1,324 research outputs found

    Process of Fingerprint Authentication using Cancelable Biohashed Template

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    Template protection using cancelable biometrics prevents data loss and hacking stored templates, by providing considerable privacy and security. Hashing and salting techniques are used to build resilient systems. Salted password method is employed to protect passwords against different types of attacks namely brute-force attack, dictionary attack, rainbow table attacks. Salting claims that random data can be added to input of hash function to ensure unique output. Hashing salts are speed bumps in an attacker’s road to breach user’s data. Research proposes a contemporary two factor authenticator called Biohashing. Biohashing procedure is implemented by recapitulated inner product over a pseudo random number generator key, as well as fingerprint features that are a network of minutiae. Cancelable template authentication used in fingerprint-based sales counter accelerates payment process. Fingerhash is code produced after applying biohashing on fingerprint. Fingerhash is a binary string procured by choosing individual bit of sign depending on a preset threshold. Experiment is carried using benchmark FVC 2002 DB1 dataset. Authentication accuracy is found to be nearly 97\%. Results compared with state-of art approaches finds promising

    Mobile Device Background Sensors: Authentication vs Privacy

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    The increasing number of mobile devices in recent years has caused the collection of a large amount of personal information that needs to be protected. To this aim, behavioural biometrics has become very popular. But, what is the discriminative power of mobile behavioural biometrics in real scenarios? With the success of Deep Learning (DL), architectures based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), have shown improvements compared to traditional machine learning methods. However, these DL architectures still have limitations that need to be addressed. In response, new DL architectures like Transformers have emerged. The question is, can these new Transformers outperform previous biometric approaches? To answers to these questions, this thesis focuses on behavioural biometric authentication with data acquired from mobile background sensors (i.e., accelerometers and gyroscopes). In addition, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first thesis that explores and proposes novel behavioural biometric systems based on Transformers, achieving state-of-the-art results in gait, swipe, and keystroke biometrics. The adoption of biometrics requires a balance between security and privacy. Biometric modalities provide a unique and inherently personal approach for authentication. Nevertheless, biometrics also give rise to concerns regarding the invasion of personal privacy. According to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced by the European Union, personal data such as biometric data are sensitive and must be used and protected properly. This thesis analyses the impact of sensitive data in the performance of biometric systems and proposes a novel unsupervised privacy-preserving approach. The research conducted in this thesis makes significant contributions, including: i) a comprehensive review of the privacy vulnerabilities of mobile device sensors, covering metrics for quantifying privacy in relation to sensitive data, along with protection methods for safeguarding sensitive information; ii) an analysis of authentication systems for behavioural biometrics on mobile devices (i.e., gait, swipe, and keystroke), being the first thesis that explores the potential of Transformers for behavioural biometrics, introducing novel architectures that outperform the state of the art; and iii) a novel privacy-preserving approach for mobile biometric gait verification using unsupervised learning techniques, ensuring the protection of sensitive data during the verification process

    More-than-words: Reconceptualising Two-year-old Children’s Onto-epistemologies Through Improvisation and the Temporal Arts

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    This thesis project takes place at a time of increasing focus upon two-year-old children and the words they speak. On the one hand there is a mounting pressure, driven by the school readiness agenda, to make children talk as early as possible. On the other hand, there is an increased interest in understanding children’s communication in order to create effective pedagogies. More-than-words (MTW) examines an improvised art-education practice that combines heterogenous elements: sound, movement and materials (such as silk, string, light) to create encounters for young children, educators and practitioners from diverse backgrounds. During these encounters, adults adopt a practice of stripping back their words in order to tune into the polyphonic ways that children are becoming-with the world. For this research-creation, two MTW sessions for two-year-old children and their carers took place in a specially created installation. These sessions were filmed on a 360˚ camera, nursery school iPad and on a specially made child-friendly Toddler-cam (Tcam) that rolled around in the installation-event with the children. Through using the frameless technology of 360˚ film, I hoped to make tangible the relation and movement of an emergent and improvised happening and the way in which young children operate fluidly through multiple modes. Travelling with posthuman, Deleuzio-Guattarian and feminist vital material philosophy, I wander and wonder speculatively through practice, memory, and film data as a bag lady, a Haraway-ian writer/artist/researcher-creator who resists the story of the wordless child as lacking and tragic; the story that positions the word as heroic. Instead, through returning to the uncertainty of improvisation, I attempt to tune into the savage, untamed and wild music of young children’s animistic onto-epistemologies

