Drawing from her recent book, “Why Would I Be Married Here? Marriage Migration and Dispossession in Neoliberal India” (Cornell University Press 2022), Dr. Kukreja examines marriage migration undertaken by rural bachelors in North India who seek brides from outside their customary marriage pools such as from development peripheries of India. She connects the macro-political violent process of neoliberalism to the micro-personal level of marriage and intimate gender relations to demonstrate that predatory capitalism dispossesses many poor women from India’s marginalized Dalit and Muslim communities of marriage choices in their local communities and exposes them to new forms of gendered and caste violence in conjugal communities.
Dr Reena Kukreja is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Development Studies with cross-appointment to Gender Studies Department and affiliation with Cultural Studies Program at Queen’s University. Her research interests and filmmaking practice is focused on migration and development, marriage migration, masculinities, political economy and caste.