Cátia and Gilmara’s experiences were not unusual. Supporting women survivors of gender-based violence was not a priority for the Brazilian or British states, especially when they were residents of favelas or migrants. This was the case whether the violence was perpetrated inside or outside their homes. However, not only was there a passive neglect on the part of the state, but women and girls often entered a web of active institutional and symbolic violence when seeking help. This included sexist, racist, classist, homophobic, transphobic and xenophobic discrimination, stigmatisation and blaming, combined with facing severe barriers to accessing mechanisms of support, safety and justice. Gilmara’s experience illustrates how being a migrant in London with insecure immigration status and/or facing socio-linguistic challenges often leads to re-victimisation. Cátia’s situation was worsened by the fact that she lived in a favela with high levels of direct and indirect state violence, a proliferation of armed groups and severe marginalisation of favela residents.

In this chapter, recalling the translocational gendered urban violence framework outlined in Chapter 1, we focus on infrastructural violence and specifically its gendered dimensions and how it intersects with structural and symbolic violence across the overlapping private, public and transnational sites where multiple abuses are experienced by women. Echoing arguments in Chapters 4 and 5, we explore the nature of gendered infrastructural violence within broader feminist contestations against individualised narratives around direct gender-based violence (McIlwaine and Evans, 2023). In acknowledging how gendered infrastructural violence is underpinned by systemic intersectional oppressions, the discussion shows how such violence functions in invisible passive and active ways (Datta and Ahmed, 2020; Truelove and Ruszczyk, 2022). Empirically, it reveals how barriers to assistance and support among survivors, mainly on the part of the state, are a form of infrastructural violence which may result in the intensification of women’s suffering of direct gender-based violence. As with violence experienced in the private and public spheres and across borders, infrastructural violence is also deeply embodied, as is clearly communicated through the creative encounters. Yet, gendered infrastructural violence is often countered by invaluable forms of support infrastructure that can mitigate against the generation of ever more structural and direct gendered violence against women. We briefly address the role of civil society organisations in assisting women through highlighting the views of service providers, who often provide a lifeline in the face of wider exclusion and who operate in transnational and translocational ways to mitigate and prevent gendered urban violence. However, the role of these organisations is explored more fully in Chapter 7 on negotiating and resisting gender-based violence.

Gendered infrastructural violence and women’s urban lives

As outlined in Chapter 1, gendered infrastructural violence is perpetrated through the exclusion of women survivors of gender-based violence from support services in cities, especially those provided by the state. Reflecting wider debates around the role of urban infrastructure in mediating and reproducing power relationships in cities (McFarlane and Silver, 2017), infrastructural violence is now accepted as a term to denote lack of access to judicial, education, health and public security systems (Rodgers and O’Neill, 2012). More recently, the gendered dimensions of this form of structural and ‘slow’ violence have been illuminated (Chaplin and Kalita, 2017; Datta and Ahmed, 2020). Gendered infrastructural violence constitutes part of the wider matrix of harms and exploitation that women in peripheral communities and/or living in marginalised circumstances face disproportionately on an intersectional basis. This violence can passively exclude city dwellers, and especially women, from basic urban services and other resources such as housing (Pain, 2019). Infrastructural violence may also more actively control, discriminate against and marginalise certain populations, such as women migrants and/or favela dwellers (Sawas et al., 2020). As shown in Chapter 5, inadequate urban services, such as safe transport facilities and functioning public security, can directly compromise women’s right to the city in terms of mobility, livelihood security and freedom from violence (Beebeejaun, 2017).

This chapter focuses on how gendered infrastructural violence, perpetrated primarily by the racist state, underlies the exercise of multiple barriers against women seeking to disclose and report gender-based violence (McIlwaine and Evans, 2023; McIlwaine et al., 2021). As we have seen in Chapters 4 and 5, when women reside on the margins of cities, as migrants and faveladas, they are more likely to face risky situations within and beyond households that can facilitate the perpetration of gender-based violence. These risks are underlain by structural, symbolic and infrastructural violence. The latter is especially insidious in two main ways. First, lack of access to certain types of infrastructure such as street lighting and safe public transport can generate gender-based violence (Chant and McIlwaine, 2016; McIlwaine, 2013). Second, when survivors seeking support are excluded from (mainly) statutory services – due to fear, lack of information, lack of confidence in the ability of providers to help – this can lead them to remain in situations of violence and/or to be re-traumatised by interactions with those from whom they seek help (O’Neal and Beckman, 2016). They may also face direct perpetration of violence on the part of the state through verbal abuse, threats or direct armed violence.

