Transnational marriages in a netwok age

One key contemporary population flow is the migration of Indian software professionals. In the early 2000s, First World market demands resulted in some governments fast-tracking migration of highly-skilled software engineers, but the global economy has seen the return of these migrants. This paper examines the impact of transnational migration on relationships and marriages, focusing on the engineers of the network age. The work adopts a transnational approach using multi-sited ethnography carried out in India and the United Kingdom, to follow the migratory experiences of transnational couples, as well as their families left behind. A central theme of this paper relates to hierarchical notions of power and how migration challenges traditional local structures (gender, age, caste, ethnic identity and wealth), and how national and global structures such as nation-states and multinational corporations influence marriageability, family structures and relationships. The paper finds that migration differentially affected the ‘marriage market’ of male and female software engineers. Migration has brought about re-negotiation of traditional values and expectations within transnational marriages, and is challenging the nature of intragenerational relations, and kith and kin networks