Transnational marriage abandonment: A new form of domestic violence and abuse in transnational spaces

In the West, abandonment within the context of marriage is generally not considered a form of violence against women. In the case of transnational marriages, abandonment of wives across national borders is embedded within a pattern of domestic violence and coercive control exercised over the woman. Additionally, by strategically abandoning their wives in their home country and then filing for divorce in foreign courts, transnationally mobile migrant men can make it almost impossible for their wives to participate in legal proceedings to secure their financial rights relating to child support, maintenance and return of dowry. The impact of abandonment also creates contexts for further forms of violence against women due to the stigma associated with divorce, women’s vulnerability within natal families and issues related to inheritance and residence arrangements within the natal home after divorce. Research conducted in India shows that beyond the various processes of control and individual acts of harm that lead to and outlast the act of abandonment in transnational marriages, abandonment itself constitutes a form of violence against women. It is rooted in and results in gendered devaluation of women and is enabled by gender-blind transnational formal-legal frameworks, which construct abandoned women as an inferior class of citizens and as a category of women who can be abused and exploited with impunity. This chapter explores the issue of transnational marriage abandonment, which has recently been recognised as a form of domestic abuse by family courts in England and Wales.