For Brazilian migrants in London, gendered infrastructural violence refers primarily to the passive exercise of violence through ‘limitations and omissions’ (Rodgers and O’Neill, 2012: 406–7). This was manifested through the barriers survivors faced when trying to access state services, especially in terms of reporting to the police and welfare services when they had insecure immigration status. Yet, women also experienced direct abuse when interacting with public officials. Women from Maré faced passive gendered infrastructural violence through endemic state neglect represented through restricted access to urban sanitation services, transportation and lighting as well as inadequate provision of assistance for survivors. Yet, active infrastructural violence was endemic through a state policy designed in an intentionally violent way to ‘control social norms’ and ‘actively marginalise certain groups’ (Rodgers and O’Neill, 2012: 406–7). As we saw in Chapters 3, 4 and 5, this entailed not only abuse by state officials when seeking help but continuous police incursions resulting in deaths, injuries, trauma and the closure of schools and health centres. Even where violence is attributed to the ruling armed groups, the state’s ‘war on drugs’ agenda remains directly responsible for sustaining and reproducing the militarisation of life in favelas. The armed state presence in Maré is thus motivated by the ‘war on drugs’ context, and as a result criminalises residents and violates their rights (Sousa Silva, 2017). In such a context, the protection of rights is sidelined to other political priorities – which has led many to consider this a state of exception (de Souza and Serra, 2020).

Gendered infrastructural violence and accessing support in Maré

Bearing in mind the discussion of organisational support in Chapter 3, this section briefly mentions residents’ attitudes towards the state before moving on to assess disclosure and reporting of gender-based violence. Perhaps not surprisingly, perceptions of the state were almost uniformly negative. Reflecting wider discourses on the part of Afro-Brazilian feminists around a ‘genocidal state’ with reference to the ‘genocídio do povo negro’ (genocide of Black people) (do Nascimento, 1978; Rocha, 2012), one woman, Marina, spoke of ‘genocidal and murderous rulers’ who take everything away, even favela residents’ right to come and go. The state operated through a range of activities in addition to the police operations. They were involved in removals and evictions and a level of lenience towards armed groups and often overt abetment towards the Milícias who act within the state apparatus to control and limit access to water, gas, sanitation or other basic services in their areas of control (also Borde and Hernández-Álvarez, 2022; Garmany and Richmond, 2020). With ever-increasing investments in the militarised structures in the public security agenda, this critical situation only escalates, said Ludmila, twenty-six, branca and a resident of the favela of Morro do Timbau:

As a result of the lack of a positive and supportive state presence, Eliana Sousa Silva noted in the Women Resisting Violence (WRV) podcast that there was ‘a very strong [environment of] violence against women, with no space to tackle it. Justice is not served, nor is it served through these illegal, criminal systems’.

Recalling that the nearest Women’s Police Station is 12 km from Maré, the only public services available to support women identified within Maré were health clinics (see Chapter 3; Figure 3.2). Despite the efforts of the staff working in these units, the quality of support was low. One of the participants in a focus group with working women said that she had been waiting for a gynaecologist appointment for two years as she needed a hysterectomy; she ended up resorting to private surgery. Poor quality care, itself a form of infrastructural violence, was echoed by many other women. For example, a focus group participant noted that there were long waiting lists and that when attended, this was by nurses rather than specialists:

Women felt that they were treated with disrespect in the public health clinics, and they perceived this as violence. Another participant remembered a situation where a girl had a sexually transmitted disease and the doctor called the staff of the clinic to have a look at her: ‘How embarrassing for that girl when she left that room … It was a violent thing … that to me was gender-based violence’. Limited access to and poor quality of support services are predominantly related to the precarity of public policies and institutions and a perceived ineptness of some professional workers. It was also remarkable that many women were unable to identify any support services, especially as survivors of gender-based violence (McIlwaine et al., 2023b).

