When South Meets North: Interrogating Agency and Marital Mobility in Kerala-Haryana Marriages

Paro Mishra ()
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Paro Mishra: Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIITD)

Chapter Chapter 14 in India’s Economy and Society, 2021, pp 369-386 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Ethnographically interrogating Haryana Kalyanams—popular name for marriagesMarriage between men from Haryana and womenWomen from Kerala—this chapter illustrates the complexity of marital mobilityMobility in cross-region marriagesCross-region marriages (henceforth CRM) in India. CRM are an outcome of local male marriage squeezeMarriage squeeze created due to sex-ratioSex ratio imbalance and changing genderGender relations in north India. Media attention to these marriages is largely negative and replete with stories of traffickingTrafficking and exploitation of brides from BiharBihar, Bengal, Odisha, Assam and Bangladesh married into Haryana. However, in Kerala–Haryana marriagesMarriage, the popular narrative changes. The better position of Kerala in comparison to Haryana, as expressed in its gender developmentDevelopment indicators, is used to present Kerala brides as completely in control of their marital destiny and as agents of change and transformationTransformation in rigidly patriarchal Haryanavi society. This paper complicates this oversimplified narrative to illustrate how Kerala brides in Haryana grapple with harsh patriarchal norms and genderGender prescriptions which often conflict with their personal desire for freedom and agency.Agency In doing so, it cautions against any straightforward assumptions of upward mobilityMobility and agency for Kerala bridesAgency in CRMCross-region marriages and emphasizes the need to analyze their poistion within the webs of power within which they operate.

Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:isbchp:978-981-16-0869-8_14

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-16-0869-8_14

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