    RADIC Voice Authentication: Replay Attack Detection using Image Classification for Voice Authentication Systems

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    Systems like Google Home, Alexa, and Siri that use voice-based authentication to verify their users’ identities are vulnerable to voice replay attacks. These attacks gain unauthorized access to voice-controlled devices or systems by replaying recordings of passphrases and voice commands. This shows the necessity to develop more resilient voice-based authentication systems that can detect voice replay attacks. This thesis implements a system that detects voice-based replay attacks by using deep learning and image classification of voice spectrograms to differentiate between live and recorded speech. Tests of this system indicate that the approach represents a promising direction for detecting voice-based replay attacks

    Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion. Collected Works, Volume 5

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    This fifth volume on Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion collects theoretical and applied contributions of researchers working in different fields of applications and in mathematics, and is available in open-access. The collected contributions of this volume have either been published or presented after disseminating the fourth volume in 2015 in international conferences, seminars, workshops and journals, or they are new. The contributions of each part of this volume are chronologically ordered. First Part of this book presents some theoretical advances on DSmT, dealing mainly with modified Proportional Conflict Redistribution Rules (PCR) of combination with degree of intersection, coarsening techniques, interval calculus for PCR thanks to set inversion via interval analysis (SIVIA), rough set classifiers, canonical decomposition of dichotomous belief functions, fast PCR fusion, fast inter-criteria analysis with PCR, and improved PCR5 and PCR6 rules preserving the (quasi-)neutrality of (quasi-)vacuous belief assignment in the fusion of sources of evidence with their Matlab codes. Because more applications of DSmT have emerged in the past years since the apparition of the fourth book of DSmT in 2015, the second part of this volume is about selected applications of DSmT mainly in building change detection, object recognition, quality of data association in tracking, perception in robotics, risk assessment for torrent protection and multi-criteria decision-making, multi-modal image fusion, coarsening techniques, recommender system, levee characterization and assessment, human heading perception, trust assessment, robotics, biometrics, failure detection, GPS systems, inter-criteria analysis, group decision, human activity recognition, storm prediction, data association for autonomous vehicles, identification of maritime vessels, fusion of support vector machines (SVM), Silx-Furtif RUST code library for information fusion including PCR rules, and network for ship classification. Finally, the third part presents interesting contributions related to belief functions in general published or presented along the years since 2015. These contributions are related with decision-making under uncertainty, belief approximations, probability transformations, new distances between belief functions, non-classical multi-criteria decision-making problems with belief functions, generalization of Bayes theorem, image processing, data association, entropy and cross-entropy measures, fuzzy evidence numbers, negator of belief mass, human activity recognition, information fusion for breast cancer therapy, imbalanced data classification, and hybrid techniques mixing deep learning with belief functions as well

