Structural Violence Research Articles

Resilience to structural violence: an exploration of the multisystemic resources that enable youth hope

Youth in structurally violent environments emphasise hope when explaining their resilience. Even so, the multisystemic resources that enable hope (also over time) are relatively underreported for African young people. In response to this gap, we report a qualitative study that identified the hope-enabling resources that contributed to the resilience of two samples of African youth aged 15–24 and living in the township of eMbalenhle, South Africa. Using Draw-Write-Talk methodology, the 2017 sample ( n = 30; Mage = 18.6; 56% male youth) and 2018 sample ( n = 7; Mage = 18.4; 85% female youth) generated visual and narrative data of their experiences of hope enablers. A thematic analysis showed that a multisystemic mix of contextually relevant resources typically explained youth capacity for hope in the face of structural violence. Four resources informed this mix: personal strengths, faith-based beliefs, positive personal relationships, and tangible sources of inspiration. This contextually relevant mix, and its putative durability over time, has implications for how psychologists and policymakers support youth in structurally violent contexts to be hopefully resilient.

Remitting amid autocracy: Venezuelan migrant remittances to relatives enduring widespread structural violence

Homeland conditions shape how migrants and refugees perceive the purpose and impact of their remittances (i.e. financial support). Countries of origin with low violence and stable conditions allow migrants to remit with hopes of improving their non-migrant relatives’ long-term material circumstances, while homelands with armed conflict limit remittance objectives to securing recipients’ immediate safety and basic survival. However, scholarship has under-theorized how homelands with widespread structural violence–economic devastation resulting in deprivation for most of the population–impact migrants’ remittance practices and perceptions. Drawing on in-depth interviews with forced Venezuelan migrants in Chile and Argentina–whose homeland has an emerging autocrat and economic sanctions that have resulted in widespread structural violence–we find that interviewees are highly concerned about relatives’ survival in Venezuela. They remit with resignation to secure relatives’ bare subsistence while grappling with their inability to counter the economic deterioration, infrastructural decay, and essential goods shortages that are decreasing their relatives’ lifespan. Broadly, findings indicate that widespread structural violence reshapes migrants’ transnational care; as deprivation spreads in the homeland, migrants are increasingly aware that the impact of their remittances is diminishing and seek to fulfill their relatives’ immediate basic needs.

Design and pilot evaluation of a brief intervention to reduce transphobia and improve attitudes of government officials to address legal gender affirmation needs of transgender people in Peru

ABSTRACT Legal gender affirmation – legal name and gender marker change – is an important health-promoting health determinant for transgender people. In Peru, the state's failure to universally recognize transgender people’s legal identity limits standardized legal affirmation procedures, including the paucity of government officials trained in gender affirmation strategies. This project, in partnership with Registro Nacional de Identificación y Estado Civil (RENIEC) and transgender communities, designed and piloted a group-based intervention to sensitize government officers to the importance of gender-concordant identity documents. Between August 2017 and February 2018, three in-person group intervention sessions were held (each 3–4 hours) with 51 government officers. Guided by Gender Affirmation and Structural Violence Frameworks, the intervention utilized Adult Learning Theory and applied storytelling and testimonials as pedagogy. Pre-/post-test surveys were administered (19 true/false items, summed to create an index score measuring knowledge and attitudes toward transgender people). Within-person changes in pre-/post-intervention scores were evaluated using paired t-tests. Pre-/post-test data were available for 41 participants. After the intervention, there were improvements in knowledge and more favorable attitudes toward transgender people (pre-test mean = 14.09, SD = 2.33 vs. post-test mean = 15.62, SD = 1.82; difference = 1.53, 95% CL = 0.60, 2.67; t-test = 3.30 [df = 46]; p = 0.002). The intervention was feasible to conduct and garnered high acceptability. The results suggest the promise of this brief intervention for future research and testing before potential later implementation and scale-up to increase the capacity of government officers to address legal gender affirmation for transgender people in Peru.

