Communicative planning for the marginalized: The case of abused Asian Indian immigrant women.

Abstract

The communicative planning paradigm holds that communication patterns vary based on membership within social groups. This research refines the paradigm by highlighting the issue of communicative differences arising from membership not just in different social groups, such as peer or professional groups, but those arising from ethnicity. Specifically, this project highlights how constituents' culturally specific use and access patterns with regard to information and services can be used to introduce the ethno-cultural dimension into communicative planning. Communication theories of persuasion, information dissemination, dependency and uses and gratifications are used to document and analyze abused immigrant Indian women's access and use patterns. Data were collected from 15 in-depth interviews and 10 survey questionnaires with survivors of domestic violence, using snowball and purposive sampling. These were followed by telephone interviews with domestic violence agencies, planners, and religious leaders. The 25 survivors had a mean age of 36 and an average annual income of $55,000. They resided in Michigan, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Pennsylvania, or New York. Findings indicate that survivors' ethno-culturally specific use of and access to information and services shapes their help-seeking behavior. Socio-cultural understandings and beliefs impact whether or not and how survivors communicate with service providers. For instance, such factors as culturally-grounded beliefs about government agencies, including the police, and about asking for assistance (indirectly) in ways that do not contradict stereotypes of being a 'good' wife impede survivors' access to certain services. Survivors' issue salience, framing preference, dependence and gratifications from different information sources and services are identified to suggest specific intervention strategies. These include providing messages through the ethnic community, and mass media and more effective dissemination by (South Asian) women's organizations. Suggestions for improving the cultural competence of planning interventions are also made. These include realigning service delivery wherein ethnic agencies provide emotional support and mainstream services focus on providing access to entitlements. The research presents a communicative planning framework outlining how planners can become engaged, as learners and/or communicators, in both understanding and addressing the socio-cultural contexts of marginalized constituents such that ethno-culturally competent interventions can be identified, designed and implemented.