    To have done with theory? Baudrillard, or the literal confrontation with reality

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    Baudrillard, Eluding the temptation to reinterpret Jean Baudrillard once more, this work started from the ambition to consider his thought in its irreducibility, that is, in a radically literal way. Literalness is a recurring though overlooked term in Baudrillard’s oeuvre, and it is drawn from the direct concatenation of words in poetry or puns and other language games. It does not indicate a realist positivism but a principle that considers the metamorphoses and mutual alteration of things in their singularity without reducing them to a general equivalent (i.e. the meaning of words in a poem, which destroys its appearances). Reapplying the idea to Baudrillard and finding other singular routes through his “passwords” is a way to short-circuit its reductio ad realitatem and reaffirm its challenge to the hegemony of global integration. Even in the literature dedicated to it, this exercise has been rarer than the ‘hermeneutical’ one, where Baudrillard’s oeuvre was taken as a discourse to be interpreted and explained (finding an equivalent for its singularity). In plain polemic with any ideal of conformity between theory and reality (from which our present conformisms arguably derive, too), Baudrillard conceived thought not as something to be verified but as a series of hypotheses to be repeatedly radicalised – he often described it as a “spiral”, a form which challenges the codification of things, including its own. Coherent with this, the thesis does not consider Baudrillard’s work either a reflection or a prediction of reality but, instead, an out-and-out act, a precious singular object which, interrogated, ‘thinks’ us and our current events ‘back’. In the second part, Baudrillard’s hypotheses are taken further and measured in their capacity to challenge the reality of current events and phenomena. The thesis confronts the ‘hypocritical’ position of critical thinking, which accepts the present principle of reality. It questions the interminability of our condition, where death seems thinkable only as a senseless interruption of the apparatus. It also confronts the solidarity between orthodox and alternative realities of the COVID pandemic and the Ukrainian invasion, searching for what is irreducible to the perfect osmosis of “virtual and factual”. Drawing equally from the convulsions of globalisation and the psychopathologies of academics, from DeLillo’s fiction and Baudrillard’s lesser-studied influences, this study evaluates the irreversibility of our system against the increasingly silent challenges of radical thought. It looks for what an increasingly pessimistic late Baudrillard called ‘rogue singularities’: forms which, often outside the conventional realms one would expect to find them, constitute potential sources of the fragility of global power. ‘To have done with theory’ does not mean abandoning radical thought and, together with it, the singularity of humanity. It means, as the thesis concludes, the courage to leave conventional ideas of theory and listen to less audible voices which, at the heart of this “enormous conspiracy”, whisper — as a mysterious lady in Mariupol did to Putin — “It’s all not true! It’s all for show!”

    Tiny Machine Learning Environment: Enabling Intelligence on Constrained Devices

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    Running machine learning algorithms (ML) on constrained devices at the extreme edge of the network is problematic due to the computational overhead of ML algorithms, available resources on the embedded platform, and application budget (i.e., real-time requirements, power constraints, etc.). This required the development of specific solutions and development tools for what is now referred to as TinyML. In this dissertation, we focus on improving the deployment and performance of TinyML applications, taking into consideration the aforementioned challenges, especially memory requirements. This dissertation contributed to the construction of the Edge Learning Machine environment (ELM), a platform-independent open-source framework that provides three main TinyML services, namely shallow ML, self-supervised ML, and binary deep learning on constrained devices. In this context, this work includes the following steps, which are reflected in the thesis structure. First, we present the performance analysis of state-of-the-art shallow ML algorithms including dense neural networks, implemented on mainstream microcontrollers. The comprehensive analysis in terms of algorithms, hardware platforms, datasets, preprocessing techniques, and configurations shows similar performance results compared to a desktop machine and highlights the impact of these factors on overall performance. Second, despite the assumption that TinyML only permits models inference provided by the scarcity of resources, we have gone a step further and enabled self-supervised on-device training on microcontrollers and tiny IoT devices by developing the Autonomous Edge Pipeline (AEP) system. AEP achieves comparable accuracy compared to the typical TinyML paradigm, i.e., models trained on resource-abundant devices and then deployed on microcontrollers. Next, we present the development of a memory allocation strategy for convolutional neural networks (CNNs) layers, that optimizes memory requirements. This approach reduces the memory footprint without affecting accuracy nor latency. Moreover, e-skin systems share the main requirements of the TinyML fields: enabling intelligence with low memory, low power consumption, and low latency. Therefore, we designed an efficient Tiny CNN architecture for e-skin applications. The architecture leverages the memory allocation strategy presented earlier and provides better performance than existing solutions. A major contribution of the thesis is given by CBin-NN, a library of functions for implementing extremely efficient binary neural networks on constrained devices. The library outperforms state of the art NN deployment solutions by drastically reducing memory footprint and inference latency. All the solutions proposed in this thesis have been implemented on representative devices and tested in relevant applications, of which results are reported and discussed. The ELM framework is open source, and this work is clearly becoming a useful, versatile toolkit for the IoT and TinyML research and development community