Structural, historical, and geopolitical violence as an identity marker of Haitian nationals and migrants

ABSTRACT Violence is a phenomenon affecting relationships between people and has the potential to shape their identities. This article provides a better understanding of how historical-structural violence has shaped and continues to shape Haitian identity and why Haitians are often confronted with violence when they migrate to other countries. By showing how structural, historical, and geopolitical factors have shaped the Haitian people’s identity, this article identifies the causes of the violence that remains in a population subjected for over 200 years to chains that even migration cannot break. Born of violence and fleeing generalized violence, Haitian migrants, not particularly for being Haitian, have been the targets of post-colonial violence.

Structural violence, social suffering, and the COVID-19 syndemic: discourses and narratives on the margins of the state in Texas

While the repercussions of the novel Coronavirus or COVID-19 have been felt across the world over the past few years, the impact has not been consistent. Instead, it has been mediated by the systemic ways in which existing social and structural disparities have failed vulnerable populations globally. Drawing on document analysis and fifteen in-depth interviews (n=15) conducted among the key stakeholders in the city of San Antonio, South Central Texas, this paper reveals how structural violence worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in making it a syndemic pandemic of high rates of deaths and illnesses among the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. A grounded theory approach particularly revealed themes of social suffering such as low income and pre-existing medical conditions that contributed to higher mortality rates, the presence of racism and misinformation, the importance of trustworthy communication channels, and streamlined collaborative partnerships with clear and effective communication through all levels of the government, especially when communicating scientific information.

Hamlets Gewissen

Abstract From the point of view of temporality, Shakespeare’s tragedy of Hamlet falls into two parts. The first sequence, leading from the ghost’s appearance to the Mousetrap, stages – in its manifold soliloquies and monologues slowly and painfully exploring the protagonist’s conscience – Hamlet’s inexorable inner search for truth so as to be able to legitimize his ‘sovereign’ right to act. This is what is read as a programmatic ‘interiorisation’ of structural violence. The second sequence, leading from Hamlet’s authorisation to act to his unfortunate and untimely death, pursues the contingent asynchronicities between the right to take revenge and the continuous (ironical) denial of an appropriate situation for its necessary perpetration. This is in turn seen as a showcased ‘precarity’ of revenge. Both sequences show a marked dependency on a new, linear conceptualization of time: in both sequentially accepting and denying the right to revenge, they aesthetically negotiate the observable early modern shift in temporality from a cyclical ‘guarantee’ of a return to the invariable (and in this sense atemporal) ‘same’, to open and at times self-contradictory linear processes of being bent on the production/realization of results and, hence, of (personally) having to ‘find out’ and act.

Mexican-origin women’s individual and collective strategies to access and share health-promoting resources in the context of exclusionary immigration and immigrant policies

BackgroundA growing literature has documented the social, economic, and health impacts of exclusionary immigration and immigrant policies in the early 21st century for Latiné communities in the US, pointing to immigration and immigrant policies as forms of structural racism that affect individual, family, and community health and well-being. Furthermore, the past decade has seen an increase in bi-partisan exclusionary immigration and immigrant policies. Immigration enforcement has been a major topic during the 2024 Presidential election cycle, portending an augmentation of exclusionary policies towards immigrants. Within this context, scholars have called for research that highlights the ways in which Latiné communities navigate exclusionary immigration and immigrant policies, and implications for health. This study examines ways in which Mexican-origin women in a midwestern northern border community navigate restrictive immigration and immigrant policies to access health-promoting resources and care for their well-being.MethodsWe conducted a grounded theory analysis drawing on interviews with 48 Mexican-origin women in Detroit, Michigan, who identified as being in the first, 1.5, or second immigrant generation. Interviews were conducted in English or Spanish, depending on participants’ preferences, and were conducted at community-based organizations or other locations convenient to participants in 2013–2014.ResultsWomen reported encountering an interconnected web of institutional processes that used racializing markers to infer legal status and eligibility to access health-promoting resources. Our findings highlight women’s use of both individual and collective action to navigate exclusionary policies and processes, working to: (1) maintain access to health-promoting resources; (2) limit labeling and stigmatization; and (3) mitigate adverse impacts of immigrant policing on health and well-being. The strategies women engaged were shaped by both the immigration processes and structures they confronted, and the resources to which they had access to within their social network.ConclusionsOur findings suggest a complex interplay of immigration-related policies and processes, social networks, and health-relevant resources. They highlight the importance of inclusive policies to promote health for immigrant communities. These findings illuminate women’s agency in the context of structural violence facing immigrant women and are particularly salient in the face of anti-immigrant rhetoric and exclusionary immigration and immigrant policies.

