Research has documented the considerable hardships immigrant women often face if they want to leave abusive relationships, but the cumulative impacts of such experiences have received insufficient scholarly attention. In response, this study investigates women’s difficulties leaving abusive relationships based on life story interviews with 35 immigrant women who experienced partner abuse. Almost all the women originated from “patriarchal belt” countries in, for example, the Middle East and all arrived in Denmark as adults. Using a model of gendered geographies of power, this study examines key interview passages in which the women use dramatized speech to tell about their younger selves’ interactions with significant others. These dramatized episodes of interactions emerge as crucial for the interviewees to communicate why they remained in abusive relationships for years and how most finally managed to leave their husbands. The narrated episodes reveal how the women’s frequent lack of success in various interactional situations can be attributed to women “having the lower hand”—holding disadvantaged positions in the familial, social, and national hierarchies of power. These hierarchies reinforce each other, for example, when insecure residency status limits immigrant women’s options to solicit help from Danish society. The analysis demonstrates that—in contrast to the stereotype of the abused immigrant woman as a passive victim—micro- and macro-level processes may work together to undermine immigrant women’s possibilities to act independently at important junctures in their lives. The results also stress the importance that frontline workers have sufficient understanding of immigrant women’s predicament and the ability to extend qualified and timely support. Such support can be crucial for abused immigrant women to become able to move away from their violent home environments.

研究记录了移民女性想要离开虐待关系时经常面临的相当大的困难，但这些经历的累积影响并没有得到足够的学术关注。作为回应，本研究根据对 35 名遭受伴侣虐待的移民女性的生活故事访谈，调查了女性离开虐待关系的困难。几乎所有女性都来自中东等“父权带”国家，并且都是成年后抵达丹麦的。使用性别权力地理模型，本研究检查了女性使用戏剧化演讲讲述年轻自我与重要他人互动的关键采访段落。这些戏剧化的互动情节对于受访者来说至关重要，他们可以传达为什么他们多年来一直处于虐待关系中，以及大多数人最终是如何设法离开丈夫的。叙述的情节揭示了女性在各种互动情况下经常缺乏成功可以归因于女性“处于下风”——在家庭、社会和国家权力等级中处于不利地位。这些等级制度相互加强，例如，当不安全的居住身份限制了移民妇女向丹麦社会寻求帮助的选择时。分析表明，与受虐待的移民妇女作为被动受害者的刻板印象相反，微观和宏观层面的过程可能会共同作用，破坏移民妇女在生活中重要时刻独立行动的可能性。结果还强调了一线工人对移民妇女的困境有足够的了解以及提供合格和及时支持的能力的重要性。这种支持对于受虐待的移民妇女能够摆脱暴力的家庭环境至关重要。