II. Culture and legal consciousness

Culture is a contested and polysemic concept (see, for example, the variety of meanings found by Saguy and Stuart in a comprehensive study of academic journal papers published between 2000 and 2007; Saguy and Stuart, Reference Saguy and Stuart2008, p. 150). Part of the complexity in the use of this concept is that it can be understood as the ‘beliefs and practices associated with a specific group’ or as an ‘abstracted system of symbols and meanings, both the product and context of social action’ (Silbey, Reference Silbey, Hall, Gridnstaff and Lo2010, p. 470, emphasis in original). It is the former meaning that will be the focus of inquiry in this paper, although its relationship with the latter will become evident when discussing how it is shaped by other structural factors, and how these intersect with individual circumstances to inform legal consciousness.

The concept of culture may be misleading if used uncritically, as it hides a variety of factors that influence human behaviour. The cultural aspects mentioned in this paper refer mainly to the ‘traditional’ notions of Portuguese culture, in terms of family organisation and division of gender roles. Some of these derive from behaviour identified by an attitudinal study on family organisation and gender roles conducted in 2002/03 (Wall, Reference Wall, Wall and Amâncio2007); others draw from participants’ own views of what Portuguese culture consists of.

To contextualise the notions of Portuguese culture used in this paper, it is useful to understand where some of these originate. In Portugal, women's domesticity was promoted with more or less emphasis by successive governments until the end of the dictatorial regime in 1974. Feminism faced considerable opposition from the state during this period (Esteves, Reference Esteves1998, p. 42; Amâncio, Reference Amâncio, Wall and Amâncio2007, p. 189; Cova, Reference Cova and Amâncio2007, p. 40), literacy levels remained low and class mobility was limited (Candeias, Reference Candeias2010, p. 180). The education syllabus reflected traditional gender stereotypes promoted by the state, which defended women's domesticity and a narrowly defined ideal of family life (Candeias, Reference Candeias2010, p. 181; Rosas, Reference Rosas2001, p. 1040). Emigration levels were high, with the possibility of a number of emigrants taking with them the cultural values promoted by the state regarding family organisation to the countries of destination (Tavares, Reference Tavares2010, p. 90).

In the 1960s and 1970s, Portuguese emigrants generally consisted of unskilled workers, who moved to European countries, such as France, Luxembourg and Switzerland. Since the 1990s, the characteristics of Portuguese emigrants have been changing, with highly skilled and formally educated individuals choosing to move to countries such as England and Spain (Malheiros, Reference Malheiros2010, p. 135). This means that England, which had been receiving mainly unskilled Portuguese workers, has also been receiving skilled and highly educated professionals from this country, since then (Malheiros, Reference Malheiros2010, p. 137). Indeed, England is today one of the countries with the highest level of skilled Portuguese migrants in Europe (Pereira et al., Reference Pereira, Pinto and Pires2015, p. 5). This makes the current Portuguese population living in England a mixture of lower-skilled, less formally educated workers, usually employed to do manual labour, and formally educated and highly skilled individuals, working in a variety of services and industries. An example of the recent increase in skilled professionals migrating to England is the recruitment of high numbers of Portuguese nurses by the National Health Service (Dreaper, Reference Dreaper2015; Howie, Reference Howie2011; Pereira et al., Reference Pereira, Pinto and Pires2015, p. 5; Williams, Reference Williams2012).

With the change in political regime in the 1970s, Portuguese women gained access to the same rights as men. Women's work outside the household became commonplace as a result, but this was not accompanied by a profound change in the organisation of family life. As such, women's association with a domestic role, especially in relation to child-rearing, remains strong in contemporary Portuguese society (Wall, Reference Wall, Wall and Amâncio2007, p. 228). Divorce and births out of wedlock are socially accepted, but a traditional stance towards the sharing of family responsibilities is still in place (Aboim, Reference Aboim, Wall and Amâncio2007, pp. 37–38, 41; Inglez, Reference Inglez and Amâncio2007, p. 351; Crompton and Lyonette, Reference Crompton, Lyonette, Wall and Amâncio2007, p. 102; Wall, Reference Wall, Wall and Amâncio2007, pp. 228, 247). This has potential implications for the way Portuguese women address domestic violence, especially as children and the family are seen as essential for individual happiness (Aboim, Reference Aboim, Wall and Amâncio2007, p. 72). The lack of promotion of women's rights during most of the twentieth century led to a lack of policies to address violence against women until recently. The past twenty years have therefore been dedicated to catching up with developments in other parts of the world, in creating a legal framework that protects women from domestic violence and in raising awareness about it.

