Migrant wives : the spouse visa and experiences of divorce

Abstract

Spouse visa schemes provide a migration pathway for the intimate partners of citizens, permanent residents and particular visa holders, such as those with an employment visa. Research on this important population has generally been framed around ethnicity and nationality or the classifications of ‘marriage migrant’ or ‘accompanying spouse’. Yet, legal status is an important determinant which ties this cohort of migrants together and informs both the processes and practices involved in how they do family. In order to broaden these common methodological approaches and thus advance research in this area, this thesis examines the way in which entry by spouse visa can shape migrant family practices and inform positionalities within familial and social hierarchies. To achieve this goal, it draws upon problem-centred interviews conducted from 2016-2017 with forty-six women who migrated under synonymous spouse visa schemes to two cities – Hong Kong and Melbourne, Australia. With all of these women having divorced after migration, the thesis uses a comparative approach to interrogate whether arriving by spouse visa influenced these women’s family lives after arrival as well as during and beyond the biographical disruption of marital breakdown. Guided by a theoretical framework which combines the approaches of David Morgan’s family practices orientation and Floya Anthias’ translocational positionality frame, the thesis considers these questions across three time periods – after arrival and pre-divorce; mid-divorce; and post-divorce. Through the application of this framework, it uncovers how arriving by spouse visa shapes the family practices of migrant women and translocationally positions them as ‘migrant wives’ in both cities. In this way, the visa initiates a highly gendered and traditional family dynamic - one which acts as a common thread linking the experiences of this highly diverse group of interviewees. This ‘migrant wife positionality’ has an enduring effect, continuing throughout the collapse of the women’s marriages and even lingering post-divorce through the routinization, and thus persistence, of the family practices performed. Intriguingly, this positionality continues to exist even after the women’s spouse visa status has been replaced. These empirical findings contribute to the field by revealing how spouse visa status can act as a generator for how family life is done and the way those who migrate under it are translocationally positioned. This illustrates, at the theoretical level, the power of the law as an instigator for particular ways of family living but, just as importantly, it shows how it is the social enactment of the legal status within the family which has an enduring effect. It is thus the social which extends the visa’s generative powers well beyond its expiry date. In other words, immigration law has the potential to awaken and validate traditional expectations of family life, but it is through the normative and historically-based nature of gendered family practices that migrant women’s positionalities within the family and society are sustained.