 Disclosure and reporting of gender-based violence

The rates of disclosure and reporting of incidents of direct gender-based violence by women residents of Maré was generally low, and especially low to formal sources. According to the survey, of the 457 women who experienced at least one form of violence, only 52 per cent told someone about it. Disclosing to family and friends was typically much more common than reporting to the police and judicial system. Almost three-quarters disclosed to a family member and half to friends. In contrast, only 8 per cent reported to the Women’s Police Station and 2.5 per cent to the general police. Overall, 83 per cent only sought informal support, with 2.5 per cent only seeking formal support and 14 per cent seeking both formal and informal. More specifically, women disclosed to thirteen sources of support, differentiated into informal support (family, friends, intimate partners, neighbours) and formal support (the Women’s Police, police, psychologists, lawyers, bosses, the police station, the school headmaster, private security agents and criminals). One-fifth of women had accessed at least one service, with 6 per cent accessing two or more. Although the numbers were small, the most accessed formal service was the Women’s Police (33 women), followed by the police (24), the church (19) and criminals (18) (Krenzinger et al., 2018b).

This also varied according to the favelas within Maré, with reporting more common in those with several organisations, where wider urban conflict was more intense, and with variations depending on the local codes imposed by armed groups (see Figure 6.1). For instance, different armed groups were more or less likely to intervene in cases of domestic abuse; drug gangs often provided protection for women survivors of intimate partner violence (see below), whereas the Milícias were known to punish people who discussed problems in their territories. These dynamics were reflected in the experiences of a focus group participant who recalled how the chief of police said:

Figure 6.1Formal and informal reporting of gender-based violence in Maré by favela (credit: cartography by Steven Bernard; adapted from McIlwaine et al., 2023b)

It took women more than one experience of violence before they sought help, with women who experienced more than two different forms of violence being increasingly more likely to access a service. For example, 7.5 per cent of women who had suffered one form of violence sought help, compared with 43 per cent of those who suffered seven forms of violence. The type of violence experienced also played a significant part in women’s decisions to seek help, with those suffering physical violence being more likely to report (28 per cent), compared with 23 per cent of those who suffered psychological violence and 22 per cent who experienced sexual violence.

Some women were more likely than others to report their experiences of gender-based violence. This included women aged between eighteen and twenty-nine (57.5 per cent), those working in fixed employment (58 per cent) or unemployed (55 per cent), educated to secondary level or above (53 per cent) and married (54 per cent). Those living alone or separated from their partners were also more likely to report (74 and 54 per cent respectively).

This general situation of silence over reporting to state institutions was confirmed by the coordinator of the Centro de Referência de Mulheres da Maré, whose service statistics showed that more than 60 per cent of women who sought help from them did not report to the police. She also noted the importance of providing specific help for women: ‘each one will have different ways of breaking the cycle of violence’, stating that they need to do more than just dial the national helpline (180), which is what the media tends to advise. This situation was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did cases of intimate partner violence increase but women spoke of being less likely to report. For example, Renata, twenty-four, branca, said that because many women had lost jobs due to the pandemic, they ended up depending on partners financially: ‘I’m not going to report him because I’m out of a job and I need him there now. … And the men can do what they want, but how is the person going to get out of this relationship?’

 Barriers to reporting and securing support

There are therefore multiple and intersectional barriers faced by women in Maré in their search for support when they experience gender-based violence (Krenzinger et al., 2021). Those who do manage to negotiate a hostile and violent institutional culture often find themselves re-victimised by action, delay or failure to act on the part of institutions, particularly in the security and justice system (Muniz and Proença Júnior, 2016; Santiago et al., 2019).

In terms of not reporting in the first place, one of the most commonly identified reasons was that women blamed themselves for the violence, especially intimate partner abuse, and this was reinforced by responses from family and friends when they did disclose (see also Chapter 4). In the second stage of the research, participants in several focus groups noted the types of reactions they heard: ‘but if you stayed in the relationship, it would have been OK’; ‘if you really wanted to, you would have left him a long time ago’; ‘what were you thinking going to such places at night?’; and ‘why were you dressed in that way?’ Figure 6.2 shows some of these testimonies from women who identified people in the church and the police as reacting negatively. This meant that women stayed silent as they were either embarrassed, too scared to speak up or they felt that nothing would be done. Ingrid, forty-nine and of Asian origin, spoke about silence in relation to wider structural oppression: ‘A woman, I think, experiences everything, but unfortunately fear and oppression sometimes makes us shut up. I still don’t feel safe to demand respect and demand my legal rights as a woman, as a person in society, as an individual. I don’t feel safe’.