It is important to acknowledge that cultural practices may or may not be adopted by all members of a cultural group and that using ethnicity to understand culture may not wholly represent an individual's culture (Yick and Oomen-Early, Reference Yick and Oomen-Early2008, p. 1079). By focusing on Portuguese culture, generalisations may be proposed that do not allow subcultures or different forms of experiencing culture to surface from the analysis. In order to address this limitation, participants were asked to define Portuguese culture in their own words. This strategy helped to avoid incorrect assumptions about Portuguese culture and, by extension, participants’ legal consciousness.

Not only is the concept of culture challenging in itself; its use may lead to problematic outcomes. When associating women's victimisation with culture, there is a danger that culture is blamed for the violence perpetrated against them. This can be done by concluding that the reason behind women's victimisation is simply because certain cultures are more accepting of violence against women than others, in what is sometimes called ‘subculture of violence theory’ (Tartakovsky and Mezhibovsky, Reference Tartakovsky and Mezhibovsky2012, p. 561). Although the normalisation of violence in certain cultures may be an important aspect to take into account, a more complex analysis of culture is needed to fully understand how it operates. Culture is dynamic and socially constructed, and violence against women may come from both within and outside women's culture and community (Sokoloff, Reference Sokoloff2008, pp. 234–235; Burman et al., Reference Burman, Smailes and Chantler2004, p. 335); its study can, therefore, be enhanced by an intersectional analysis that discusses its relationship with different factors.

Legal consciousness is used in this paper to explore the structural and individual factors subjacent to this process. It also helps to avoid a tautological use of the concept of culture, in that certain (legal) cultural practices are explained by referring back to certain cultures (Nelken, Reference Nelken2004, p. 8; Reference Nelken, Orucu and Nelken2007, p. 247; Saguy and Stuart, Reference Saguy and Stuart2008, p. 156). The approach adopted here, instead, reveals how culture informs individual decisions regarding legal phenomena, while at the same time demonstrating how individuals themselves perpetuate cultural stereotypes. Indeed, the idea of legal communities, as suggested by Cotterrell (Reference Cotterrell2004), may be closer to the stance adopted here, as it suggests the existence of shared meanings circumscribed to a smaller population (which in this case consists of Portuguese women living in England) than the use of broader concept of national culture allows.

The study of the role of culture in women's legal consciousness should not be confused with the study of legal culture. Friedman introduced the concept of legal culture in the 1970s and highlighted the role of ‘social forces’ in the operation of the legal system (Reference Friedman1975, p. 15). Both legal culture and legal consciousness are interested in the influence of a variety of factors on individuals’ relationship with the law. Cotterrell proposes that a legal consciousness approach is part of a subset of forms of discussing legal culture, which he equates with ‘law and popular culture’ and, more specifically when referring to the work of Ewick and Silbey, and Merry and Yngvesson, law and ‘popular consciousness’ (Cotterrell, Reference Cotterrell2004, p. 5). Saguy and Stuart propose that legal consciousness is one of three principal approaches to the relationship between law and culture – that which sees ‘law as culture’ (Reference Saguy and Stuart2008, pp. 158–161, emphasis in original). Silbey, however, focuses on the locus of enquiry and sees legal culture as tracing the ways in which ‘law exists in society generally’ and legal consciousness ‘the ways in which law is experienced and interpreted by specific individuals as they engage, avoid or resist the law and legal meanings’ (Reference Silbey, Smelser and Baltes2001, p. 8626). Similarly, Marshall refers to legal consciousness as an example of how legal culture extends to everyday life (Reference Marshall2006, p. 230).

Legal culture and legal consciousness are both concerned with systems of meaning but take on different approaches to the understanding of how culture influences and perpetuates the law. It is a legal consciousness approach that tries to understand the law in everyday life, that is taken in this paper when analysing women's perceptions and reactions to domestic violence. As Ewick and Silbey suggest, understanding legal consciousness means to understand ‘how legality is experienced and understood by ordinary people as they engage, avoid or resist the law and legal meanings’ (Reference Ewick and Silbey1998, p. 35) or, as Merry puts it, to answer the question of where the ‘categories of the law intersect with daily life’ (Reference Merry1990, p. 37).

