In her doctoral dissertation, MSc Nataša Mojškerc explored domestic violence shelter work and its effects on racially minoritised victims’ access to safety and empowerment. The study reveals some previously undocumented accounts of everyday shelter practices from the perspective of shelter workers. This research is the first autoethnographic action research of shelter work in Finland, and one of few internationally.
“Working full-time as a shelter counsellor before and during data collection allowed me to produce unique knowledge on grassroots-level racialisation processes and shelter working conditions,” says Nataša Mojškerc, who collected the research data during eight months of fieldwork in a domestic violence shelter.
Autoethnography proved to be efficient in researching shelter work because it allowed her to access what otherwise often remains hidden.
“The personal insider experience of the shelter worker, the experience of inevitable pressures in the field and the overwhelming urgencies and demands that impose themselves on workers and victims,” Mojškerc says.
The findings suggest that there is a space for improving shelter work with racially minoritised survivors by raising awareness of the intersectional dynamics of race and gender and their effects on shelter work. However, the problem of reproduction of inequalities cannot be fully addresses without improving the working conditions at shelters, which have a profound effect on workers’ agency and consequently on their work with victims. As the production of harmful racial hierarchies occurs through habitual responses, it is crucial to provide working conditions that would enable professional reflection by intersectional insight. Sufficient staffing and the provision of essential services, as well as guided intersectional interventions in which race and gender are critically addressed, would contribute to the development of non-oppressive perceptions and practices in shelter work.
Public defence on Monday 19 June
The doctoral dissertation of MSc Nataša Mojškerc in the field of Gender Studies titled Racialisation in Domestic Violence Shelter Work – Autoethnographic Action Research will be publicly examined at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Tampere University in the Väinö Linna auditorium of the Linna building, Kalevantie 5, Tampere, at 12 o’clock on Monday 19 June 2023. The Opponent will be Professor Ann Phoenix, University College London, United Kingdom. The Custos will be Professor Päivi Honkatukia, Tampere University, Finland.
The doctoral dissertation is available online.
The public defence can be followed via remote connection.
Photograph: Roman Fonda