    Seamless Multimodal Biometrics for Continuous Personalised Wellbeing Monitoring

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    Artificially intelligent perception is increasingly present in the lives of every one of us. Vehicles are no exception, (...) In the near future, pattern recognition will have an even stronger role in vehicles, as self-driving cars will require automated ways to understand what is happening around (and within) them and act accordingly. (...) This doctoral work focused on advancing in-vehicle sensing through the research of novel computer vision and pattern recognition methodologies for both biometrics and wellbeing monitoring. The main focus has been on electrocardiogram (ECG) biometrics, a trait well-known for its potential for seamless driver monitoring. Major efforts were devoted to achieving improved performance in identification and identity verification in off-the-person scenarios, well-known for increased noise and variability. Here, end-to-end deep learning ECG biometric solutions were proposed and important topics were addressed such as cross-database and long-term performance, waveform relevance through explainability, and interlead conversion. Face biometrics, a natural complement to the ECG in seamless unconstrained scenarios, was also studied in this work. The open challenges of masked face recognition and interpretability in biometrics were tackled in an effort to evolve towards algorithms that are more transparent, trustworthy, and robust to significant occlusions. Within the topic of wellbeing monitoring, improved solutions to multimodal emotion recognition in groups of people and activity/violence recognition in in-vehicle scenarios were proposed. At last, we also proposed a novel way to learn template security within end-to-end models, dismissing additional separate encryption processes, and a self-supervised learning approach tailored to sequential data, in order to ensure data security and optimal performance. (...)Comment: Doctoral thesis presented and approved on the 21st of December 2022 to the University of Port

    Racialisation in Domestic Violence Shelter Work : Autoethnographic Action Research