In a helpful attempt to categorise the variety of papers on legal consciousness published in academic journals, Serban suggests that studies on legal consciousness tend to focus on three broad areas: the mobilisation of rights, relationships with power and the creation of meanings, identities and subjectivities (2014, p. 777). While the research presented here positions itself in the rights mobilisation area, much in line with Ewick and Silbey's seminal work (Ewick and Silbey, Reference Ewick and Silbey1998), it does so by looking primarily at the role of national culture in the formation of legality, therefore also considering the creation of meanings and identities.

III. Methodology

The data used in the analysis presented here result from twenty-four interviews with Portuguese women living in England on a permanent basis. The interviews were conducted between 2011 and 2012. Participants were reached mainly in two ways, through local support services and through members of the Portuguese community living in England. Participants were recruited in London, Norfolk and Reading, as these are areas with high density of Portuguese immigrants, visible in the existence of a large number of Portuguese shops, restaurants, media outlets and social organisations. Support services, Portuguese organisations and organisations directed at the Portuguese community were contacted by post, e-mail and telephone. Meetings were set up with representatives of these organisations who, in turn, referred other Portuguese immigrants in the area, who either agreed to be interviewed or were able to indicate someone else who would be. The majority of participants were from London (fifteen) and Norfolk (seven), with the two participants living in Reading recruited through contacts made in London.

A snowballing method was used, building on trust established with members of the community. This consisted of first interviewing women with more prominent roles in the community, who would then reassure other women that the interviews were not intrusive and that they would not have to reveal any personal details that they did not wish to. Participants did not have to be victims of domestic violence to be a part of the research – a fact that was highlighted during the recruitment process. Even though this was made clear to potential participants, the subject of domestic violence deterred a number of women from agreeing to be interviewed. Some women accepted enthusiastically to be interviewed, having understood that the project was on Portuguese culture, and then cancelled the interviews when they realised that it included domestic violence; other women simply said that they were not comfortable talking about it to a stranger or that they had no opinion on the subject.

The fact that victimisation was not part of the recruitment process allowed not only more participants to volunteer to be interviewed, but also reflects the wider purpose of this study. The objective of the research is to understand Portuguese women's perceptions of the justice system in a broad sense and not their victimisation. In the scope of a legal consciousness approach, their subjective experiences are relevant because they reveal their experiences of law in everyday life, rather than an engagement with formal law. As such, it is as important to understand the construction of legality of women who experienced domestic violence, as of those who never experienced it, but might nevertheless one day come in contact with the English justice system. The decision to be more inclusive in recruiting participants also follows Barata et al.’s (Reference Barata, Mcnally, Sales and Steward2005) methodology to study domestic violence amongst Portuguese-speaking women in Canada that was adopted by Sokoloff and Pearce to research immigrant women's legal awareness and responses to domestic violence in Maryland, US (Sokoloff and Pearce, Reference Sokoloff and Pearce2011) and by Gleeson to analyse the mobilisation of law of undocumented Latinos, regardless of whether they had actually mobilised the law or not (Gleeson, Reference Gleeson2010). Six participants disclosed having been victims of domestic violence. Experiences of direct victimisation will be highlighted in this paper whenever relevant.

The methodology used to gather information consisted of in-depth semi-structured interviews. The use of semi-structured interviews allowed participants to express themselves more freely on these topics than a more structured approach would. This was particularly important as participants were not expected to have knowledge of English law and may have had difficulties giving an account of their experiences had they not been allowed to tell their stories in the way that best suited them. An interview schedule was used, which concentrated on four broad areas: participants’ individual data, participants’ understanding of domestic violence and appropriate responses to it, participants’ experience with the justice system in England, and participants’ views on Portuguese culture and the impact that it had on reactions to domestic violence.