Figure 6.2Comments on not reporting gender-based violence from one of the focus groups (credit: Mila de Choch; adapted from McIlwaine et al., 2022c)

Also frequently mentioned by women survivors was that they felt that they would not be believed or taken seriously by those supposed to help them. Infrastructural violence was actively perpetrated by health centres and hospitals, as well as by the police and judicial system. Women were treated with contempt and often re-traumatised as a result. In the context of women seeking help from health centres for their injuries, a participant recalled how she had gone to the Legal Medical Institute after her partner beat her up, and the doctor said: ‘“You’re here [at the Legal Medical Institute], you got beat up, but then what? Then you’re going to go back to the guy … you’re interrupting my job and a lot of people who are here for a real emergency, really in need, who are feeling sick’. A similar situation was discussed by a participant in another focus group, who commented on her experience at the Emergency Care Unit. She said she felt violated because the woman at the reception asked her what her symptoms were (following abuse). After she told her and was ordered to wait while ‘trembling in pain and crying’, it transpired that her name was not put into the system and she was completely ignored: ‘These are other forms of violence too; there is nothing formal protecting us’.

Negative treatment by the police was commonly discussed by women as a factor dissuading them from seeking help and was a major form of infrastructural violence (see Figure 6.2). Elisa, fifty-one, recounted her experience of reporting her ex-husband at a police station. She told the police investigator how her husband had threatened to kill her with a butcher’s knife, but all the officer did was ask her, ‘where’s the blood?’ Part of the problem that women faced was the police requirement for proof, which was very difficult to provide, as Mónica, twenty-six, noted when she tried to report her violent husband: ‘They said that I had to have concrete proof against him and at the time I didn’t have much … People in the community here won’t testify for you because they are scared of being involved with the justice system … so there’s nowhere to turn’.

This issue extended to dealing with the judicial system. Despite the important institutional advancements regarding the protection of women and girls experiencing violence, particularly the Maria da Penha Law (see Chapter 3), the enforcement of protective laws in Maré is limited. While many women mentioned the Maria da Penha Law – which ostensibly provides additional support for women survivors of domestic abuse through the Women’s Police Stations, refuges and increased punishment for offenders – it was rarely seen in a favourable light. Célia, twenty-nine, parda, stated explicitly: ‘The Maria da Penha Law does not work within Maré’. Others, such as Patricia, thirty-one, parda, talked about their first-hand experiences of going to the police station after suffering violence. After reporting the father of her daughter who abused her during her pregnancy, the only advice she received was to stay away from her aggressor (as her responsibility). Patricia referred to the Maria da Penha Law as the ‘Maria Coffin Law’, because only when a woman was murdered would her case be addressed. One focus group participant did have a positive experience with the Women’s Police Patrol who contacted her every month to check whether her violent ex-partner was complying with the injunction order: ‘Every month, they send me a message to talk to me … And I was even surprised – I’d never received this service before’.

Considering the generalised lack of support for women survivors in Maré, many felt compelled to seek help directly from the armed groups because they had no alternative. Odete, thirty-two, spoke about the drug traffickers as ‘the parallel power’ who provide support for women survivors, stating that they ‘find a way’ to deal with perpetrators: ‘and their way is to kill or otherwise threaten, saying, “You either go away never to return, or if you do, and we find you here, we’ll kill you!”’. Some women found ways of being protected by both the police outside Maré and the armed actors inside, again showing how alternative extra-judicial authority and protection functions in the territory. Angela, twenty-five, parda, described how she obtained a restraining order against her ex-partner in order to be protected outside of Maré, as well as informing the drug trafficking leaders inside. But she was aware of the need to be very transparent with the latter: ‘I said, “Look, I’m doing this because here you are the law, but outside there is a law and he is threatening to go to my workplace” … one of the leaders said, “No, it’s OK, no problem, if you’re sure that’s what you want”’. Involvement with the drug trafficking leaders was often complicated. Elisa, who was divorced, discussed how she involved the traffickers in her separation but explained that this led to her re-victimisation, pushing her into an unfair division of assets leaving her with almost nothing and giving no parental responsibilities to her ex-husband for their daughter. The ‘mediator’ made her withdraw the case she had filed in court and insisted that it would influence her ex-husband’s decision to pay child support for their daughter (which he agreed to do): ‘The armed groups said, “If he doesn’t want to give you anything, he won’t give you anything … you will accept whatever he wants”’.

Alternative mediation of conflicts was not seen as ideal, and many women would much rather see a change in state support than turning to armed groups. The idea of having access to justice was closely associated with their sense of dignity. When access to services and policies was effective, women felt respected. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, a member of the campaign Maré Says No to Coronavirus spoke of women creating their own dignity in the face of state neglect (see also Chapter 7): ‘It is precisely from this gap, from this non-presence, from the non-effectiveness of these services, that women become absurdly inventive. It is from this that creativity arises, ways of existing, resisting in various possible ways’.