Participatory Security as Form of Control: Kaziranga National Park, India

Abstract ‘More security, more conservation’ is the mantra utilised by the Indian forest service to ensure the protection of flora and fauna. Aligned with international agreements aiming at securing wildlife and preserving forests, the Union and the State governments of India have adopted a series of green measures to ensure both the securitisation and participation of local communities in conservation efforts. This research article illustrates how participatory forms of conservation are employed to complement the securitisation of conservation, serving as a means to indirectly control people’s lives and create new environmental subjects. It does so through a case study of Kaziranga National Park, a biodiversity conservation hotspot in the northeastern state of Assam, renowned for the successful conservation of the Greater One-horned Rhino Rhinoceros unicornis. This ‘success’ emerges amidst critiques of its violent and militarised anti-poaching conservation measures and the efforts deployed to protect the rhino ‘at any cost’. The research article analyses the participatory protection mechanisms supported by state and non-state agencies to ensure the conservation of Kaziranga, primarily carried out through the revitalisation of two bodies: the eco-development committee and the voluntary defence organisation. The results demonstrate how soft forms of violence complement hard forms, thereby supporting a broader process of structural violence and national building in Assam. It shows how participatory mechanisms are used as ‘counterinsurgency practices.’ Abstract in Hindi: rb.gy/rhcrzz

Women's Perception of Sexuality and Sexual Violence in Turkish Culture - Are Women Aware of This Difficult Distinction?: A Qualitative Research

Women's Perception of Sexuality and Sexual Violence in Turkish Culture - Are Women Aware of This Difficult Distinction?: A Qualitative Research

The uneven spatial development of the region as a factor of structural violence

The uneven spatial development of the region as a factor of structural violence

Why Femicide? Analysis Of The Roots Of Cultural Hatred Against Women From Johan Galtung's Perspective

Femicide occurs when perpetrators have an either-or mindset that drives them to kill women. This is usually promoted or justified by patriarchal culture. The murder of women is an accumulation of hatred that has been maintained for a long time, is continuously produced, and occurs both in the private and collective spheres. The motives vary but are not limited to: the aim to dominate, conquer, or marginalize the existence of women. This research method uses a literature review, this research identifies that femicide can occur existentially and/or essentially. The research results show that both occurred because the perpetrator killed women in the abstract to maintain the logic of the status quo which positions masculinity as absolute superior. To prevent femicide in the context of cultural violence, this mindset needs to be redefined. The conclusion of this research is that Femicide is a facade of violence against women that is rooted in hatred that is fostered and reproduced continuously. Not only is it a manifestation of the most extreme patriarchal ideas, the murder of women is evidence of the inability of each community to create an environment without violence.

No Man Is an Island: Resiliency Among Older African American Men Living with HIV

ABSTRACT African American men face chronic illness earlier in life and earlier death due to higher severity of illness and poor control of chronic diseases than their white male counterparts. Preexposure and post-exposure prophylaxis PrEP and PREP have improved the odds of survival among those living with HIV. However, the anti-retroviral treatments, though effective, are only as effective as early prevention and detection and in cases where patients can adhere to treatment regimens. The mean age of participants (N = 11) was 56.44 (SD = 5.175, range = 47–63). The current study employs qualitative methodology to propose an ecosystems-driven intersectional model to identify resilience and the influence of personal, social, and societal forces shaping the lives of older African American men living with HIV. Findings determine stigma, community violence, and structural barriers to care as crucial stress areas. Participants discussed self-advocacy and family as constituent elements of resilience. Several implications for practice and research emerged. Practice must design and deploy assessment instruments to include exposure to racism and violence, including emotional and structural violence. Practice must include advocacy at the micro, meso, and macro levels. Assessment must also be self-reflexive. Organizational assessment should involve internal and structural reviews of barriers to meeting client preferences.