The data were analysed in a first instance using discourse analysis, in which similar responses were grouped under three predetermined headings, namely ‘cultural schemas’, ‘resources’ and ‘service providers’. These categories then formed the basis of the exploratory study of respondents’ legal consciousness, using a grounded theory approach. Although using predetermined categories drawn from a literature review conducted beforehand, the study left the categories themselves open to be completed by the identification of patterns and repetitions in respondents’ discourses. As such, the category ‘cultural schemas’ was used to group aspects related to Portuguese culture and perceptions of domestic violence and responses to it, as respondents chose to identify them. The category ‘resources’ included length of stay in the country, age and language skills – aspects that had been identified in exiting literature to potentially influence how immigrant women perceive and respond to domestic violence, but also any others that respondents mentioned and had not been identified before, such as economic independence. The category ‘service providers’ aimed to clarify to what extent perceptions of services (such as their usefulness, cost and accessibility) influenced women's responses to domestic violence (for an exploration of this theme, see Graca, Reference Graca2015).

An effort was made to recruit participants with a variety of ages and educational backgrounds. Participants’ ages ranged from twenty-three to sixty-five years and their educational background from four years of schooling to PhD (fifteen participants had education up to BA level or equivalent, and nine BA level or equivalent or above). Participants were asked to rate their level of English as ‘very good’, ‘good’, ‘average’ or ‘poor’; nine out of twenty-four respondents ranked their language skills from ‘Average’ to ‘Poor’ and the rest in the remaining categories. There are no particular discrepancies between the population in London and in Norfolk in terms of command of English. The nine respondents who rated their English as ‘average’ or ‘poor’ had been living in England for an average of five years, with two living in this country for one month and seven between three and twelve years. Participants’ length of stay in England ranged from one month to thirty years, with the majority having been in the country between five and eight years.

Respondents declined to answer questions that related to their income and perceived class, preferring instead to give more generic information regarding socio-economic factors related to household provision and employment status. Because a snowballing method was used and the participation rate was low, a decision was made to accept these answers as indicators of socio-economic status rather than risk alienating participants by pressing them on the questions as they were written in the interview schedule. Moreover, it was found that the class system in Portugal and ideas of class mobility in this country might not equate well with class stratification and mobility in England, thus skewing the analysis, rather than clarifying it. Eight respondents were the main providers of their households; this corresponds to the respondents who were single or divorced; the other respondents shared the provision equally with their partners. Portuguese women are amongst those who most combine paid and unpaid work in Europe (Guerreiro and Carvalho, Reference Guerreiro, Carvalho, Wall and Amâncio2007, p. 136), and this is confirmed by participants’ attitudes towards employment and household financial contributions. Respondents in Norfolk displayed lower income and educational levels than those in London and Reading, with the latter also including the respondents with the highest levels of education and command of English.

Sixteen respondents were in a long-term relationship; of these, ten were living with a partner without formalising the relationship and six were married. Only two of the twenty-four respondents did not have any family in England; all others had children, a partner and/or extended family living in this country with them. Of the twenty-four respondents, five did not have children; all others had one, two or three children. The majority of women who had children gave birth to them in England (twelve out of nineteen). Participants’ sexual orientation was not part of the selection process; all participants who were or had been in a relationship said that this was of a heterosexual nature. All of their partners or former partners were Portuguese, except for one. All participants were White, except two, which makes conclusions based on race difficult to establish, particularly as race was not mentioned by any respondent, at any point, in the interviews.

Interviews lasted usually between one and two hours, and were conducted in locations chosen by the participants to ensure that they were comfortable and ease power imbalances that arise in any interview process. The interviews were conducted in Portuguese, which is the first language of both the researcher and the interviewees. It was hoped that this would allow respondents to express themselves more freely, without concerns about the correct use or understanding of the English language. In fact, it was common for participants to use Portuguese and English interchangeably when answering questions, particularly if they had been in England for over eight years and were well integrated in the wider English community. When expressing themselves in Portuguese, it is an English translation of their responses that illustrates the sections of this paper.

In order to establish a rapport with the participants, and in response to their enquiries, the interviewer often revealed personal details, such as region of origin or length of stay in England, during the initial stages of the interviews. This created a certain level of reciprocity and was used to ensure, as much as possible, that the interview dynamic was non-hierarchical. It was likely that the interviewer's socio-economic background (which would come across, for example, in the way she dressed and her regional accent) would impact on respondents’ willingness to talk about their own background and personal experiences. A conscious effort was therefore made to reassure participants that responses would be treated in a non-judgemental way; and, moreover, that, although the interviewer was Portuguese herself, she did not live in the same communities as they did, and so would not inadvertently be in contact with them or their relatives once the interviews were over. Responses were recorded whenever participants authorised it, and notes were taken during the interviews. In order to protect participants’ anonymity, all names used in this paper are pseudonyms.

