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Researching South Asian women who have departed social norms and married outside the social conventions of their culture widens our understanding and knowledge on the topic of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). This paper will investigate how the women participating in the research navigated the socialisation of arranged marriage and expectations on them as women, and how this influenced their decisions to remain in violent and abusive relationships. Often without family support or the “safety net” of an arranged marriage, the women stayed in abusive relationships longer than they would have done if the marriage had been arranged. The findings show that the women’s experiences of leaving the relationship are mediated by the context of forming an intimate relationship. A qualitative research approach using Black Feminist Standpoint Epistemology employed thematic analysis to give voice to South Asian women’s experiences and insights into their experiences of, and responses to, leaving abusive relationships. The analysis shows that women’s agentic act of choosing a partner became the very barrier to leaving the relationship if it turned violent and abusive.

The rise of social media use has been phenomenal, particularly during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, Facebook has also seen its share of users rise at a meteoric rate. At the same time, the academy is producing a growing body of literature concerning the use of online methods for primary data collection. Yet, despite the increase in the use of the internet as a research tool, very little still exists on the use of social media to recruit research participants, particularly those deemed “socially invisible”. This paper addresses this gap. Another research project explored the experiences of South Asian women who had departed the social norms of arranged marriage to form an intimate relationship with a partner of choice and who then experienced forms of gender-related violence (GRV). The project encountered difficulties in recruiting participants from this marginalised and often invisible group in UK society, who are often too frightened or ashamed to come forward. This study demonstrates how to use Facebook ethically and methodologically, highlighting some of the methods used to overcome the challenges that were presented. The research was undertaken before the COVID-19 pandemic (which prompted a widespread use of social media in social science research). We argue that, despite the ethical challenges, the advantages of using social media to recruit participants when researching a highly sensitive topic such as GRV with ‘invisible groups’ was highly beneficial. We therefore suggest that social media should be an integral part of the research recruitment process, alongside non-digital methods, so that other ‘invisible groups’ are not created comprising those who cannot access technology. We share the lessons learned for the benefit of researchers using a similar approach today when recruiting research participants from invisible and marginalised groups. The authors caveat their recommendation of using social media with suggesting that those who do not have high levels of experience of data collection with such cohorts instead consider working with gatekeepers to facilitate the recruitment.

Me, Myself as a Black Feminist My politics are rooted in anti-racism and black feminism. Pragna Patel articulates and emphasises the origins and use of the political term 'black' to represent the solidarity amongst Asian and African Caribbean people and other minorities in resisting race and gender oppression in the UK (Patel, 1997). Heidi Mirza points out that, as British black women 'we as racialized, gendered subjects can collectively mark our presence in a world where black women have for so long been denied the privilege to speak' (Mirza, 1997). I am considered to be a member of the Indian Sikh diaspora within Britain, the country of my birth. I have never identified solely as a Sikh woman as I have never analysed my oppression entirely on my faith. Although I identify a Sikh heritage in conjunction with my ethnicity and diasporic experiences of my family, my perceptions of my experiences of prejudice and discrimination have always been as a result of any one or a combination of my race, class, age and gender. I therefore identify as a black feminist. Within this article I refer to Sikh, Black and Asian as appropriate to give meaning and context to the social locations and not as mere interchangeable labels where meaning is irrelevant or 'ethnic neutral'.