How do marginalized women on the open drug scene in  Copenhagen experience a lack of social justice in their Everyday life?

Beskrivelse

This presentation shows how marginalized women who use drugs experience their everyday lives on the open drug scene in Copenhagen. The open drug scene where 600-800 drug users come daily to buy, sell, use drugs, and socialize can be conceptualized as a risk environment (Rhodes 2002). The marginalized women who participate in this risk environment are particularly vulnerable to violence and sexual assaults. And these risks are a daily concern for the women. Moreover, the women experience a lack of social justice due to absent police protection, discourses of victim-blaming, and structural barriers for reporting crimes committed against
them. The presentation is based on qualitative interviews with 22 actively drug-using women. The interviews were part of a larger research project about the everyday life of marginalized people who used drugs in Copenhagen. The presentation focuses on women's own stories. These stories illustrate a constant awareness of their safety and the risk management strategies they use to avoid violence and sexual assault. We describe how structural and organizational factors affect the vulnerability of women and their risk management strategies. The presentation concludes that women have difficulties getting help when they have been the victim of a crime, and they experience that reporting perpetrators is futile. Instead, they know that reporting other drug users for sexual assault may harm their safety and status in the drug environment. Furthermore, due to the risks of violence and sexual assaults the women frequently avoid the health care and social services that almost exclusively are gender-neutral.

Periode	19 jun. 2024
Begivenhedstitel	FORSA/NASSW 2024: Social Work as Emancipatory Practice Creating Pathways towards Social Justice.
Begivenhedstype	Konference
Placering	Göteborg, SverigeVis på kort
Grad af anerkendelse	International