IV. Perceptions of domestic violence

Participants were asked in the interviews to describe what they understood by domestic violence, in their own words and without any legal contextualisation from the researcher. ‘Domestic violence’ is a direct translation of the expression used in Portuguese to refer to all forms of abuse in a domestic setting (‘violência doméstica’); this was deemed easier to understand by respondents than the expression ‘domestic abuse’. Domestic violence was used as a generic category of violent, controlling and coercive behaviour, allowing respondents to include all forms of abuse that they wanted to mention in their accounts. The choice of language used is particularly relevant when studying any immigrant population, as the conceptualisation of the legal phenomena that is made within a group may not align itself completely with that of the justice system of the country of destination. A bottom-up approach to legality that is closer to a European approach to legal consciousness, as described by Hertogh (Reference Hertogh2004, p. 477), and that recognises individuals’ active participation in the creation of legality (Fritsvold, Reference Fritsvold2009, p. 804) was therefore adopted. As a result, the expression ‘domestic violence’ is used throughout this paper in its broadest possible sense, and interchangeably with domestic abuse.

When asked to describe domestic violence, eighteen out of the twenty-four respondents mentioned physical and psychological violence. However, the terminology used to describe the latter was varied, including ‘emotional’ and ‘verbal’ violence. The six respondents who did not name either physical or psychological violence mentioned ‘emotional violence’ and specific types of conduct, such as shouting and name-calling. Indeed, ‘verbal’ and ‘emotional’ violence were mentioned by a large number of respondents, with three considering psychological violence as the most insidious and difficult to overcome. Most respondents who mentioned physical and psychological violence then went on to describe in more detail what they meant by these categories of behaviour. ‘Hitting’ was the most common form of physical violence mentioned, with ‘socially isolating’ the other, ‘being cold’, ‘diminishing the other’, ‘being overly jealous’ and ‘bullying’ or ‘controlling’ given as examples of psychological violence.

Other forms of violence mentioned related to forms of patriarchal violence found in the community, such as men's greater freedom outside the house, men having the last word when it came to ‘important’ decisions, men's entitlement to having the house clean and tidy without contributing to this, and men's behaviour being excused if fuelled by alcohol, as the accounts by Helena and Beatriz, mentioned below, illustrate.

The community was often described as being ‘very traditional’ and there was a perception that this reflected Portuguese culture, which, in turn, had a marked influence on women's understanding of and reactions to domestic violence. This became apparent when discussing topics such as the division of work within the household, or parents’ relationship with their children.

Catarina, an academic in her twenties, who immigrated to England four years before the interview and was highly involved in the Portuguese and wider English communities, referred to this by saying:

Catarina's mother had experienced violence at the hands of her father. Her mother eventually left him and moved with her to a different country. Catarina's perception of domestic life was infused by this experience and her mother's decision to leave her abuser, but not to seek help from any support services. Catarina did not disclose having experienced abuse herself but demonstrated an acute awareness of how family life can be regulated by gender stereotypes that she associated with Portuguese culture, and how these existed in both her mother's generation and her own.

Barata et al. revealed that Portuguese-speaking women saw the Portuguese-speaking community as patriarchal and more traditional than the wider Canadian community – a perception that potentially hindered their ability to end relationships in which domestic violence existed (Reference Barata, Mcnally, Sales and Steward2005, pp. 139, 140). Here, as with Barata et al., patriarchy is seen by respondents such as Catarina and others as a Portuguese characteristic that is either non-existent or at least not as prevalent in the wider English community, with negative implications for Portuguese women's ability to escape abusive relationships.

