Structural Violence

Abstract

The passage from Roberts cited above encompasses within an ‘expanded definition of violence’ a broad range of harmful actions which may be either intended or unintended, and can be perpetrated through either direct or indirect means, by individuals or institutions. Structural violence is characterized primarily by the absence of visible actors and is associated with forms of violence that are largely unintended. In this chapter we identify many aspects of border control as examples of structural violence. It might be objected immediately that the harms inflicted by borders are far from unintended. Deterrence-based policies rely on the threat of harm to deter others; and while inflicting harm on those who are not deterred is evidence of policy failure, some measure of pain is fully anticipated in return for the expected compliance of the majority.

Galtung was one of the earliest to publish in the Western academic press an expanded definition of violence which identified and distinguished between direct and indirect actions, and also identified ‘invisible’ actors such as institutions, systems and structures rather than simply human beings acting directly. Violence, then, could be committed directly and deliberately, but could also be conducted indirectly and largely unintentionally, by structures populated by humans … Violence was to be understood as a force that unintentionally prevented humans from realizing their actual potential. (Roberts, 2008, p. 19)

My hope to make life in your country really is finished. And when I leave here I don’t know what will happen to me in Iran but I know death in my land is much better than dying in this detention or this hell. I lost everything. I lost my life, my love, my family and now I think maybe if I stay here I lose my mind.

(Letter from Australian asylum seeker reproduced in Burnside, 2003, p. 171)