When the State is Complicit in Gender-Based Violence against Women: Exploring Experiences of Housing Violence among Punjabi Women International Students in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

This article situates housing violence experienced by Punjabi women international students (ISs) in Toronto, Canada, as an aspect of structural gender-based violence (GBV) in which the Canadian state is complicit through its policies, laws, actions, and inactions. This works in tandem with patriarchal cultural practices by local Indian/Punjabi homeowners who rent out rooms to ISs and/or employ them. More specifically, state policies and practices allow the diasporic patriarchal cultural practices to be reproduced in ordinary interactions between ISs and homeowners. Both the state and patriarchal diasporic cultural practices contribute to structural violence against women ISs. The notion of neo-racism is utilized to understand the hostility faced by Punjabi ISs within the Punjabi diaspora. The authors draw on intersectional, anti-racist, feminist migration studies and interviews with 12 Punjabi women ISs and key informants conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]