Description
There has been a rapid rise in migration from South Asia to Europe and North America in the past decade. While these migrant groups have been the subject of policies, political debates, and scholarly research, not much has been written about the transnational bonds that remain between migrants and their families back home. In addition, attention must also be drawn to the interpersonal relationships between the migrants in the host country, both within the family units and outside. Existing scholarships on intimacy and violence that migrants experience with reference to domestic relationships could direct us to explore how these scapes pan out for the South Asians moving to the “west”. This also invites us to understand the link between affect and migration, return and settlements.
In the light of such observations, this workshop will look at how transnational bonds between migrants and their anchor families continue to have a gendered impact on migrants. For understanding the process and consequences of gendering intimacy and violence in migration studies, this workshop engages with the practices that often mimic the gendered relations back home reproduced in the host countries among the migrants. In particular, through cases of women migrants, we will demonstrate how interpersonal forms of violence not only continue but are often exacerbated by the transnational networks of kinship control exercised by those who remain in their home countries; for example, cultural and religious markers are often employed to exercise coercive control on women while the lack of transnational laws and contradictory national laws deem any relief impossible.