Indeed, some women take things into their own hands, such as Roseni Lima de Oliveira, who was a carnival designer and author but also a community health agent. Community health workers are the links between communities and specialist healthcare providers. In effect working for the state, they have been widespread in Brazil since the 1970s (Krieger et al., 2020). Roseni spoke of how she had suffered domestic abuse and how after leaving her partner, she began to support the founding of a residents’ association as well as becoming a community health agent to reclaim her dignity and rights to her territory (see also Figure 6.3):

Figure 6.3Roseni Oliveira 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)

Gendered infrastructural violence and accessing support in London

Migrant women survivors of gender-based violence are especially affected by gendered infrastructural violence across multiple scales as they navigate support systems within a hostile immigration environment created and executed by the British state. Here, following McIlwaine and Evans (2023), we suggest that statutory and non-statutory services constitute a form of ‘migrant infrastructure’. We focus specifically on ‘statutory migrant infrastructure’, which comprises services of the police and wider judiciary, as well as state social and health services. ‘Non-statutory migrant infrastructure’ refers to civil society organisations supporting migrant women (Xiang and Lindquist, 2014). There are also some overlaps where organisations and initiatives providing specialist support for women constitute ‘women’s equality infrastructure’ (Brodie, 2008). The focus in this chapter is on the infrastructural violence of the state, although we mention the non-statutory service providers who support migrant women when the state excludes them (acknowledging the links between them).

Evidence around the world shows that migrant women face multiple barriers when seeking help as survivors (Menjívar and Salcido, 2002; O’Neal and Beckman, 2016; Reina et al., 2014). While this work tends to focus on individual challenges faced by migrant women, such as isolation, lack of information, immigration status, language competencies and institutional factors (Erez et al., 2009; Vidales, 2010), increasingly, these barriers are being viewed as structural oppressions. This standpoint is important in moving beyond analyses of women’s individual failure to report or seek help, which can amount to ‘victim-blaming’, and instead unpicking how accessing organisational support, or migrant infrastructure, is shaped by structural and symbolic violence – in relation to poverty, discrimination and marginalisation (McIlwaine and Evans, 2023). Migrant women’s exclusion from and/or poor treatment within support services is therefore a form of infrastructural violence.

As noted in Chapter 3, Brazilian migrants face a hostile state and immigration regime which has made migration and settlement in the UK extremely difficult since around 2010. These ‘managed migration’ policies have eroded migrants’ rights to work and access to social security and support (Hodkinson et al., 2021). For survivors of gender-based violence who have insecure immigration status, it is exceptionally difficult to secure assistance, not least because of the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF). They also face infrastructural or ‘border’ violence in banks, schools, hospitals and when trying to find accommodation (Lopes Heimer, 2023; Yuval-Davis et al., 2019). This entraps migrant women, with deleterious consequences for their wellbeing as survivors of gender-based violence (Cassidy, 2019). Although women with insecure immigration status can sometimes secure statutory services such as social and health services, state benefits, housing and subsidised refuges, in reality, it is very difficult. For those who are undocumented, it is effectively impossible to access any service, while those with insecure status face multiple restrictions in referral options due to the NRPF. As explained by a non-statutory service provider: ‘It doesn’t matter what their legal status is to me … but if they are here “illegally”, then … I can’t refer out to other services’.

In the Step Up Migrant Women (SUMW) project, service providers repeatedly stated that insecure immigration status makes migrant women vulnerable. This invariably involves the state actively criminalising them when they try to access help as survivors. Criminalisation is compounded by institutional racism, as noted by a service provider:

This has clear effects for migrant women seeking help as survivors, as noted by a service provider in the SUMW project: ‘What I’m finding … is that women are very frightened to approach statutory services, partly because of the fact that the hostile environment we are in right now deters them from seeking help and reporting violence and abuse’. What was also noted by service providers was that the hostile state was increasingly finding it too costly to deport women and instead was withdrawing support for them: ‘They go underground! They disappear … It is utterly terrifying!’ These processes underlie migrant women’s experiences of disclosure and reporting.