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    Lähisuhdeväkivalta ja lähisuhteissa tapahtuva hyväksikäyttö ovat mittasuhteiltaan laajoja ihmisoikeusrikkomuksia, jotka traumatisoivat ja aiheuttavat mittavaa kärsimystä kokijoilleen. Sukupuolistuneena ilmiönä lähisuhdeväkivalta risteää etnisyyden, rodun ja maahanmuuttostatuksen kanssa. Tämä laajalle levinnyt sosiaalinen ongelma edellyttää tehokasta puuttumista sekä lähisuhdeväkivaltaa kohdanneiden tukemista. Suomessa turvakodit tarjoavat matalan kynnyksen palveluita, joiden tavoitteena on antaa välitöntä suojaa ja turvaa lähisuhdeväkivallan uhreille sekä voimaannuttaa heitä. Merkittävällä osuudella turvaa etsivistä ihmisistä on maahanmuutto- tai muu rodullistettu asema suomalaisessa yhteiskunnassa, mikä on heikosti tunnistettu ilmiö. Esimerkiksi Sosiaali- ja terveysministeriön raportti (Laine, 2010) osoittaa, että noin 30 % turvakotien asukkaista Suomessa on maahanmuuttotaustaisia, kuten pakolaisia, turvapaikanhakijoita tai äidinkieleltään muita kuin suomen- tai ruotsinkielisiä. Osuus on tätä korkeampi suurissa kaupungeissa ja Etelä-Suomessa; näillä alueilla paikoin kaikki turvakotien asukkaat ovat maahanmuuttotaustaisia. Lisäksi turvakodeissa on paljon etnisiin vähemmistöihin, kuten Suomen romaneihin, kuuluvia asiakkaita. Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan näiden, rodullistettujen lähisuhdeväkivallan uhrien tilanteita ja asemaa turvakodeissa ja sitä, millaisia haasteita he tuovat turvakotityöntekijöiden ammattitaidolle. Tutkimusten mukaan rodullistetut uhrit kohtaavat syrjintää hakiessaan turvaa. Ulossulkevat ja toimijuutta heikentävät turvakotikäytännöt, etniseen taustaan liitetyt stereotypiat, kielteiset identiteettikonstruktiot ja keskiluokkaisen valkoisuuden normatiivisuus muokkaavat ympäristöstä torjuvan monille rodullistetuille uhreille (Bent-Goodley, 2005; Burmen et al. 2004; Donnelly et al., 2005; Kulkami, 2018; Nnawulezi and Sullivan, 2014). Lisäksi tutkimus osoittaa, että rodullistetut uhrit kohtaavat monissa maissa huomattavia esteitä ilmoittaessaan väkivallasta ja hakiessaan apua. Ammattilaiset puolestaan kokevat työskentelyn rodullistettujen uhrien kanssa vaikeaksi ja pohtivat usein, pitäisikö työntekijöiden kohdella maahanmuuttotaustaisia uhreja samoin vai eri tavoin kuin rodullisesti enemmistössä olevia uhreja (Hagemann-White et al., 2019). Tutkimuksen piirissä on peräänkuulutettu lähisuhdeväkivallan uhrien intersektionaalisten haavoittuvuuksien asianmukaista käsitteellistämistä ja ymmärrystä; tämä tarkoittaa esimerkiksi sen tunnistamista, miten maahanmuuttajastatus kietoutuu yhteen muiden alistuksen muotojen kanssa (Burman et al., 2004; Kulkami, 2018; Menjivar and Salcido, 2002). Myös Suomessa on tunnistettu tarve kehittää onnistuneita käytäntöjä lähisuhdeväkivaltaan puutumiseksi (Husso et al., 2020, 2021; Piippo et al., 2021) ja kiinnittää huomion ongelmallisiin työskentelyn käytäntöihin liittyen kulttuurisensitiivisyyteen ja eroihin. Esimerkiksi monikulttuurisesta väkivaltatyöstä puuttuu eroja ymmärtävä intersektionaalinen lähestymistapa. Tämä ylläpitää lähisuhdeväkivallan ja hyväksikäytön kehystämistä kulttuuriseksi ilmiöksi ja näin ollen myös uusintaa rodullistavaa ymmärrystä uhreista (Keskinen, 2011; Keskinen et al., 2012; Honkatukia and Keskinen, 2018; Niemi et al., 2017). Puutteellinen ymmärrys intersektionaalisiin subjektipositioihin kiinnittyvistä haavoittuvuuksista voi johtaa rodullistettujen uhrien ulossulkemiseen turvakotien tarjoaman suojan piiristä. Esimerkiksi Törmän (2017) tutkimus osoitti, että lähisuhdeväkivaltaa kokeneet romanit kohtaavat epäilyä ja ulossulkemista hakiessaan apua viranomaisilta tai turvakodeista. Tutkijat ovat tähdentäneet kulttuurisensitiivisyyden merkitystä kohtaamisissa rodullistettujen uhrien kanssa, jotta olennaiset erot voitaisiin tunnistaa ilman, että uhreista ylläpidetään rasistisia käsityksiä (Lidman, 2015). Tämä on yhä haaste turvakotien arkisissa käytännöissä. Tähän tutkimuskeskusteluun pohjautuen tutkimukseni käsittelee turvakotityötä Suomessa ja sen vaikutuksia rodullistettujen uhrien turvan ja voimaantumisen piiriin pääsylle. Tutkimukselle on merkittävät yhteiskunnalliset perusteet, sillä turvakotipalvelun ulkopuolelle jääminen ja toimijuutta heikentävät turvakotikäytännöt ovat elämän ja kuoleman kysymys lähisuhdeväkivaltaa ja hyväksikäyttöä paettaessa. Lisäksi tutkimukseni tarjoaa uuden näkökulman tämänhetkiseen lähisuhdeväkivaltatyöhön Suomessa; se