his things in the bin’. Many women also blamed their abusers’ upbringing and especially mentioned male perpetrators having experienced abuse in the home or having witnessed violence between their parents. In Maré, twenty-nine-year-old Elizabete, speaking about her brother, noted:

This was also noted by several LGBTQI+ people who spoke about homophobic and transphobic mistreatment by family members. In Maré, Juliana, who had been sexually abused by her uncle, recalled how she interiorised violence as normal because of the treatment by her family. In London, a trans woman, Nina, spoke about intense discrimination on the part of her parents and siblings because of her sexuality and identity, leading to her leaving Brazil and moving to the UK.

Alcohol and drug abuse among fathers, mothers and intimate partners was widespread in Maré and in London and was commonly cited as a reason for violence in the home. Odete from Maré spoke about how her husband’s alcohol and drug addiction would lead to violent arguments. While at first he would be emotionally abusive when he was under the influence of alcohol and drugs, he began to throw things and become more physically violent. In London, Paula’s husband got extremely violent when drunk. She recalled one incident when he picked up a heavy typewriter and hit Paula repeatedly on the head with it, smashing her face and breaking her jawbone. Of course, alcohol and drugs are only triggers for violence and not underlying causes (McIlwaine, 2013).

Other so-called ‘triggers’ for male violence include women’s pregnancy, which appears to threaten men. In London, Juliana, thirty-six, discussed how her second husband became progressively violent after she got pregnant. Initially, he shouted and kicked and punched walls, then he began to threaten to hit her, chasing her around the house brandishing a knife and not allowing her to go out alone. His abusive behaviour worsened after the baby was born, culminating in him throttling her. In Maré, Odete also mentioned her pregnancy as a tipping point after which her husband began to stay out all night then come home and abuse her.

All these factors, while extremely important, occur at the individual level and relate to interpersonal relations. Yet, gendered violence cannot be isolated from the wider context of active exclusion and marginalisation. Women in Maré and London live in situations of often extreme insecurity where their bodies are exposed to institutional, structural and interpersonal violence – within the wider matrix of power that reinforces racist heterosexist gendered urban violence as inherently entrenched within colonial legacies (Carneiro, 2003; Lopes Heimer, 2022; Segato, 2016). In Maré, Black women suffer disproportionately from the ‘slow violence’ and ‘slow death’, as individuals within a community, as mothers of sons and as partners of men who are targeted and killed by the state through police incursions (also Rocha, 2012; Smith, 2016). This is especially marked for trans women who suffer what Rodríguez Madera (2022) calls ‘necropraxis’ – where trans people experience everyday social interactions that entail gradual doses of death. These processes centre on the private sphere of the home as a permeable space where wider direct and indirect violence and stigma influence women’s experiences of violence and safety. This all occurs within the broader context of historical neglect.

The transnationality and translocationality of gendered urban violence are reflected in the experiences of Brazilian migrant women, highlighting the importance of thinking across borders. The types of violence experienced by women prior to migration often act as a key factor in their decision-making about leaving. This might be symbolic violence related to gender discrimination or might be linked with divorce, gender identity and/or orientation, as well as exploitative labour processes (McIlwaine, 2023). Direct forms of intimate partner violence also emerged as reasons why women decided to move, fleeing abuse. For example, Juliana (see above) left Brazil in 2007 to get away from her alcohol-using and violent first husband.

Migrant women’s memories of trauma subsequently influence their experiences after arrival and can lead to an intensification of intimate partner and intra-family violence – whether or not they have migrated with partners. This intersects with the structural violence they encounter, which is part of global systems of intersectional colonial inequity and uneven development, which undergird migration processes in the first place (McIlwaine and Evans, 2023). Migrant women face hostile borders everywhere they turn (Cassidy, 2019; Lopes Heimer, 2023). These structural factors are combined with changing gender norms; hegemonic masculinities are undermined for migrant men, leading to emasculation which can sometimes lead to them perpetrating violence (McIlwaine, 2010).

Intersectional inequalities have also been exacerbated by the pandemic, which has not caused gendered urban violence but has certainly led to a marked intensification (McIlwaine et al., 2022c). In Maré and London, violence in the home has intensified due to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdown measures. In Maré, Michele Gandra, who works at Buffet Maré de Sabores and who was interviewed for the Women Resisting Violence (WRV) podcast, noted:

There is therefore nothing inherent at the individual level that makes favela residents or migrant women more likely to experience higher levels of violence in the home. But rather, the intersectional and embodied insecurities and fear of living on the margins of cities mean that they deal with structural, symbolic and infrastructural violence. This creates processes of domination that provide fertile ground for violence in the private sphere. It also highlights the necessity of exploring the private and public (and transnational) domains of gendered urban violence in the city together. Again linked with the framework, these processes emerged as profoundly embodied with violence indelibly written on their bodies but revealed through the artistic engagements that allowed for more in-depth understanding of what gendered urban violence in the private sphere means for women. The following chapter turns to explore violence in the public sphere.