On caring and a love ethic to address the effects of structural violence on adolescent health

Youth care webs and interactions with caring systems are evaluated using Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) methods. This qualitative study used photovoice and interviewing technics with a group of emerging adults to reveal details about their interactions with systems of care, and their nuanced perceptions of the care they receive and give. The variety of settings that youth turn to for care when traditional caring systems fail, and their nuanced understandings of both interpersonal and systemic care were explored. The isolation that structural violence and neoliberal systems of care have had on their communities was revealed in explicit detail. The integral role that YPAR researchers play within youth care networks was discovered through supportive interactions between youth participants and researchers. Using a love ethics approach to YPAR built on trust uncovers participant knowledge that could be missed through non-collaborative approaches.

A donor wall vs. a big jar: critical space analysis of two school fundraising campaigns

ABSTRACT This study sheds light on how large-scale school fundraising efforts differ according to locations in unequal and segregated cities, putting a greater burden on schools in under-resourced areas. In particular, we compare the large-scale fundraising campaigns of two high schools in contrastingly unequal urban neighbourhoods in one of Canada's prairie provinces. We apply critical space analysis to compare their respective communities, actors, strategies, discourses as well as time. Our comparison indicates that unequal levels of community wealth led to inherently uneven processes, with a greater and more prolonged fundraising burden on schools in low-income and under-resourced areas. We conclude by discussing how these large-scale school fundraising inequities constitute new structural inequities, symbolic domination, and spatial violence.

Structural violence and necropolitics among Indigenous Peoples living with HIV who use substances in the Prairie provinces during COVID-19

BackgroundWithin Manitoba and Saskatchewan, pre-existing health inequities amongst Indigenous groups were intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. Service disruptions in the health and social service sector—combined with the effects of intersectional stigma—disproportionately impacted Indigenous peoples living with HIV (IPLH). IPLH experience structural violence and necropolitical exclusion through systemic forms of stigma situated within Canada's expansive colonial history. Utilizing the theoretical foundations of structural violence and necropolitics, this qualitative study examines how the COVID-19 pandemic amplified preceding states of inequity for IPLH. MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with 60 participants. The sample comprised of those with lived experience (n = 45) as well as those who provided services for IPLH (n = 15). Indigenous Storywork guided the data collection and analysis process. Topics explored within each interview included access to health and social services, harm reduction, substance use, and experiences in providing services during COVID-19 pandemic. Thematic analysis was used to identify common themes throughout each story. ResultsOur results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed and amplified pre-existing forms of structural violence and necropolitical logics for IPLH within Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Specifically, we describe how structural violence and necropolitics are manifested via three main avenues— (i) restrictions and removal of care, (ii) bureaucracy and institutional care politics, and (iii) discrimination and systemic racism within the Canadian healthcare system. ConclusionThe COVID-19 pandemic within Manitoba and Saskatchewan sparked massive changes in service provision within settler-colonial and neoliberal institutions of care. For those services that remained open to IPLH, masking requirements, questionnaire requirements, scheduling requirements, and a lack of in-person services acted as only some of the barriers described by community members as detrimental to care access. Increased experiences of discrimination in health care on the basis of substance use or HIV status further limited access to needed services.

Structural Violence, Gender, and Post 9-11 Terrorism in Pakistan: Examining the Psychological Impact on the Parents of Army Public School attacks in Pakistan

This study seeks to explore the gender – specific impact of post-9/11 terrorismacts inPakistan, with a particular focus on the parents of the children killed in the terrorist attacks on Army Public School in Peshawar, in 2014. The paper dwells deep intoexploring how the parents have been impacted and examines the many ways by whichthe victims have devised coping strategies in response to traumatic events. This studyuses Galtung’s structural violence theory as a theoretical framework to examine the psychological impact on the parents, with structural violence in this context referring topost-9/11 terrorism acts in Pakistan. This study adopted a sequential exploratory design. By using a stratified random sampling technique, a total of 216 participants were selected, comprising 133 Direct Victims and 83 Indirect Victims. Data collectioninvolved a mixed method approach - both quantitative and qualitative analyses. Primarydata was collected through structured interviews and a standardized questionnaire called Lieber’s scale of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to measure the level of post-traumatic stress. Subsequent processing and tabulation followed by statistical examination to assess the psychological impact of post-9/11 terrorism in Peshawar. Finding indicates that the symptoms of PTSD were still evident among all participants even after nine years of terrorist attack. Participants who were directly exposed totrauma displayed more symptoms of psychological distress as compared to those whowere indirectly exposed. The results also indicate a surprising and rather significant development in gender focused research with male parents exhibiting significantly highlevel of PTSD in comparison to women victims. Observations from the primary data showing men demonstrating higher level of PTSD, brings interesting propositions togender research, where explorations around the social and psychological aspects of masculinity, and the multifaceted roles played by men around gender empowerment may prompt intriguing inquiries into gender research. Furthermore, it is recommendedthat future research must focus on factors that should not only identify the optimal timing for PTSD treatment, but also explore factors that can bring natural recovery. Moreover, the research also facilitates the policy recommendation for development work as well as those agencies including, the government, local and international aidorganizations working in the areas affected by violence.