tuottaa uutta tietoa arkisista rodullistavista tulkinnoista ja käytännöistä turvakodeissa, jotta on mahdollista ymmärtää intersektionaalista valtadynamiikkaa ja sen vaikutuksia turvakotityöhön sekä osoittaa mekanismeja, joilla moninaisten rodullistettujen uhrien pääsyä turvan ja voimaantumisen piiriin voidaan parantaa. Tarkastellessani turvakotityön olosuhteita ja rodullistavia tulkintoja ja käytäntöjä turvakodin arjessa, esitin seuraavat kolme tutkimuskysymystä: Kuinka turvakodeissa tehtävän työn olosuhteet vaikuttavat rodullistettujen uhrien kanssa työskentelyyn? Kuinka turvakodin työntekijät ymmärtävät intersektionaaliset erot ja kuinka tämä vaikuttaa rodullistettujen uhrien asemaan turvakotityössä? Kuinka turvakotityön käytännöt vaikuttavat turvakotipalvelujen piiriin pääsyyn sekä rodullistettujen uhrien voimaantumiseen ja turvallisuuteen? Keräsin tutkimusaineistoni kahdeksan kuukauden autoetnografisen kenttätyön aikana turvakodissa, jossa työskentelin kokopäiväisenä ohjaajana. Tutkimusaineisto koostui kenttämuistiinpanoista, autoetnografisista ääninauhoituksista sekä toimintatutkimuksen työpajoissa tuotetuista dokumenteista. Aineiston keräämisessä käytin autoetnografian ja toimintatutkimuksen menetelmiä. Osana toimintatutkimusta järjestin viisi kuukausittaista tutkimustyöpajaa turvakodin työntekijöiden kanssa. Niissä keskustelimme työntekijöiden ja uhrien intersektionaalisista asemoista sekä valtasuhteista rodullistettujen selviytyjien kanssa tapahtuvissa kohtaamisissa. Tutkimukseni lähestymistapa sijoittuu feministisen intersektionaalisuutta koskevan tutkimuskeskustelun ja sosiaalisen konstruktionismin alueille ottaen huomioon rodullistamisen erityispiirteet Suomen sosiaalisessa kontekstissa. Tämä tutkimus laajentaa aikaisemman tutkimuksen havaintoja intersektionaalisista eriarvoisuuksista ja niiden haitallisista vaikutuksista uhreihin lähisuhdeväkivaltatyössä (esimerkiksi heikentyneestä toimijuudesta) analysoimalla myös intersektionaalisten asemojen voimaannuttavia vaikutuksia (esimerkiksi mahdollistava toimijuus). Lisäksi, toisin kuin aikaisempi tutkimus rodullistamisesta ja lähisuhdeväkivallasta, tutkimukseni keskittyy uhrien subjektipositioiden lisäksi työntekijöiden subjektipositioihin. Tutkimukseni tarkastelee myös väkivaltatyön tekemisen olosuhteita turvakodissa ratkaisevina kontekstuaalisina tekijöinä, jotka vaikuttavat sensitiivisen turvakotityön mahdollisuuksiin ja rajoituksiin. Erittelen tutkimuksessa rodullistavien turvakotikäytäntöjen intersektionaalisia vaikutuksia rodullistettujen uhrien kanssa tehtävään työhön tuoden esiin niiden vahingollisia vaikutuksia. Ymmärrän rodullistamisen prosessin relationaalisena subjektipositioiden rakentumisena (Bourdieu, 2018), joka sisältää sekä etuoikeutettujen (valkoiset) että alisteisten (ei-valkoiset) subjektipositioiden rakentumisen (Keskinen et al., 2021). Rakenteisiin, instituutioihin ja käytäntöihin sisältyvä arkipäivän rasismi tulee näkyväksi ja käsittelyyn silloin, kun instituutioiden eri toimijat havaitsevat syrjivät institutionaaliset käytännöt (Seikkula and Hortelano, 2021). Havaitseminen on yhteydessä tunnistamisen ja väärin tunnistamisen tekoihin (meconaissance; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990), mikä tarkoittaa tunnistamista riittävästi, tunnistamista joksikin muuksi (Husso et al., 2016) tai sitä, että havaitsemista tai tunnistamista ei tapahdu lainkaan (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990). Esimerkiksi, vaikka rodullistaminen vaikuttaa merkittävästi turvakotityöhön, työntekijät yleensä eivät tunnistaa sen vaikutuksia turvakodin arjessa. Tutkimus osoittaa turvakodin työntekijöiden ponnistelevan paljon havaittujen kulttuuristen erojen luokittelun äärellä. Tämä muovaa työntekijöiden ymmärrystä maahanmuuttaja- ja romanivähemmistöistä sekä heidän turvakotitarpeistaan ja väkivallan aiheuttaman haitan laajuudesta. Lisäksi kulttuuristen erojen arviointi on yhteydessä väkivallan tunnistamiseen; työntekijät voivat epäillä uhrin tarinaa tai väärin tunnistaa lähisuhdeväkivallan joksikin muuksi, kuten tavalliseksi eroprosessiksi. Tutkimuksen mukaan turvakotityön aliresursointi ja välttämättömien turvakodin tukipalvelujen puute heikentävät turvakotityön laatua yleisesti sekä erityisesti suomen kieltä puutteellisesti osaavien tai muuten rodullistetun aseman vuoksi haavoittuvassa asemassa olevien uhrien kohtaamista. Maahanmuuttotaustaisiin tai romaniuhreihin liittyvät rodullistavat näkemykset