Portuguese culture and legal consciousness: a discussion of immigrant women’s perceptions of and reactions to domestic violence

This article uses legal consciousness to discuss the influence of Portuguese culture on women’s perceptions of and reactions to domestic violence. It is based on an in-depth small-scale study of Portuguese women living in England, and proposes that culture is central in shaping their behaviour, regardless of whether they experienced violence or not. The cultural characteristics that influence women the most are analysed here under the themes of ‘familism’, ‘shame and community pressure’, and ‘acculturation’. These do not operate all at the same level and their influence can change according to structural and individual circumstances. As such, the article suggests that immigrant women’s perceptions of and reactions to domestic violence can only be fully understood by articulating national culture with other structural and individual variables; this will enable a multi-layered and situated understanding of women’s legality that avoids a simplistic attribution of their behaviour to national or ethnic provenance.