The phenomenology of proximity violence: relational strategies and modalities used against vulnerable migrants

The chapter describes an umbrella concept, proximity violence, of which violence against women is only one manifestation. Of this phenomenon , the author endeavoured to highlight the patterns that make defining its material contours and specifying the tesserae that compose it difficult. In fact cultural factors, contingent situations became entangled with concrete elements of pain and abuse of the victims. It was, therefore, a matter of betting, on the possibility of representing a phenomenon by devising a bridge between theories of gender-based violence and the “thing” – the violence of those who are not strangers and in whom, for different reasons, we trust. Filling this vacuum employing the theoreti-cal ability to identify generative assonances and mutual filiations maked it to evaluate the phenomenon in terms of social policies and governance. The purpose of author was to pinpoint the boundaries existing between gender–based and proximity violence related to the sphere of migration, by making a tenacious attempt at describing the counterpoints of violence. The first of these regards gender and violence. The second locates both of these within a proximal relationship