ja käytännöt sekä turvakotityön rakenteelliset rajoitukset heikentävät rodullistettujen vähemmistöjen parissa tehtävän työn laatua. Tämä vaikuttaa kielteisesti näihin ryhmiin luokiteltujen uhrien turvallisuuteen ja voimaantumiseen turvakotityössä.Domestic violence and abuse are human rights violations of pandemic proportions. As a gender-based violence intersecting with ethnicity, race and/or immigration status, domestic violence causes enormous suffering and trauma. Therefore, this widespread social problem requires an effective public response, part of which involves supporting domestic violence refugees. Domestic violence shelters are residential institutions that provide immediate safety, protection and empowerment to domestic violence victims. In Finland such shelters aim to provide low-threshold services to ensure immediate safety and empowerment for all domestic violence and abuse victims. In a barely recognized trend, racially minoritized survivors constitute a significant part of the people seeking protection. For example, a report from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (Laine, 2010) indicated that approximately 30% of the residents of Finnish domestic violence shelters are people with immigrant backgrounds, such as refugees, asylum seekers and those whose mother tongue is other than Finnish or Swedish. The percentage is even higher in larger cities and in the south of Finland, where, at times, all residents of a shelter are immigrants. When also considering victims of ethnic minorities. such as the Finnish Roma, the share of racially minoritised shelter residents is even higher. Racially minoritised domestic violence victims significantly challenge shelter workers' competences. International academic research suggests that racially minoritised victims face discrimination when seeking protection. Exclusionary and disempowering shelter practices, together with racial stereotyping, negative identity constructions, and white, middle-class normativity, shape an inhospitable environment for many minoritised survivors (Bent-Goodley, 2005; Burman et al. 2004; Donnelly et al., 2005, Kulkarni, 2018; Nnawulezi and Sullivan, 2014). Moreover, research indicates that across countries, immigrant women face considerable obstacles when reporting violence and seeking help, while professionals state that working with immigrant victim is difficult and raise the question whether workers should treat immigrant victims the same or differently from the racially majoritised victims (Hagemann-White et al., 2019). Scholars have called for adequate conceptualisations of intersectional vulnerabilities and a better understanding of the superimposition of immigrant status onto other forms of oppression in relation to victims of domestic violence (Burman et al. 2004; Kulkarni, 2018; Menjivar and Salcido, 2002). Similarly, Finnish academic research indicates the need to develop successful domestic violence intervention practices (Husso et al., 2020, 2021; Piippo et al., 2021) and address problematic working practices related to cultural sensitivity and differences. For example, multicultural violence work lacks an intersectional approach when it comes to understanding of differences and thus reproduces the racialised understanding of victims through culturalisation of domestic violence and abuse (Keskinen, 2011; Keskinen et al., 2012; Honkatukia and Keskinen, 2018; Niemi et al., 2017). A lack of understanding regarding the vulnerabilities of certain intersectional subject positions can result in the exclusion of racialised victims from the needed shelter service provision. For example, Törmä (2017) indicated that Roma domestic violence survivors face disbelief and exclusion when seeking help from officials or shelters. Finnish scholars have called for cultural sensitivity in encounters with racialised victims to recognise relevant differences without reproducing racist perceptions of victims (Lidman, 2015). However, this remains a challenge in the everyday practices of shelters. Against this backdrop and building on the extant debates on racialisation in shelter work, my research addresses the Finnish domestic violence shelter work and its effects on racially minoritised victims’ access to safety and empowerment. This research is important for societal reasons because exclusion from shelter provision and disempowering shelter practices are a question of life and death when fleeing domestic violence