Seminar: Gendered violence, abuse & exploitation in the shadow of bordering regimes & border control

Gendered violence, abuse and exploitation in the shadow of bordering regimes and border control: The transnational abandonment of wives

Professor Sundari Anitha, Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield

This presentation draws attention to a specific, and arguably growing, form of violence against women in transnational spaces – the hitherto little-researched phenomenon of the deliberate and strategic abandonment of wives across national borders by men residing in countries in the global north and less commonly, in other parts of the world. Drawing on life history interviews with 57 victim-survivors and 21 practitioners in India and the UK, I argue that such abandonment constitutes domestic violence as it entails coercive and controlling behaviour intended to deprive women of their rights such as residence entitlements, legal rights, financial settlement upon divorce and maintenance for any children. This problem serves as a prism for examining broader theoretical debates on the intersections between gendered violence, migration and bordering regimes as well as the continuums between, and the specificities of, different forms of violence against women. I will also outline my recent work with policy and practice communities to address this problem, which resulted in the creation of a new immigration route to the UK for transnationally abandoned women - one of the rare steps to expand settlement rights for migrants in an otherwise restrictive policyscape.

Bio:

Sundari Anitha is Chair in Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield, UK. She has researched and published widely across the two areas of violence against women and girls and the intersection of gender, race and ethnicity in employment relations. She previously managed a Women’s Aid refuge and worked as a Case Worker for Asha Projects, a ‘by and for’ refuge for South Asian survivors of domestic violence. She has been active in activism, advocacy and policy-making on violence against women for over 25 years.  She served as a member of the REF 2021 sub-panel 21: Sociology.