Venue: Room 1.55 Edinburgh Futures Institute, In-Person Only

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Abstract: The term ‘trailing spouse’ is used to describe the individual following in the tracks of his or her partner who is an internationally mobile professional. The existing literature on the female trailing spouse predominantly emphasises the diminishing of her professional prospects as she prioritizes her spouse’s career over her own, thereby offering a reductionist view of her overall lived experience. This study interrogates the reified portrayal of the passive trailing spouse as a ‘tied mover’, marking a shift away from a discourse that undervalues her non-wage labour. Its findings counter the specious imputation, often implicit in expatriate women’s discourses, that the trailing spouse is a victim of sorts. The very term ‘trailing spouse’ is a problematic one - suggestive of an inherent passivity that does little justice to her capacity for meaning making in the personal, familial, or societal spaces.

Employing qualitative methods such as semi-structured interviews, observation, journalling, visual tools, and thematic analysis, the study draws on the reflexive narratives of 12 ‘trailing spouses’ of Indian origin living in gated communities in Bangalore and considers the ways in which a trailing spouse negotiates structural constraints to create channels for self-growth. While the accounts of the participants reflect a mix of reluctant acceptance, even resignation; they also evince resilience; their coping strategies in both settlement and return migration contexts contradict the premise that they are merely ‘tied movers’. The findings of the research indicate that though gender ideology continues to inform migration decisions, a ‘trailing spouse’ could be reconceptualised as a subject with agency and adaptability, whose emotional labour validates her identity as a caring subject, whose cultural work reinforces her role as the family's custodian of cultural capital, and whose support is critical to the success of the migration project.

Biography: Dr Mini Chandran Kurian conducts research on migration, transnational families, cultural reproduction, and notions of identity and belonging. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Edinburgh, and an MSc in Ethnicity and Multiculturalism from the University of Bristol. Her experience as an academic and practitioner includes guest lecturing at the National University of Singapore and conducting ethnographic research on marginalised folk artists under threat of erasure, for UNESCO. Her publications include a paper on soundscapes exploring how migrants assert group identity and cultural belonging through expressions of aural and visual performativity, due to appear in the Bloomsbury publication ‘Dissonant Sounds: Diaspora, Technology, Culture and Politics’. Her other work includes a qualitative study on digital caregiving at the intersection of migration, technology, and emotions, and a policy paper on refugee education focusing on the narratives of Sri Lankan refugee teachers in India, published by the Network for International Policies & Co-operation in Education and Training, Geneva. Mini is currently engaged in research that interrogates the reified portrayal of the passive ‘trailing spouse’ as a ‘tied mover’ within the migration project.

Trailing Spouses: Not just ‘tied movers’