Factors Associated With 'Honour' Based Violence in Middle Eastern and South Asian Communities Worldwide

Abstract

Despite increasing interest there has been significant disagreement and lack of clarity regarding the factors that are pertinent to ‘Honour’ Based Violence (HBV) in Middle Eastern and South Asian communities. This thesis attempted to identify these factors via two approaches: a systematic review, and a qualitative study. The systematic review examined 16 peer-reviewed journal publications concerning HBV in Middle Eastern and South Asian communities across the globe and identified demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, and familial relationship; socio-contextual factors, such as breach of social norms, negative rumours, and social pressure; and psychological factors, such as beliefs and psychological stress as being important to HBV. The qualitative study explored the opinions of 20 professionals involved in the field of HBV and asked these experts to identify the factors they thought might increase and decrease the likelihood of a person becoming a perpetrator or victim of HBV in Middle Eastern and South Asian communities. The study identified nine aspects, conceptualisation and internalisation of honour; integration with host society; gender and sexuality; community and family; breach of social norms; anxiety, shame, and desires; previous violence and coercion; economic hardship and dependency; and quality of support from police and social services as being important to HBV. Collectively the findings of these studies indicate that HBV is a complex phenomenon with a wide variety of influencing factors. The identification of these factors can not only help researchers in developing multifactor models of HBV they can also be used to refine interventions aiming to reducing HBV in the population. To this end, this thesis also examined the contribution of these studies towards Robert’s proposed Motivational Model of HBV perpetration and brings forward a Routine Activity Theory based model for HBV victimisation. Furthermore, the implications of these studies towards HBV risk assessment, intervention strategies, and future research is also discussed.