Stranded: Indian Travelling Ayahs Negotiating Waiting and Repatriation

Abstract

The expansion of the British Empire facilitated movement across the globe for both colonisers and colonised. This article focuses on the experiences of travelling ayahs (servants and nannies) who travelled with colonial families both within and outside the British Empire. This study expands on the previous literature to focus on the experiences of ayahs in Britain and the rest of Europe under unusually difficult situations of waiting brought about by events at both global and individual levels: at the global level, the outbreak of the world wars and at the individual level, the actions of irresponsible employers who abandoned their ayahs in foreign countries. In so doing, the article contributes to a nuanced understanding of how the ayahs navigated waiting as gendered subjects, and simultaneously, how they actively attempted to craft their repatriation in the context of the highly gendered expectations attached to women of South Asian descent on the move.