“Now It Is Difficult to Get Married”: Contextualising Cross-Regional Marriage and Bachelorhood in a North Indian Village

Gender Imbalance, Marriage Squeeze and Multiple Biological Clocks: Exploring Challenges to the Intergenerational Contract in North India

“…Kaur et al (2015) show that the proportion of permanent bachelors in female deficit states will go up from 3.7 to 8.1 percent between 2015 and 2050. A similar rising trend of 'involuntary/forced bachelorhood' in north India has also been documented in several ethnographic studies (Chaudhry andMohan 2011, 2018;Kaur 2004;Mishra 2013). These 'surplus men,' on an average, are usually above 30 years of age, from rural poor families, with limited educational and income prospects, and have less favourable physical and personal attributes in the marriage market (Mishra 2018).…”

Womanhood Implies Travel: Punjabi Marriage Migration Between India and Britain

“…In other cases of women marriage migrants in our studies, the great distance between the two countries can make it extremely difficult for women to access support from their natal families, with -in the event of marital conflict -divorce one result, and the forced sustaining of unhappy or even abusive marriages another (Qureshi 2016a, p.82-5,116-8); immigrant women may also be constrained by their in-laws from work, or expected to work but then to give their earnings to their husbands or in-laws (Qureshi 2016b(Qureshi , p.1221). Yet in other ways, the differences between Kirat and Satish's life stories seem to be differences of degree, the emotional and social isolation of the international marriage migrant blending into that of the cross-regionally marrying bride (Chaudhry 2016(Chaudhry , 2017(Chaudhry , 2018 or into that of the exogamously-marrying North Indian Hindu/Sikh woman compared to her South Indian or Muslim counterparts (Dyson and Moore 1983;Karve 1993;Mandelbaum 1986;Jejeebhoy and Sathar 2001). Satish's six hour journey from Bristol to Peterborough was daunting for her as was Kirat's journey from Punjab to Britain.…”

“…A handful of studies of marriage migration have drawn out the commonalities between international and internal migration. Shruti Chaudhry (2016Chaudhry ( , 2017 documents the phenomenon of cross-regional marriages in India, undergirded by poverty in the bride-sending areas and masculine sex ratios in the bride-receiving regions, combined with the difficulties some rural men have in achieving eligibility for marriage. As these cross-regional marriages are commercially mediated, she observes parallels with forms of cross-border marriages such as 'mail-order brides' (cf.…”