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Understanding honour killing and honour-related violence in the immigration context: Implications for the legal profession and beyond
Study
"Honour-Related Violence"
"The simplest definition of honour-related violence, up to and including murder, is a family-initiated, planned violent response to the perception that a woman, as wife or daughter, has violated the honour of her family by crossing a boundary of sexual appropriateness" (Korteweg, 2012, pg.2).
In the Netherlands, I have heard a number of representatives of immigrant organizations complain informally that “young men today don’t understand what counts as a honour violation.” For these young men, watching over their sisters can become a way to assert their own sense of power and control in conditions that otherwise relegate them to a status of marginalized masculinity. This is very similar to patterns of violence against women more generally, yet shows how honour related violence needs to be situated complexly in the migration context, if we are interested in understanding the social patterns that inform this violence (where understanding does not equal condoning or minimizing the violence).