Normative devices and the Institutionalization of Interactions Among Actors in Anti-Violence Networks

Abstract

This article examines how normative frameworks shape relationships among actors within territorial anti-violence networks in Italy, focusing on the Lombardy Region as a case study. Since the adoption of the Istanbul Convention, integrated policies and territorial networks have been promoted as key tools for preventing and combating gender-based violence (GBV). While these developments have strengthened coordination and expanded service coverage, they have also introduced tensions between feminist-rooted practices and institutional requirements. The study explores how normative devices define the scope of action for anti-violence centers (AVCs) and shelters (SHs), shaping their practices and influencing the pathways available to women exiting violence. The research combines document analysis with qualitative data from twelve semi-structured interviews and six focus groups conducted with representatives of AVCs and SHs across Lombardy. This mixed-method approach captures both the historical evolution of policies and their implications for the practices and organizational structures of AVCs and SHs, as well as for women’s trajectories of exiting violence. The findings reveal how institutionalization processes simultaneously expand service availability and ensure uniform territorial coverage, while also generating tensions that affect women’s pathways out of violence as well as the practices of AVCs and SHs. At the political level, these dynamics may further produce a backlash, leading to the normalization of the phenomenon, obscuring its structural causes, and legitimizing depoliticized forms of management and intervention — thereby highlighting the ambivalent effects of institutionalization on feminist anti-violence practices.