Understanding systemic-digital challenges in using digital technology to address intimate partner and domestic violence among migrant populations: A scoping review

This scoping review explores the use of digital technology to address intimate partner or domestic violence (IPV/DV) among diverse migrant populations, including forcibly displaced individuals. Informed by a feminist intersectional and critical digital equity lens, we examine the systemic challenges empirically reported to affect migrants’ use of digital tools in responding to IPV/DV, as well as the strategies used by migrants and service providers to address these challenges. Twenty studies were analyzed. The findings show a range of digital tools used for outreach, public education, services, and platforms for community support and activism. The studies collectively illustrate how barriers, such as digital IPV/DV, financial insecurity, fear due to precarious immigration status, linguistic marginalization, and limited digital literacy, intersectionally compromise migrants’ access to or use of digital tools to address IPV/DV. While a few studies reported on individual strategies for migrants to navigate digital IPV/DV and digital safety concerns, and for service providers to ensure privacy, there remains a notable lack of research addressing intersecting challenges faced by diverse migrant survivors. Future research that intentionally addresses intersecting systemic factors impacting the use of digital tools for IPV/DV among diverse groups of migrant survivors is needed.