Preventing Violence in the Raced Margins: Alternate Rationalities, Possibilities, and Imaginaries

Abstract

The organizational communication discipline has been criticized for not centering the voices of ethnic minority communities. This can be witnessed in the prevention of violence, where migrant communities are more vulnerable to the effects of violence but are underserved by Western models of violence prevention. Grounded in the culture-centered approach, the present study—drawing from interviews with 67 new migrants and 31 service providers—explores how organizations can assist in preventing violence among new migrant communities. The findings reveal how communication inequality reduces agency and can create an environment conducive to violence and how the current individualized model of service delivery does not attend to the cultural norms and needs of community members. Engaging with new migrant communities and addressing violence involves creating communicative avenues of dialogue and leveraging community agency in codeveloping infrastructures for transformation.