and abuse. Moreover, it is important to generate knowledge on the racialised everyday perceptions and practices of shelters to better understand intersectional power dynamics and their effects on shelter work and to indicate mechanisms for improving access to safety and empowerment for diverse survivors. Therefore, my research provides new perspective on the current developments of domestic violence work in Finland. Aiming to explain effects of Finnish shelter work on racially minoritized survivors, my research focused on the issues of shelter work conditions, perceptions of shelter work agents and shelter work practices. To address these conditions, perceptions and practices, I posed the following three research questions; How do shelter work conditions affect the work with racially minoritised victims? How do shelter workers perceive intersectional differences, and how does this affect racially minoritised victims’ positions? How do shelter work practices affect access to shelter services, the empowerment of racially minoritised victims and the safety of racially minoritised shelter work subjects? I collected my research data during eight months of autoethnographic fieldwork in a domestic violence shelter where I worked as a full-time counsellor. The data included field notes, tape recordings, and documents produced during action research workshops. To collect the data, I used methods of autoethnographic observation and action research. As a part of action research approach, I organised five monthly research workshops with my shelter co-workers to discuss their own and the victims' intersectional positions and power relations in encounters with racialised survivors. My research approach is grounded in feminist literature on intersectionality and social constructionism while considering the specifics of racialisation in the social context of Finland. Although extant research on intersectional inequalities in domestic violence work has revealed adverse effects of intersectional subject positions on victims, my research widens the usual focus on disempowerment (e.g. decreased agency) by analysing the empowering effects of intersectional positions (e.g. enabling agency). Moreover, in contrast with previous research on racialisation and domestic violence, my research focuses not only on the subject positions of victims but also those of workers. In addition, my study approaches working conditions in shelters as decisive contextual factors for the limitations and possibilities of sensitive shelter work. My analytical approach was aimed at explicating the intersectional effects of racialising shelter practices in order to contribute to their recognition and thus highlight possibilities for countering their harmful effects. A relational understanding of subject position construction (Bourdieu, 2018) is central to the concept of racialisation, which involves constructing privileged (white) and oppressed (non-white) subject positions (Keskinen et al., 2021). Everyday racism embedded in structures, institutions and practices can be addressed when different agents in institutions notice discriminatory institutional practices (Seikkula and Hortelano, 2021). Noticing is related to acts of recognition and misrecognition, or meconaissance (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990), which means recognising something adequately or as something else (Husso et al., 2016) or neither noticing nor recognising it at all (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990). The analysis indicated shelter workers' classification struggles around perceived cultural differences, which structure workers' understanding of immigrant and Roma minority victims and their shelter service need, the extent of harm caused by violence and the recognition of the violence as such. Moreover, findings indicate that the under-resourcing and a lack of essential shelter support services negatively affect the quality of shelter work in general and especially for victims in vulnerable positions, such as non-Finnish speaking persons. Racialised perceptions and practices related to immigrant and Roma victims and the structural constraints of shelter work conditions, shape the preconditions for (in)sensitive shelter work, negatively affecting racialised minority survivors’ access to safety and empowerment and safety and security in domestic violence shelter work
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