The politics of ethical self-becoming: an ethnographic study of South Asian women’s (re)positioning in broken transnational marriages in the United Kingdom

This thesis draws on 18 months of person-centred, ethnographic fieldwork and ongoing contact exploring broken transnational marriages, domestic abuse and destitution experienced by South Asian brides migrating to the United Kingdom without natal family in proximity. It interrogates the process of their ethical self-becoming as they persevere and “keep going” through several challenging life events. To investigate self-becoming, I developed “Ethical (Re)positioning” – an analytical tool with a cartographic approach to examine intertwining forces shaping self-becoming over time and space. It interrogates how women navigate interweaving dynamics of familial, legal, social and medical structures, interpersonal relationships, thoughts, and emotions in gendered migration. “Ethical (Re)positioning” illuminates migrant brides’ challenging (re)positions as they await delayed spousal visas, experience domestic abuse, face deportation, fight for rights to UK residency, struggle with poor language and digital skills, and achieve economic independence. It emphasises their predicaments, concerns, doubts, fears and “multiple ethical dilemmas” in and across their (re)positions. It reveals their “carceral escapes” whereby escaping one challenging (re)position often leads to new controlling social, legal, familial, or economic structures. This thesis argues that ethical self-becoming is a shifting, non-linear, reflective and reactionary process across (re)positions, unfolding within life challenges and devotional practices, with variable outcomes, where joy, faith, hope, despair, courage, and forbearance are emotions and practices. This thesis challenges the assumption of supportive kin and community networks within South Asian transnational marriages. It refines theories of Muslim subjectivity within the anthropology of Islam, which often centre on ethical self-cultivation shaped through formalised practices. It revises the concept of “moral breakdown” in the anthropology of ethics, which overlooks people’s experiences of “multiple ethical dilemmas” across complex ethical (re)positions, where returning to an unreflective state of everyday moral dispositions is rare. This thesis offers a novel analytical approach to studying gender, migration, kinship, and Muslim female subjectivity.