 Disclosure and reporting of gender-based violence

Rates of disclosure and reporting of direct gender-based violence against Brazilian women were generally low. Indeed, according to the survey, 56 per cent of women who had experienced violence did not disclose or report. Informal disclosure was more frequent than formal reporting; for instance, 31 per cent of women disclosed to friends, with 20 per cent telling their family. Only a quarter (24 per cent) reported formally to the police, with 7 per cent turning to a solicitor or specialist organisation or trade union (4 per cent) (McIlwaine and Evans, 2018). This pattern is reflected in Figure 6.4 where three women identified the key sources of support as survivors. What is notable is that they identified friends, the church, the justice system and social media as both positive and negative, in relation to providing support but also blame, and that their feelings towards the police were completely negative.

Figure 6.4Institutional mapping of disclosure and reporting of gender-based violence; designed by three Brazilian women aged thirty-two–seventy-two from Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais (adapted from McIlwaine and Evans, 2018)

There were also variations in the identities of women who were more likely to report. Women with primary or secondary schooling rather than higher education, for example, were more likely to report. This is perhaps because of the stigma facing those from higher-class backgrounds. For example, Carolina, fifty-three, who worked as a radiologist, noted: ‘The shame of it! I felt so bad, so humiliated! … here I thought, “I’m nothing, I’m no one. They won’t help me at all”’. Racial identities also played a role, with White/branca women being more likely to report (63 per cent) than those identifying as mixed/parda and Black/preta (37 per cent). Those with permanent immigration status were more likely to report (more than half), compared with less than half of those with insecure status (46 per cent).

Rates of disclosure and reporting were also associated with women’s perception of the severity of the incident. Indeed, when women viewed an episode of violence as ‘serious’ (acknowledging that all types of gendered violence across the continuum are serious – Kelly, 1988), more than three-quarters (77 per cent) disclosed or reported (also Chapter 3). It was also the case that women experienced multiple incidents before they sought help. For example, one provider suggested that Latin American women without immigration documentation were assaulted sixty times before they reached out for formal help, compared to thirty-five incidents among women in general (McIlwaine and Evans, 2023). This was reflected in the views of Valentina, in her mid-fifties, who commented: ‘When they open their mouth, it’s because they’ve reached the limit; they’ve already gone through everything they could bear’.

There were also some transnational continuities with reporting back home in Brazil. Only 26 per cent of those who had experienced violence prior to migrating to London recalled having formally reported it. It emerged that many women downplayed their experiences of gender-based violence in London and delayed reporting because they had suffered even more violent experiences back home or had been subjected to some form of violent forced migration and/or trafficking that made them reluctant to acknowledge incidents in London. One service provider noted that it was often difficult to persuade Brazilian women to report intimate partner violence because of wider experiences of trauma both in London and back home: ‘They say … “He is really violent to me, and maybe he beats me and sometimes he is drunk, or he’s taken drugs … but you know, I’ve been shot … I’ve seen people murdered”’.

Another aspect of this dynamic is that some Brazilian women did not acknowledge that the abuse they experienced was violence (see also Chapter 3). Recognition often only occurred when they sought help for other problems, as noted by a service provider in the SUMW project:

 Barriers to reporting and securing support

More specifically, there were a wide range of barriers that prevented women from formally reporting gender-based violence. These all related to passive and active infrastructural violence that revolved around how migrant women are exploited and discriminated against within wider British society as well as by intersectional patriarchal oppressions. The survey revealed that a quarter (25 per cent) of Brazilian women did not report because they felt that nothing would be done. This was linked with the view that women would not be believed by the police or social services, an issue affecting migrant women more broadly in London. In the SUMW research, a service provider identified the ‘Four Ds’ faced by women in reporting gender-based violence. Hand in hand with detention, destitution and deportation was disbelief. This provider noted that women reported not being believed when disclosing the reasons why they migrated in the first place, nor when recounting their experiences of gender-based violence (see also below).

Another 15 per cent of women surveyed did not have the information to know how to report. Brazilian women accessed service providers through a variety of routes but most commonly via referrals through word of mouth by previous or existing service users. Self-referral through use of the internet was also found to be quite common. In the case of civil society organisations, a further route of access was through referrals of Brazilian women by statutory services, such as social services, health services and the police. Some women also accessed services via the Brazilian General Consulate in London, which offers a dial-in service for women who are victims of domestic violence, sexual labour exploitation and international trafficking (see Chapter 3; Evans and McIlwaine, 2017).

