Breaking Economic Dependence Among Asian Immigrant Women In North America: A Scoping Review

Background:

Economic dependence is a critical barrier to safety for Asian immigrant women experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV), yet the economic and financial dimensions shaping this dependence remain understudied. Although economic and financial abuse is increasingly recognized as a form of IPV, the specific dynamics of economic dependence among Asian immigrant women in North America require scholarly attention. Asian immigrant women face heightened vulnerability to economic abuse due to gendered migration pathways, dependent visa restrictions, racialized labor markets, and cultural norms emphasizing family cohesion and silence around violence, which shape survivors’ experiences and access to help. Guided by a patriarchal bargaining framework, we synthesize empirical evidence through a scoping review of Asian immigrant women’s experiences of economic and financial abuse and related financial help‑seeking. This framework is well-suited for capturing women’s strategic agency as it operates within gendered, relational, and institutional constraints.

Methods:

Empirical studies published between 2003 and 2024 were identified through searches of major interdisciplinary databases, including Academic Search Complete, CINAHL, Race Relations Abstracts, Scopus, Social Service Abstracts, and Gender Watch, using controlled vocabulary and keywords related to IPV, immigration, and help‑seeking. Two reviewers independently screened titles and abstracts, followed by full‑text review, with disagreements resolved through discussion. After de‑duplication, 3,610 records were screened, and a total of 1,049 articles underwent full‑text assessment with a high inter‑rater agreement (95.2%). The final sample included 55 studies, comprising 43 U.S.‑based and 12 Canadian studies.

Results:

Findings indicate that economic and financial abuse is widespread among Asian immigrant women experiencing IPV, with quantitative studies reporting prevalence from approximately 29% to over 78%. Qualitative evidence shows that economic abuse is experienced as a normalized condition embedded within marriage, migration, and family systems rather than as episodic harm. Women described restrictions on financial autonomy, including control over wages, allowance-based arrangements, unpaid labor in family businesses, employment sabotage, and debt manipulation. These were often reinforced by in-laws, transnational financial obligations, and systematic barriers such as work restrictions. Help seeking emerged as nonlinear and negotiated, constrained by economic dependence, fear of deportation, cultural stigma, and institutional barriers such as welfare eligibility rules tied to spousal income. Access to housing, income support, immigration protections, and culturally and linguistically responsive advocacy served as turning points that enabled renegotiation or exit from abusive relationships.

Implications:

This review advances social work scholarship by reframing economic abuse as a central mechanism of IPV shaped by structural inequality rather than as an individual or cultural deficit. By applying patriarchal bargaining, the findings clarify how survivors exercise constrained agency within unequal systems and identify material and institutional access as key mechanisms of change. Implications for social work research, policy, and practice include integrating economic justice into IPV interventions, reforming immigration and welfare policies that reproduce dependence, and expanding culturally responsive services that enhance survivors’ economic autonomy. This review demonstrates how equity‑centered social work research can illuminate the structural roots of economic abuse and identify concrete levers, including housing, income, and immigration protections, through which survivor wellbeing and democratic inclusion may be advanced.