Elsa, a divorced mother in her forties, who moved to England twelve years before the interview and was actively involved in the Portuguese community in London, contrasted the attitudes in Portugal and England by saying:

Elsa experienced domestic violence for a number of years and was positively impressed with the response from the police and other support services in London. She disputed the notion that Portuguese women only stayed with their abusers if they wanted to, and related their responses to domestic violence, instead, to the reinforcement of cultural attitudes and lack of support from the community itself. She volunteered in a local Portuguese group and said:

A lack of support from the community can be inferred from the discourse of respondents who blamed women for their victimisation. This was particularly the case when women's behaviour was seen to challenge traditional conceptions of family life. These respondents were mainly well integrated in the local Portuguese communities and had lower levels of education and little day-to-day contact with non-Portuguese individuals. Alice, a housewife in her thirties, with two children and twelve years of formal education but a low command of the English language, despite living in England for six years, said:

Some respondents gave more specific examples and said that it was up to women to try to deal with the situation sensibly and not to provoke men if they arrived home drunk. This confirms the claims of Beatriz, whose (then) husband was violent towards her when drunk and who said that there were sections in the community that condoned alcoholism and excused drunken behaviour, placing the onus of avoiding violence on the women who were victimised.

Beatriz was in her thirties and had been living in England for eight years before the interview; she was interviewed in London, where she revealed that did she had not only to face violence from her husband and the fear of losing custody of her child, but also to deal with pressure from the community and her own family to keep the marriage intact:

Another respondent, Helena, in her sixties and living in Norfolk for the past ten years, said that, in many households, women engaged in paid employment and men helped with household tasks but, if women went to work and did not leave the house in what can be considered a ‘good state’, for example of cleanliness, then it was ‘normal’ that there would be problems when the men arrived home in the evening. Helena did not disclose experiencing domestic violence; she had little contact with anyone outside the local Portuguese community and had low levels of education and command of English. She was interviewed while accessing support services in Norfolk.

Some respondents provided a more nuanced definition of domestic violence. Barbara described it as ‘behaviour that is considered abusive by those who suffered it’. Her self-confessed difficulty in defining domestic violence lay in the fact that, according to her, the same conduct could be considered abusive or not, depending on the context and the participants. Barbara did not place the blame for the violence on the victim, but instead drew attention to the volatile nature of the concept, in which different people can interpret the same form of behaviour differently. Barbara's atypical approach to the subject may reflect her social and economic standing. She was not inserted in the Portuguese community, was educated to PhD level and had a lot of contact with members of a variety of communities in England.

Respondents who experienced domestic violence added to their descriptions behaviour that they encountered during their victimisation, such as ‘forcing others to obey every whim’ and ‘controlling the other's phone calls’ or restricting access to a passport.

V. Reactions to domestic violence

Barata et al. demonstrated the existence of a large gap between Portuguese-speaking women's opinions of what women should do in situations of domestic violence and what they thought other Portuguese-speaking women actually did in these circumstances (Reference Barata, Mcnally, Sales and Steward2005, p. 138). Cultural stereotypes, both within and towards the Portuguese-speaking community, the inability to see patriarchy as non-culturally specific and the fact that Portuguese-speaking women acted out these cultural stereotypes when reacting to domestic violence were all important factors in explaining this discrepancy (Barata et al., Reference Barata, Mcnally, Sales and Steward2005, pp. 139, 140). In order to assess the existence of a similar mechanism operating in the Portuguese community in England, respondents were asked what women should do when experiencing domestic violence, as well as what they thought other Portuguese women did in these situations.

When answering the question of what women should do in situations of domestic violence, respondents agreed that the violence should stop. The course of action deemed appropriate to make it stop was, however, not the same for all. Carolina said that she would not call the police in a situation of domestic violence because the police had nothing to do with family matters and should only be called to deal with ‘crimes’. Carolina was in her sixties and was interviewed while accessing a support service in Norfolk not related to domestic violence. She had moved to England two years before the interview. Her levels of education were low and she had some contact with the local Portuguese community but not with the wider English community. Carolina was not the only respondent to say that the police should only be called to deal with ‘serious’ matters; however, she was the only one to consider domestic violence as a whole as a ‘non-serious’ matter.

Her stance is unique amongst respondents as other women tended instead to see domestic violence either as a continuum of abusive behaviour or as outright unacceptable, and would use the justice system to address it, unreservedly or under certain circumstances. Indeed, all other women would use the legal system if informal attempts to resolve the situation failed, thus confirming that legality is dynamic and, as such, individuals fluctuate between forms of legal consciousness when faced with different circumstances (Ewick and Silbey, Reference Ewick and Silbey1998, p. 50; Fritsvold, Reference Fritsvold2009, p. 805; Olson and Batjer, Reference Olson and Batjer1999, p. 155).

