About

RETRANCHE la violence is the short title of the research project ''Sortir des violences intimes, familiales et structurelles à l'ère post-pandémique : des pratiques et politiques ancrées dans l'expérience des personnes concernées''. This project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) 2023-2030.

Intimate, family and structural violence are major social problems, whose scale, consequences and human and social costs have been widely documented. Focusing on the cross-cutting theme of exit factors from violence, the team adopted the short title “RETRANCHE la violence”, reflecting the expected impacts of the project: REnforcing the factors that help victims and their loved ones exit violence; TRansforming social responses; ANticipating more effectively to prevent the reproduction of violence or revictimization; and CHanging violent behavior by Encouraging the best factors for change.

Composition

L’équipe mobilise un vaste groupe d'experts, soit 27 partenaires des milieux d'intervention (22) ou (para)gouvernementaux (5), auxquels s'associent 25 chercheuses et chercheurs, ainsi que 6 universités partenaires (U.Moncton, UdeM, UQAC, UQAM, UQTR et UQO), outre l'Université Laval. Cette équipe assure la couverture entière des expertises requises au projet, tant pour les types de violences examinés que les sphères d'action dans le domaine des VIFS au Québec.

Composition

The team mobilizes a vast group of experts: 27 partners from the intervention (22) or (para)government (5) sectors, along with 25 researchers and 6 partner universities (U.Moncton, UdeM, UQAC, UQAM, UQTR and UQO), in addition to Université Laval. This team ensures full coverage of the expertise required for the project, in terms of both the types of violence examined and the spheres of action in the field of Intimate, family and structural violence in Quebec.

Research objectives

The general objective is to describe the exit trajectories of intimate, family and structural violence, in order to identify the key factors favoring exit from violence and mobilize them in practices and public policies to improve services and their effectiveness in a post-pandemic context.

The specific objectives are to:

1) Reconstruct, from a life-course perspective, the path taken by people who consider themselves to have left a violent situation;

2) Describe and compare the factors favouring exit from violence according to: a) the type of violence, b) the person's position as a direct or indirect victim and/or perpetrator of violence, c) life stage; d) certain contexts of vulnerability (immigrants, people with disabilities, LGBTQ2+ or from ethnocultural or aboriginal communities);

3) Identify the characteristics of preventive, psychosocial or legal interventions, whether formal or informal, that encourage: a) the initiation of a process to escape violence, b) perseverance in the process;

4) Examine some of Quebec's major social policies in the light of the main factors identified as helping women to escape violence, with a view to submitting recommendations to political partners; 

5) Produce and widely distribute practical tools enabling the concrete mobilization of the recommendations emerging from the partnership;

6) Strengthen collaboration and partnership between the various experts of intimate, family and structural violence in Quebec.