Chasing Geborgenheit: A Life Course Understanding of Domestic Violence Survivors’ Leaving Process in China

Jiaying Lin, Lingnan University

This article examines how cohort effects, age effects and linked lives constrained domestic violence survivors’ choices about whether to seek help through the legal system or not. This research design builds on Pamela Neumann’s (2023) conceptualization of legal ambivalence. To extend the discussion to domestic violence survivors’ leaving process in China, this research adds a life course perspective to stress that early life experiences, changing socio-legal contexts, and marriage norms influence survivors’ legal ambivalence and direct their course of action. I interviewed domestic violence survivors and lawyers in the family and marriage area in China, and I found that the post-1960s and post-1970s birth cohorts paid more attention to their adult children’s interests than themselves, while the post-1980s and post-1990s cohorts positioned themselves as players of the legal system. The post-2000s cohort started out to resort to the Anti-Domestic Violence Law but became disillusioned with the response from legal actors and the judicial system. They may finally not enter the legal system because of the barriers created by intergenerational relationships and economic disadvantage.

Keywords: Families, Unions and Households, Gender Dynamics, Qualitative data/methods/approaches, Older Adults and Intergenerational Relations

See paper.

  Presented in Session 50. Gender-Based Violence within and outside the Home