Community opprobrium and shame were also identified as reasons why women did not report in the survey (10 per cent and 9 per cent respectively). Combined with ‘victim-shaming’, these create silencing among women survivors (also Rahmanipour et al., 2019). As noted by Carolina above, there is also a stigma attached to being a survivor of violence which can operate to prevent or delay approaching agencies for support. Paula, thirty-six, who had experienced several sexual assaults on the part of her former husband, said that she was too ashamed to report it: ‘I always considered it rape, because I could see that I was hurt and I was very unwell, but I was ashamed to tell’. This shame also has transnational dimensions of pre-existing trauma and lack of confidence in the system, which are further compounded in London. This was identified by a service provider: ‘I find they [Brazilian women] minimise quite a lot, they may hide the abuse, almost. I don’t know what the law is in Brazil; I don’t know if maybe they are not aware that it is against the law here [in the UK]’. Valentina summarised the intersections between silence and shame: ‘Usually you stay silent for many years, always full of shame, ashamed of your family, your friends knowing that you’re going through this, afraid of your aggressor, of what might come after you’ve decided to speak up’.

This also reflects women’s relationships with the perpetrators of violence as barriers, especially intimate partners. Indeed, 8 per cent of women stated that they did not report because of their emotional attachments to the perpetrators, while 5 per cent feared them or were financially dependent on them. However, these types of circumstances entrapped women within abusive relationships, with intimate partners often acting with impunity as a result. Márcia, forty-two, preta, also spoke about feeling alone and isolated and her violent husband taking advantage of this: ‘I think the abusive man takes advantage of the fact that we’re far away from family and friends’. In Gaël Le Cornec’s Efêmera (2018a: 23–24), Ana speaks about not reporting due to her husband’s manipulation and the difficulty of having proof of the abuse together with having insecure immigration status:

These negative dynamics are therefore amplified for migrant women with insecure immigration status who were afraid to seek assistance because they thought they would be deported – another one of the ‘Four Ds’ noted above. Intimate partners and other perpetrators used this fear as a tool of manipulation to be weaponised against women, as discussed elsewhere (Reina et al., 2014). In the SUMW project, more than 60 per cent of those surveyed said the perpetrator had threatened deportation if they reported the violence. One service provider noted: ‘if the woman is in this country “illegally”, and the husband is “legal”, he will do whatever he wants with her, because she is at his mercy’. Another service provider in the SUMW project stated that to intimidate women, perpetrators often take their passports away and say they have applied for Leave to Remain without doing it, as well as failing to include women’s names on official documents such as tenancy agreements or utility bills. Gilmara, who opened the chapter (and who speaks about this in the WRV podcast), said that despite promising, her British partner never made the application to settle her status, and after six months on a tourist visa, she became undocumented. She felt trapped and threatened by her partner but also discouraged by the police and the Home Office. She had NRPF to access safe accommodation and was left homeless and sleeping rough with her child.

Insecure immigration status intersected with English language competencies to exacerbate manipulation by perpetrators and further dissuade women from reporting. Valentina noted that she felt isolated because of not being able to speak English despite being educated: ‘We are far from our country, don’t speak the language, don’t have the professions that we would have in our country, we don’t belong to society, we’re very much on the margins’. Her partner ensured that Valentina did not learn English as he was aware that this would give her more power in their relationship: ‘I tried to learn English several times and always had to give up because he always created difficulties for me to learn the language. Today, I can see that it was on purpose – “If she learns the language, she’ll be able to take care of herself”’.

This was also identified by Elizabeth Jiménez-Yáñez, Policy and Communications Coordinator at the Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS) and coordinator of the SUMW campaign. Speaking on the WRV podcast, she further commented on cutbacks in translation services for women seeking help from state services since the beginning of the pandemic. This has prevented women from accessing justice because of the lack of translators: ‘Police will ask you to bring your son as a translator. So obviously there is a system lacking in ethics and a danger of re-victimisation’. Elizabeth also explains that this exacerbates women’s isolation and lack of support: ‘Isolation becomes part of the abuse … Many of these women migrate alone, or exclusively with their partners, and do not have support in a country like England where the language barrier can play a principal role’.

