Negotiating the borderlands of agency: A narrative inquiry into voice and resilience among IPV survivors in Saskatchewan.

BackgroundIntimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive public health and human rights issue, yet survivors' agency is often framed narrowly within linear victim-survivor narratives that overlook how intersecting identities and structural constraints shape their options and responses.

Objectives

To explore how women who have experienced IPV negotiate agency and reclaim voice within intersecting social, cultural, and personal borderlands of experience.DesignQualitative narrative inquiry informed by intersectionality and borderlands theory.MethodsTwo women living in a Canadian city, who self -identified as having experienced IPV and had been out of violent relationships for at least three years, participated in biweekly narrative conversations from August to December 2023. Analysis attended to intersecting social locations (including Indigeneity, sexuality, socioeconomic position, and professional roles) and to liminal in-between moments of safety and danger, love and abuse, dependence and resistance, silence and voice.ResultsAnalysis identified three interrelated movements in women's agency over time, regressive transformation, hibernation, and progressive transformation, operating simultaneously rather than sequentially. For example, Aila's parenting decisions revealed agency constrained by child welfare surveillance yet oriented toward intergenerational change, while Artemisia rediscovered her pre-abuse self through old journals and art, illustrating hibernated agency gradually re-emerging.ConclusionThis study challenges linear victim-survivor models of recovery by conceptualizing agency as a dynamic, relational process shaped by intersectional locations and borderland spaces.