Violence Against Women and Regimes of Exception: Undoing Discrimination in Migration Law

Violence against Women and Regimes of Exception provides a wide-ranging examination of how migration law discriminates against women, heightening their risk of being subjected to violence and intensifying their experiences of it. Catherine Briddick identifies patterns of disadvantage, scrutinizes justifications for differential treatment, and delineates legal obligations relating to violence against women.

Structured around the legal challenges that migrant women have brought to the regimes determining their status, this book reveals the devastating impact of flawed rules that increase vulnerability to violence, deny effective protection, and render victims at risk of destitution, detention, and deportation. Integrating doctrinal, empirical, and theoretical material, it explores the difference that migration status makes to an experience of violence, investigates where existing regimes fall short, and establishes how the resulting compounded disadvantage should be remedied.

The analysis begins in the UK and with the European Convention on Human Rights, broadening to connect with European Union law and the Council of Europe’s Trafficking and Istanbul Conventions. This approach provides valuable insights into the role and ability of national courts, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Court of Justice of the European Union to scrutinize different forms of discriminatory treatment. By bringing together distinct responses to violence experienced in the context of migration control, the book outlines a new framework for their evaluation and determines how rights and protection could better be secured.

A groundbreaking work that centres the experiences of those marginalized by migration law, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the intersection of violence, gender, and migration.

Catherine Briddick, Andrew W. Mellon Associate Professor of International Human Rights and Refugee Law, Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford

Catherine Briddick is the Andrew W Mellon Associate Professor of International Human Rights and Refugee Law at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. Her work on protection, published in leading academic journals and collections, cuts across subjects and regimes, including UK immigration and public law, non-discrimination and equality law, European Union law, and public international law. Catherine is also a barrister (currently non-practicing). Before entering academia, she managed and delivered legal advice services in the not-for-profit sector.