Both insecure immigration status and language competencies generated further infrastructural violence when women interacted with the police and other judicial and social services. Although it is often assumed that women migrants do not report to the police, the survey showed they were the most frequently consulted organisation (41 per cent of women). However, it was not uncommon for women to have negative interactions with them (Smee, 2013; see also Figure 6.4). In the SUMW research, more than two-thirds of women reported gender-based violence to the police, with a quarter saying they had been badly treated. Maria, thirty-two, from Rio de Janeiro, who participated in a focus group, discussed her experience with the police. While she was pregnant with twins, her former partner attacked her with a knife. He then called the police who arrived at their home and arrested Maria and took her to the police station. Her partner identified Maria as the perpetrator, and because she could not speak English, she could not defend herself. She spent three hours in a cell before a translator arrived and she was subsequently released: ‘I thought the world had ended, you know? Why was I being arrested; why was I inside a cell if I hadn’t done anything wrong?’ This was not a one-off occurrence, as Valentina experienced a similar situation; she was arrested for slapping her husband in self-defence: ‘So, from victim, I went to being the aggressor. And from that point onwards, my life became hell’. These cases also reflect the discretionary powers of the police that were often used to dismiss women’s claims or to report them to immigration services (Menjívar and Salcido, 2002).

Brazilian women’s dealings with the British judicial system were equally challenging. Some service providers claimed that the system fails to obtain justice for Brazilian women through a range of institutionally racist and sexist practices that trivialise women’s needs and rights in favour of men’s rights. The case of Gabriela, thirty-eight, highlights this. When she took her husband to court for sustained domestic violence against her and her daughter, the judge dismissed the charges because he did not believe her: ‘At no point did they … respect what I was going through … They didn’t believe me, they didn’t believe my pastor, they didn’t believe my case worker, they didn’t believe the psychologist’. Not surprisingly, women rarely prosecuted perpetrators, especially when their immigration status was insecure, or they dropped prosecutions once they realised that they could be detained or deported or they might lose custody of their children. This was exacerbated by the demands for detailed evidence that is required for a case to proceed. Navigating the judicial system was often deeply traumatising for women, as noted by a service provider: ‘the abuse by the system often is worse, in [migrant women’s] view, than the abuse they suffered at the hands of the perpetrator’. However, there were also cases where women were supported by the police and judiciary. One woman from a focus group recalled how ‘The police went to my place twice … Yes, they were like angels that God sent me to help me’.

Interactions with social services were often fraught and inherently violent. Again, this was especially acute for those with insecure immigration status who were subject to the NRPF restriction. Despite concessions when women are destitute and/or there are safeguarding issues around children, most women found it difficult to access support and especially access to refuges. Many women felt disempowered by the lack of assistance from local government bodies, as noted by Cristina who had NRPF: ‘If I’d had documents, Brent Council would have removed him from the house and given me some support, but as I didn’t … I felt like my hands and feet were tied; I had no way out’. Cristina’s case was portrayed in the video Raising Awareness of Violence against Brazilian Women in London, through an animation (see Figure 6.5). Difficulties with authorities were noted by audience members in some of the Brighton performances of Efêmera. For example, one person noted: ‘As someone who works with women living with domestic abuse, I found it representative of the cycles of abuse and manipulation and how all agencies seem set against them. It’s amazing to be able to give them a voice’. Another audience member commented on ‘All the suffering in silence and the bureaucratic incompetence and resistance’.

Figure 6.5Animation from Raising Awareness of Violence against Brazilian Women in London video (animation by Francesca de Bassa, video directed by Aida Baneres) (credit: People’s Palace Projects/YouTube)

Social care and healthcare providers were often overtly discriminatory towards migrant women. One service provider remembered how one of her clients who had experienced intimate partner violence had been abused by a social worker who said: ‘You are strong. I don’t see any marks on your body. Why don’t you go and do some work?’ This attitude reflects the view that migrants are ‘undeserving’ of state assistance, linked with wider institutional racism which underpins infrastructural violence (see also Erez et al., 2009). Just as in Gilmara’s case, this invariably left women with nowhere to turn. This was explored in Gaël Le Cornec’s sound installation Believe, drawing on the SUMW project. Inspired by the women’s experiences and based on their own words, Believe included the following audio:

These words and sentiments have been integrated into the SUMW campaigns and the various ways that they have lobbied the British state in challenging their approach to migrant women survivors. Indeed, it is inspiring that Gilmara has become an activist within their campaigning. In 2020, she spoke in Parliament as a witness in a Public Bill Committee on the Domestic Abuse Bill about her experiences of infrastructural violence at the hands of the state. This has given her a sense of purpose: ‘I work with women today. I explain to them that they each have their own story, but they are not alone, that I have already been through the same thing’ (McIlwaine, 2022: 87).

Like Gilmara and the SUMW campaign, women survivors and organisations in Maré and London challenge gendered infrastructural violence and other forms of direct gendered violence through various forms of negotiation, coping and resistance – to which we now turn in Chapter 7.