"Distance" makes the heart grow fonder? : transnational intimacy - contracting South Asian marriage in Northern Ireland

• Main Author: Malhotra, Vanita
• Published: Queen's University Belfast 2014
• Subjects: 306.8
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.675851

Recently, scholars have described the consequences of transnational living all families and children: Research, however, has neglected to address in detail the lives of transnational couples still negotiating their relationships. Furthemore, existing research only touches on the lives of third generation South Asians in Northern Ireland and their cnnection to India in relation to contracting a marriage. This dissertation fills the gap by analysing the intimate experiences of South Asians who reside in Northern Ireland, and investigates how a developing autonomy through migration affects patterns of intimacy and marriage choices. My research sought to examine couples who were perceived by themselves and their families to be culturally and/or geographically distant, which constitute two (sometimes overlapping) variations in the organisational arrangements of South Asian marriage. Ethnographic data and interviews demonstrate how South Asians living in Northern Ireland transform meanings of love and intimacy through technology and constructions of selfhood to accommodate these spatial and temporal separations. The dissertation highlights how rather than South Asians feeling 'between cultures', they form an assured sense ofpersol1.hood. What they simultaneously struggle with and strategise, however, is sta111S attainment through 'doing modernity' whilst upholding traditions, as displayed in the processes and performances of contracting a marriage. As a result, rethinking intimate relations has been key for South Asians in the transnational context.