Fighting for Justice Amid Anti-Black Violence

This study draws on conceptualizations of BlackCrit and motherwork, and critical counterstorytelling methodological approaches, to present and analyze Ms. Irene Robinson's drawings and poetry that illustrate her experiences as a Black mother organizing for educational justice in Chicago Public Schools. The artistic narratives and supplemental analyses shared illuminate the authors’ liberatory dreams for education while also illuminating the structural violence Black students and families face in and out of urban schools. The authors conclude the article by offering implications for educators in K-12 urban schools that support more symbiotic and justice-centered educational praxes amongst teachers and Black mothers.

Self-Censorship or Irony? The Rhetoric of Silence in Rosalía de Castro’s “Las literatas”

This article studies the textual strategies used by Rosalía de Castro in “Las literatas” to denounce the structural and epistemic violence suffered by women writers and to defend their right to participate in the public sphere through literary activity. The text appears in a peculiar context, a year after street demonstrations by seminarians prevented the publication of another article of hers in the same Almanaque para la Juventud Elegante. This article, addressing the general theme of the silencing imposed on women, exposes their reaction to any kind of pressure: to continue writing and publishing. The splitting of the narratorial voice to show an excinded, dialogic and even incoherent or contradictory authorial self continues a tradition initiated by Romantic women authors to generate fissures in a model of femininity disciplined within the limits of the space assigned to them.

Conceptualizing and Developing a Dynamic Stigma Theory

Stigma is a form of injustice that contributes to the worsening course of the symptoms associated with mental health problems. The paper discusses the conceptualization and development of a contemporary theoretical model of stigma. Building on the findings of an initial scoping review, the author developed a theoretical model after thoroughly analyzing and redefining the key concepts of interest. This article proposes that stigmatized individuals are impacted by the religiocultural and structural violence perspectives embedded within social spaces, leading to stigma perception appraisal and subsequent coping mechanisms, which could be adaptive or maladaptive. Current models of mental illness stigma have gaps. It is time to relook at existing stigma frameworks and fill these gaps that have existed for many years for effective anti-stigma strategies.

Variegated racism: exploring experiences of anti-Black racism and their progression in medical education.

Addressing anti-Black racism in medical education in Canada has become increasingly urgent as more Black learners enter medical institutions and bring attention to the racist harms they face. We sought to gather evidence of experiences of racism among Black medical learners and to explore the contexts within which racism is experienced by learners. Drawing on critical race and structural violence theories, we conducted interviews with Black medical faculty, students, residents, and staff at the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine between May and July 2022. We thematically analyzed interviews using instrumental case study methodology. Thematic analyses from 13 interviews revealed 5 central themes describing experiences of racism and the compounding nature of racist exposures as learners progressed in medicine. Medical learners experienced racism through uncomfortable encounters and microaggressions. Blatant acts of racism were instances where patients and superiors harmed students in various ways, including through use of the N-word by a superior in 1 instance. Learners also experienced curricular racism through the absence of the Black body in the curriculum and the undue pathologizing of Blackness. Medical hierarchies reinforced anti-Black racism by undermining accountability and protecting powerful perpetrators. Finally, Black women medical learners identified intersecting oppressions and misogynoir that compounded their experience of racism. We propose that experiences of racism may worsen as learners progress in medicine in part because of increases in the sources of and exposure to racism. Anti-Black racism in medical education in Canada is experienced subtly through microaggressions or blatantly from different sources including medical faculty. As Black learners progress in medicine, anti-Black racism may become worse because of the compounding effects of exposures to a wider range of sources of racist behaviour.