He didn’t know how strong I was: Family violence experiences of Vietnamese women on partner visas in Australia

This thesis explored the family violence experiences of Vietnamese women who were sponsored to Australia on partner visas. I conducted life history interviews and Photovoice workshops with 15 survivors. Survivors reflected on how their decisions to marry and migrate were not motivated by desperation or poverty (as stereotypes of marriage migrants may suggest). Instead, their accounts of visa precarity, isolation and financial control suggests that migration status not only facilitates perpetrators’ ability to enact violence, but also systematically impacts how survivors and service providers may respond to such violence.