Conducive Contexts and Vulnerabilities to Domestic Abuse

Dear Colleagues,

Domestic abuse, which includes controlling, coercive, threatening, degrading, and violent behaviors, is a worldwide public health and human rights issue. As an umbrella term, domestic abuse also captures more recently recognized forms, including coercive control, gaslighting, and technology-facilitated violence as well as abuse. While domestic abuse pertains to diverse groups, globally incidents overwhelmingly represent violence against women, which is rooted in socially ascribed unequal gender relations. At the global and national levels, different groups of women face restricted recourse to protection and justice on account of intersectional inequalities and policies restricting access to welfare and rights. Most recently, the “shadow pandemic” sparked by the onset of the COVID-19 public health crisis led to a rise in domestic abuse as perpetrators took advantage of the state restrictions limiting social interactions, access to services, help-seeking opportunities, and the normal workings of the justice system. These state-induced vulnerabilities have been further compounded by overlapping crises in different national contexts, including conflict, climate change, the overhaul of immigration systems, and the cost of living crisis.

This Special Issue invites authors from diverse disciplinary backgrounds (such as social policy, sociology, psychology, criminology, and geography) to examine new vulnerabilities to domestic abuse. We are interested in manuscripts that interrogate dynamic vulnerabilities beyond the individual, illuminating new conducive contexts (Kelly, 2005) to domestic abuse and sexual harassment. We welcome manuscripts that theorize vulnerability and resistance, and which offer new empirical perspectives on the societal, institutional, and legislative failings that perpetuate domestic abuse in its variety of forms. We also welcome manuscripts that present novel methodological approaches, producing new directions for domestic abuse research in evolving societal contexts.

We encourage submissions based on rigorous, high-quality quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods research, including case studies and ethnographies. Manuscripts addressing intersectional vulnerabilities and the experiences of minoritized and marginalised groups are particularly welcomed.

Please submit your proposals and any questions to Special Issue editors by 1 July 2024. Notification of acceptance will be provided by 15 July 2024. Final papers are due on 31 December 2024 for peer review.

Dr. Emmaleena Kakela
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Social Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• domestic abuse
• gender-based violence
• intersectionality
• conducive context
• COVID-19 pandemic