After the Violence? Everyday Life and Family Relationships among Children and their Mothers at a Women's Refuge

This dissertation investigates how everyday life and family relationships are experienced and practiced by children and their mothers at a women’s refuge.

The question is addressed through an ethnographic approach consisting of extended fieldwork at a refuge in Denmark and interviews with children, exploring experiences and practices over time. Empirically, the dissertation adds to the small body of qualitative research on families at refuges and children especially. It shows that a refuge stay cannot be limited to a focus on the refuge itself, as experiences and practices are entangled with other events both inside and outside the refuge, such as navigating the new institutional setting and processes of family change.

The dissertation has also taken up the call to bring children’s actions to centre stage in research on violence in the intimate sphere. It illustrates how children navigate and negotiate everyday life and (contested) family relationships, and how this happens in interplay with adults at the refuge.

Finally, the dissertation contributes to the three theoretical frameworks that have inspired the analyses: the sociology of childhood, the sociology of families and the lived experience of violence. It does so by showing how children are both social and moral actors, the importance of situating family practices and understanding violence as context.