FJDG Seminars: Dr. Catherine Briddick and 'The Wrong and Its Remedy: Compounded Disadvantage and an Independent Migration Status'

The Feminist Jurisprudence Discussion Group are delighted to be hosting our FJDG seminar of Hilary Term 2023 next Monday 13th February, 11am-12:30pm, Rooftop Suites, St. Hilda's College with Dr. Catherine Briddick, who will be discussing her draft chapter entitled 'The Wrong and Its Remedy: Compounded Disadvantage and an Independent Migration Status'. An abstract of the draft chapter can be found below, and the full draft will be circulated to members who sign-up ahead of the discussion. 

This event will be hybrid and, as always, is open to all. Please sign up for the event here, indicating whether you would like to join online or in-person. 

We hope to see many of you there for what promises to be an interesting presentation and discussion! 

Over thirty years have passed since Kimberlé Crenshaw analysed the ‘double subordination’ experienced by migrant women of colour who were subject to domestic violence. ‘Compounded disadvantage’ is, to draw on and paraphrase Crenshaw, the term I use to state the difference that immigration law makes to an experience of violence against women.

The ECtHR uses the concept of vulnerability to respond to applicants’ different characteristics and experiences. This strand of its non-discrimination jurisprudence, in conjunction with Martha Fineman’s theorising, has been relied on by scholars who have sought to understand the disadvantage that flows from migration status as a distinct form of legally-created vulnerability. In the first part of this paper, I justify my analytical approach, one that is rooted in this jurisprudence and theorising, and which reveals the role of the State in first producing, and then compounding, migrant women’s disadvantage. I then explain the circumstances which give rise to compounded disadvantage and trace its features, drawing on empirical research that focuses on women’s lived experiences of violence and State power. While migration status and violence may interact to produce a constellation of different experiences, what is shared and what are, therefore, the defining features of compounded disadvantage are control, exclusion, a perilous migration status and an intensified experience of violence.