Changing nature and emerging patterns of domestic violence in global contexts: dowry abuse and the transnational abandonment of wives in India

This paper argues for the need to understand dowry-related abuse through a lens that focuses not only on micro-and meso-level gendered socio-cultural milieus and economic norms, but also on macro-level formal-legal structures and global power asymmetries. Based on life-history narratives of 57 women in India and 21 practitioner interviews, this paper documents a growing phenomenon whereby men who are resident in another country abuse their Indian-origin wives, appropriate their dowry and abandon them. While dowry-related abuse in such marriages is part of a continuum of domestic violence prevalent in South Asia and the South Asian diaspora, we explore how gender and migration intersect to exacerbate existing forms of violence against women and foster new forms of violence such as transnational abandonment. Gender-blind transnational formal-legal frameworks and gendered and transnational structural inequalities come together to construct transnational brides as “disposable women” who can be abused, exploited and cast aside with impunity.