Gender, Migration, and Exclusionary Citizenship Regimes: Conceptualizing Transnational Abandonment of Wives as a Form of Violence Against Women

Abstract

Based on life history narratives of 57 women in India and interviews with 21 practitioners, we document the neglect, abuse, and instrumental deprivation of women's rights through the process of transnational abandonment. While gendered local sociocultural milieus and economic norms contribute to these harms, they are crucially enabled and sustained by transnational formal-legal frameworks. Widening the explanatory lens for understanding domestic violence beyond the family and community, we argue that in a globalized world, (inter)state policies serve to construct these women as a subordinate category of citizens-"disposable women"-who can be abused and abandoned with impunity.

Women exiting prostitution: Reports of coercive control in intimate relationships

“…In addition to the continuum of coercive control tactics described by Stark, our participants also revealed threats of abandonment that were frequently used by intimate partners to control their behavior. This finding was consistent with other literature that explained that threats of abandonment are a common form of coercive control (Anitha et al, 2018;Hamberger et al, 2017). In our study, several participants indicated that warnings of desertion and actual abandonment were doled out by intimate partners to garner compliance with monetary, substance, and sexual demands.…”

“…The spectrum of controlling behaviors include exploitation (i.e., manipulation of resources), intimidation (i.e., maintaining secrecy by instilling fear), enticement (i.e., persuading using psychological manipulation), isolation (i.e., prevent from obtaining social support/help), microregulation (i.e., monitoring coming and going/insisting on check-ins), surveillance (i.e., partner stalking), degradation (i.e., denying self-respect/marking ownership), and deception (i.e., large/more subtle mistruths/gaslighting). Other researchers included threats of abandonment as a specific category of coercive control (Anitha et al, 2018;Hamberger et al, 2017).…”

“…Specifically, for the coercive control tactics, the raters used the range of coercive behaviors discussed by Stark (2013). However, a code for abandonment/threats of abandonment was added based on other empirical literature (Anitha et al, 2018;Hamberger et al, 2017).…”

Temporary Migration and Family Violence: How Perpetrators Weaponise Borders

“…However, increasing attention has focused on the precarious status of temporary visa holders (Bui and Morash 2008;Erez, Adelman and Gregory 2009;Lyneham and Richards 2014). Migration law and policy has been recognised across Australia (Segrave 2018), the US (Ortiz-Rodríguez andMooney 2018, 2002) and the UK (Anitha 2008(Anitha , 2011Anitha, Roy and Yalamarty 2018;Gill 2004) as affecting help seeking and contributing to the ongoing experience of DFV. There are many reasons for this, but it is particularly because temporary migrants are more likely to be dependent on their partner for economic and housing security as well as for their visa and have other critical complications, such as fearing forced separation from dependents who are born in the country of destination to a citizen or permanent resident father (see Segrave 2017;Vaughan et al 2015).…”

Abducting Children Abroad: Gender, Power, and Transnational Mobility in Immigrant Family Conflicts

“…Another pattern is "transnational abandonment," when one spouse "dumps" the other spouse in the country of origin. In the vast majority of such cases, it is the husbands who "dump" their wives-and sometimes also their children (Anitha et al, 2018;Danneskiold-Samsøe et al, 2011). Nevertheless, wives may also strategically seek to affect geographical separation when transnational marriages fail (Liversage, 2013).…”