Respondents were then asked what they thought other Portuguese women would do in situations of domestic violence. They were asked to draw from the knowledge of friends or cases they knew in the Portuguese community, if they so wished. Adopting this speculative approach allowed respondents to speak more freely about possible reactions to domestic violence that occurred in the community, including those that they thought might not be deemed socially acceptable. The same approach was used by Young (Reference Young2014) when developing the concept of second-order legal consciousness. Implicit to this question is the possibility that the behaviour that other Portuguese women adopt might be different from that which respondents described as the appropriate one – a concept that they generally had no problem engaging with and indeed led women to become noticeably more relaxed and open to volunteer information. This question therefore worked well in overcoming the problem of social desirability in interviews, where respondents give an answer that they perceive to be what the interviewer is expecting from them, rather than their actual views on the subject.

There was a large consensus amongst respondents that Portuguese women would either endure a violent relationship or hide it as much as possible (a total of twenty out of twenty-four respondents), with five respondents saying that Portuguese women would both endure and actively hide domestic violence. These findings are in line with the results from Barata et al.’s research, where participants also said that they would put an end to a violent relationship if they experienced it themselves, but that other Portuguese women would endure and hide it (Reference Barata, Mcnally, Sales and Steward2005, p. 138). Some respondents added that Portuguese women would endure domestic violence until it became so serious that a third party, such as neighbours or the police, would intervene. Carla, a highly skilled, well-educated mother in her thirties, living in Reading for seven years, illustrated this by saying: ‘They will try to hide it. The same as in Portugal, they will hold on until the situation becomes so bad that it is no longer sustainable or the family has to intervene, for example.’

Carla was drawing from the example of her Portuguese neighbours, whom she said were difficult to help, as they would see her intervention as interference in their private lives. She associated this with Portuguese culture, particularly with a great desire for privacy. As such, it was not culturally expected that one would intervene in these situations, in the same way as it was not expected that women would seek help, unless the situation became unmanageable.

Catarina, in a similar way to Carla, suggested that Portuguese women would most likely hide the abuse. She drew attention to the importance of culture in determining Portuguese women's reactions and stated that this would make them endure and hide a violent relationship, especially if this led to a loss in social or economic status. In line with the findings of Barata et al. (Reference Barata, Mcnally, Sales and Steward2005, p. 149), Catarina attributed women's behaviour to ‘Latin culture’, which, according to her, differentiated Portuguese women's behaviour from that of women from other cultures. Catarina thought that Latin culture led Portuguese women to value privacy and protect their family lives from outside intervention, which in turn encouraged them to endure and hide domestic violence.

Similarly, Alexandra, a businesswoman with twelve years of formal education, who also lived in London but had been in this country for considerably longer (twenty-six years) and, being in her forties, was older than both Carla and Catarina, described the Portuguese community as: ‘The community is more traditional and less free than the English. Much more conditioned by family, community and what others think of us than the English.’

Other respondents attributed hiding violence to pressure from the community to accept it as part of a relationship (as Beatriz's story reveals), but also to feelings of guilt and to finding excuses for the violence suffered (as Carla and Helena's discourses reveal).

The impact of Portuguese culture on women's reactions to domestic violence is, however, not straightforward. Although Elsa concurred with the respondents above and Barata et al.’s findings that there was something specific to Portuguese culture that was related to a heightened patriarchal attitude, which impacted on individual attitudes towards domestic violence, Elsa also highlighted the permeability of Portuguese immigrants to the receiving country's culture and customs. Elsa developed this point by stating that:

Elsa was not alone in drawing attention to a change in behaviour in immigrants when arriving in England. Diana, also a divorced mother, who had moved to England three years before the interview, had twelve years of formal education and worked as a cleaner, also described situations in which Portuguese men and women changed their behaviour in a way that is more reflective of mainstream English culture, in what she saw as both a positive and a negative influence of English culture on Portuguese immigrants. These included not paying as much attention to children's well-being as they would in Portugal and going out at night much more often than they would in Portugal. It could be argued that Diana's more recent move to England, and therefore lesser exposure to a different culture, led her to find changes of behaviour in other Portuguese immigrants more striking than they did for Elsa. The impact of acculturation on perceptions of family life is discussed in more detail in the next section of this paper.