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Experiences of Transnational Abandonment in the Lives of Abused South Asian Women in the United States

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Shreya Bhandari at Purdue University Northwest
Shreya Bhandari
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Abstract

Purpose To examine the experiences of transnational abandonment among abused South Asian women in the United States (U.S.) to be able to contribute to the scant literature on this topic. Methods The in-depth interviews of a sub-set of seven out of 40 South Asian participants experiencing domestic violence in the U.S. was analyzed to examine the patterns and experiences of transnational abandonment. Results Experiences with transnational abandonment can be described through the following themes; (1) women already living in the U.S. coaxed or deceived and either sent back to their home country or rendered homeless in the U.S., (2) women who tried to come back to the U.S., asked to come to a new city where they did not have any social support; (3) impact of abandonment on relationship with their children. Conclusion It is extremely important that social workers and helping professionals demonstrate awareness and cultural sensitivity towards issues such as transnational abandonment and intervene to connect clients with resources so that they have the emotional energy to fight long immigration and custody battles. Practice and policy implications are discussed.
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Family Violence
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-024-00683-2
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Experiences ofTransnational Abandonment intheLives ofAbused
South Asian Women intheUnited States
ShreyaBhandari1
Accepted: 10 January 2024
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024
Abstract
Purpose To examine the experiences of transnational abandonment among abused South Asian women in the United States
(U.S.) to be able to contribute to the scant literature on this topic.
Methods The in-depth interviews of a sub-set of seven out of 40 South Asian participants experiencing domestic violence
in the U.S. was analyzed to examine the patterns and experiences of transnational abandonment.
Results Experiences with transnational abandonment can be described through the following themes; (1) women already
living in the U.S. coaxed or deceived and either sent back to their home country or rendered homeless in the U.S., (2) women
who tried to come back to the U.S., asked to come to a new city where they did not have any social support; (3) impact of
abandonment on relationship with their children.
Conclusion It is extremely important that social workers and helping professionals demonstrate awareness and cultural
sensitivity towards issues such as transnational abandonment and intervene to connect clients with resources so that they
have the emotional energy to fight long immigration and custody battles. Practice and policy implications are discussed.
Keywords South Asian· Domestic violence· Abuse· Transnational abandonment
Domestic Violence intheSouth Asian
Community
Domestic violence (DV) in the South Asian community in
the United States (U.S.) is a serious issue and the lifetime
prevalence ranges from 18 to 40% (Hurwitz etal., 2006;
Soglin etal., 2020). Several non-representative samples in
the past 20years have reported rates of DV in the South
Asian community in the U.S. at around 40% (Mahapatra,
2012; Raj & Silverman, 2002). Due to lack of representa-
tive data and methodological limitations overall, the rate
of abuse reported by an intimate partner at least once in
their lives ranges from 22 to 77% (Adam & Schewe, 2007;
Mahapatra, 2012; Nagaraj etal., 2018; Rai, 2021; Raj &
Silverman, 2002; Yoshihama & Dabby, 2015). Community
experts assert that the rates of DV may be much higher than
what has been reported (Mahapatra, 2012; Rai & Choi,
2018). Due to several barriers including but not limited to
cultural, immigration-related, financial, language, among
others, there is a high likelihood that the current prevalence
rates of DV in the South Asian community in the U.S. may
be under-estimated (Tripathi & Azhar, 2020). With recent
activism from feminist groups, transnational abandonment
has been recognized as a form of DV. The gendered nature
of exploitation and deprivation when women experience
abandonment in transnational marriages, described below
explicates the reasons for it to be a form of DV (Anitha etal.,
2021; Mullins, 2022).
Transnational Abandonment asaForm ofDV
Anitha and colleagues have conducted extensive research on
transnational abandonment both in the UK and India. The
authors came up with three categories of transnational mar-
riage abandonment (Anitha etal., 2016, 2018a, b).
a) A woman experiencing domestic violence upon mar-
riage migration to a foreign country is deceptively asked
* Shreya Bhandari
bhanda15@pnw.edu
1 Department ofBehavioral Sciences, Social Work Program,
Purdue University Northwest, 394 Class Room Office (CLO)
Building, 2200 169th Street, Hammond, IN46323, USA
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... Within these modern immigration regimes, parents, families, and communities seemingly accept the risks of transnational marriage which scales up inequalities between men and women, wife-takers and wife-givers, as well as the sponsoring and the sponsored spouse in the face of future potential to migrate (Charsley, 2007). These risks, faced by Indian marriage migrant women, encompass various forms of gender-based violence including marriage abandonment; these have been documented across various diasporic contexts in the UK (Bajpai, 2013), the US (Bhandari, 2024), Canada (Merali et al, 2015) and Australia (Vasil, 2023). ...
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